The second feature for ’Heavy Water Month’ concerns its provenance and how the pedal came to be!

The story starts all the way back in 2016 with Thorpy’s Chain Home Tremolo - his smart take on the choppy Vox Repeat Percussion. A common issue with early Tremolos was volume drop - perceived and actual, and an output typically under signal-chain unity, for which the remedy was to add a boost circuit - in order to raise the volume back up to optimal / usable levels.

The very first High ...

This has been a long-time in the making! Adrian Thorpe was the first Pedal Builder I properly connected with nearly 10 years ago now at an Olympia Guitar Show I believe it was.

Thorpy actually volunteered this collaboration off his own back - he was the one to suggest this - as a reward for GPX’s long and continued support of the ThorpyFX brand. He spotted that I had used the Heavy Water 3-in-1 Boost on my board right since it first came out in the summer of 2019. And as a power user of ...

I’m a huge advocate for supporting any kind of grassroots endeavour happening within the guitar industry - obviously the pedal side in particular. So it was a foregone conclusion really that I would attend the very first Alternative Guitar Show and lend it my support - held this time at the wonderful Fighting Cocks Bar / Pub / Live Gig Venue in Kingston.

I loved the venue - which was accesses behind the main bar / pub - and the whole vibe of the space really reminded me of my student years....

This article was actually inspired by the recent Fjord Fuzz SOL Fuzz-Vibe feature - where I got to thinking about extended range Fuzz Face style pedals. To my memory there is only the Carl Martin Purple Moon and Fjord Fuzz SOL in that compact Fuzz-Vibe format. I then recalled the Keeley Electronics Monterey - but realised there weren’t a whole lot of pedals in the extended format category - for Fuzz-Vibes - so I expanded the remit to cover ’Fuzz Face+’ pedals - essentially expanded feature set ...

Wow, The Guitar Show was certainly a rollercoaster of an event with the busiest crowd I’ve witnessed to-date. At times it was quite a struggle to make your way through the packed waves of attendees, which did though start to peter out just a little after 3 o’c. For me it was fast and furious from the start - and I found it a little awkward navigating around the hall - as the stand layout seemed to have all kinds of little nooks and crannies - which made some booths incredibly easy to overlook ...

It seems a long while ago now since I reviewed the V1 The Jack and The Kraken - respectively November 14th, and 21st of 2022. I had intended to tackle the remaining 3 Victory V1 pedals - The Copper, The Sheriff and The Duchess - not too long after that - but all kinds of other happenstances and priorities got in the way. So it seems a timely exercise to revisit the Victory V1 Series - which was / is a close collaboration between my good friend Adrian Thorpe and Victory Amps’ Martin Kidd.

It...

The final arrangement for the year - all the pedals that impressed the most!

The Modutility roundup combines Modulation, Utility and Pitch type pedals - it also includes Multi-FX and Multi-Modulation pedals of course. Some years this selection is relatively sparse - while this year it’s totally chock-a-block! In fact it was a struggle to whittle the Longlist down - and inevitably some pedals I wanted to feature did not make the cut - including the Endorphin.es Ghost Pedal Multi-FX and Subdecay Prometheus 3 Dual Super Filter.

I still feel that this selection of 26 is...

And so to what is often my favourite category - the many wonderful flavours of fuzz - and we have some hugely innovative pedals in the selection this year - one of these may even be my pedal of the year!

So there are 24 in this year’s selection - where I’m just missing the Collision Devices TARS, Fender Shields Blender, JAM Pedals Octaurus, KMA Machines Mandrake, Reeves Electro Facet IZ, and Unsound Circuitry Kato Glitch Fuzz - where I will attempt to add most of those to the reference ...