This is my 3rd Lovetone Big Cheese derivative to date, and the most expansive / granular of the 3, first was the somewhat welter-weight JHS Cheese Ball, which sounds positively anaemic when compared to either of the Thorpy FX Field Marshal or this Gigahearts Small Cheese.

Both the latter ones are quite a bit more vibrant and visceral - possibly with the Small Cheese MK2 having just a little more in the engine room - that one can get ridiculously loud - just as I like it!

I’ve always ...

I can’t explain why I’m so late to the Angel Teeth - it’s been on my wishlist for a while (years!). I actively collect evolved and extended range DOD250’s - so this one was always going to be a perfect fit for me. And indeed - I have been meaning to get it for a while - I always expected to pick one of these up at one of the guitar shows - but Gwion’s batch schedule didn’t seem to sync up with my specific pedal-chasing needs.

I was expecting to review the Spectral Fire and Micro Mountain ...

After my earlier Dirty Birdy overview article - where I complained of the seemingly excessive international shipping fees. The very genial Pete from Airline Guitars reached out to me and asked me for advice on what the shipping costs to the UK should be. I shared with him the shipping costs of the last 4 pedals I had acquired from North America - where those ranged from around $25 to $50 - with the median values mostly around the $50 mark.

Shortly afterwards Pete replied that they had ...

May has been a little bit of strange month - lots of delays really, and waiting for pedals to land.

As inevitably happens most months - much was delayed this month, and I was unable to complete some of the larger articles - they will need to wait until next month, there’s certainly lots of projects in progress. Where new and imminent arrivals kind of scuppered several intended projects - hopefully they can be completed in June.

The first event I’m attending this month is tomorrow - as a micropub ...

Obviously the Glenn S. Wyllie Moonrock Fuzz circuit is back in vogue again largely because of JHS Pedals’ recent Coyote take - a somewhat slavish 2-knob recreation of that original. While G.S. Wyllie actually made a huge variety of Moonrock fuzzes over his years of operation - mostly in the ’Moon rock’ style oval enclosures - but also in square and more evenly circular boxes too. My good friend Henry Kaiser sent the below visual of a selection of G.S. Wyllie’s finest! Note that several of those...

The Huliaipole Anarchy Fuzz is a radical evolution of the classic Jordan Boss Tone circuit, meticulously re-engineered for unparalleled tonal flexibility and dynamic response. Moving away from a standard silicon setup, this fuzz utilizes a unique hybrid pairing of a Silicon 2SD1330 and a NOS military-grade Germanium 1T403 transistors, with the entire gain stage completely re-biased to perfectly accommodate the Germanium component. 

Vitalii has introduced a dedicated ’Texture’ control to ...

As introduced at the recent Leeds Pedal Show - Northern Stompboxes alone has the really attractive Limited White Colourway Edition of the Fuzz Fields Modulated Fuzz and the IT.. LFO Modulator.

I own and love my original Fuzz Fields Black Set, but would be heavily conflicted if I didn’t already own one of these - I would likely have a preference for the White Set if starting from scratch, but I don’t feel it enough to want to change my unit - I’ve already bonded with it! - and everything ...

Back in 2021 I did a cool Fuzz Face Feature - which focused on the 3 to 4 Key Fuzz Face types :

• Type I : Original AC125 / Newmarket NKT275 Gorgeous Gritty-sounding Germanium Transistors
• Type II : BC108 / BC109 Higher Gain, Harder-sounding / Searing Silicon Transistors 
• Type III : BC183 / 2N3904 Germanium-sounding Softer Silicon Transistors
• Type IV : Fuzz Face Circuit Evolutions and Derivations - Fuzz Factory, Meathead, Regulus VIII etc. evolved 2-Transistor circuits - using a variety of

So we’re using the EHX terminology here - where ’Mini’ denotes Mid-Size enclosures. We’ve had something of a revival of those of late - with all the key Big Muff purveyors currently releasing mid-size special editions - including EHX, Wren and Cuff, and of course Stomp Under Foot as here!

I typically prefer the SUF 4-knob compact takes - with extra Mids control - these 5 here are all authentic takes with just the core 3 controls. Note that the Ace Tone FM-3 originally had both Boost and ...