GPX Blog

I’ve featured MXR quite a lot on this site over the years, but bizarrely and somewhat inexplicably to date have only acquired one of those numerous pedals - the Mini Phase 95, actually with the Brown Acid it makes 2! And this just after my fairly recent acquisition of the Pigdog Juju Fuzz - which also happens to be a TB MKIII style fuzz - I think I now have a nicely rounded quartet of MKIII’s with room for a couple more no doubt. Of course I’m an avowed fuzz fan, and I have ...

I’ve had my sights on the Analog.Man Astro Tone Fuzz and PigDog Mark III Juju Fuzz for a while now - both are made in small batches and in different colourways, and neither stays in stock for long - so you need to pounce when you see a suitable candidate available.

This last chapter of pedal acquisitions has been kind of serendipitous as shortly after I spotted and ordered a black edition Astro Tone, PigDog announced a new batch of 10 shiny black and gold Juju pedals. I had been ...

Yet another Pedal Primary Colour Wheel derived article - I must surely be running out of these colour-associated varieties soon. In my original piece I recalled the alliteration of Lovepedal’s Purple Plexi which made that the most obvious Purple Pedal association, yet I also mentioned how Jimi Hendrix had inspired a number of Purple Fuzz Pedals. This is as distinct from the Violet Ram’s Head Muff - which is associated with a slightly different hue. Here the colour Purple is that ...

Like many others I’m guessing, my first exposure to DanDrive Pedals was courtesy of Joey Landreth’s brief Secret Weapon Fuzz appearance on a relatively recent That Pedal Show Episode

I confess that I was not fully aware of Dan and his super high quality brand of Fuzz Pedals until that very moment - which is rare for such a Fuzz fan as me.

DanDrive Pedal Solution has actually only been established for a couple of years now - with the earliest official record being...

I have to start by saying I was really excited to see what Josh Scott was going to be releasing today - as his teaser campaign worked well at building up intrigue. I spotted single and dual transistor circuits - possibly a pair of Tungsram AC128 transistors - so I was definitely thinking in the ballpark of Fuzz Face and RangeMaster style pedals. Yet I must admit that the full reveal has taken me somewhat by surprise.

Firstly there are 4 pedals to this ’1966’ Limited Series ...

I’m not entirely clear on how I first got into Basic Audio / John Lyons, but I did get the Scarab Deluxe very early on in my Fuzz ToneQuest - followed then by the Futureman and Gnarly in rather quick succession, and leading to where I now have 11 from this very extensive and flavourful range. Update! I’ve just added the Foxton to make it 12 now.

I think if you are a fuzz fan like myself then you really cannot ignore John Lyons’ Basic Audio Fuzz Pedals - there is no ...

I first came into contact with Expresso FX when researching my piece on Treble Boosters back in May - where Expresso’s Germanium Boost was one of the standouts in that roundup. During my research I of course came across the Harry Holden Demo for the Expresso Germanium Boost - which then naturally led me tangentially to another of Harry’s Demos - this time covering the Expresso Germanium Fuzz - CV7005 edition.

I can’t explain it exactly - but something in the tone and ...

This article is somewhat in response to the fairly recent arrival of my long quested for Spaceman Gemini IV (originally chasing the III), and the imminent arrival of my DanDrive Austin Pride Fuzz. In fact when I was working on my last but one article on Tone Benders I was in two minds as to whether to include Paul Trombetta’s Bone Machine GTX - as I’m not 100% clear on what its circuit provenance is and exactly which fuzz family it is supposed to belong to - in the end I determined ...

I started down my Fuzz ToneQuest at the beginning of 2018 - where I already had a few fuzzes, but determined that over the course of the year I would acquire around 30 of the very best fuzzes available across the different fuzz families. My aim was to get the bulk of my research done in 2018 so I could move on to investigating other pedal genres - like say Glitch/Granular Synthesis/Micro Looping.

As it happens though - I got to twice as many fuzzes as intended in 2018, and have ...

Last time I did a Tone Bender overview I limited the selection to 12, and as much by chance as anything else I still managed to get a pretty decent roundup of most of the main Tone Bender varieties although not quite all as featured here. In the world of fuzz though only the Big Muff can compete with the convoluted and complex nature of the Tone Bender Family Tree - which I will endeavour to distil first, and then extrapolate into my own favourite / preferred pedals!

It all starts with...