I’ve been a huge fan of Markus Reeves’ point-to-point-wired circuits - since having been alerted to them by Brian Wampler. I was lucky enough to secure a rare BlackHatSound MKI-style fuzz during that original production run - as per the below reference. And Markus seems to have been able to secure 22 more pairs of those rare TO106 TUN ‘Blackhat’ Transistors. He has made 20 more regular-sized / compact RedHatSound editions, as well as a couple of his big-box BlackHatSound...

As promised, I’ve drawn up a list of suitable quality alternatives - for those who did not or were unable to snag one of the excellent Boss TB-2W 2N404 Waza Editions. I’ve already passed highly favourable opinions on said pedal, while I recognise that there weren’t nearly enough to go around for all of those who wanted one. This has resulted in ridiculous price gouging - which has long afflicted the Klon Centaur in a similar manner. For the Klon Centaur around 8,000 units were...

So back in around 2013 Boss made the smart decision to start reviving and reissuing some of its earlier pedal editions. The process involved selecting typically Series-2 analog pedals and re-engineering and hand-assembling those in Japan - with superior and more vintage parts.

Boss’s mainstay pedals were all initially built in Japan, but then production mostly moved to Taiwan, and more recently Malaysia - where all those standard and core pedals are mass-manufactured. By contrast...

June has been another incredibly busy month - with editorials going out on almost a daily basis - which kind of leaves me a little exhausted, but still warmly satisfied with proceedings. There has been something of a plethora of releases in June - a number of which were delayed from previous months because of parts sourcing issues and other production challenges.

A very respectable 23 pedals were added to the collection in June - and most have been featured on the site already, with ...

So I took delivery of both the TB-2W and HM-2W this last Friday - and have been getting to grips with each of them over the weekend. I will tackle the Heavy Metal a little later - while the big question of course is whether Boss’s Tone Bender is worth the hype - and the somewhat extended wait?

I explained in earlier articles how parts supply issues had significantly slowed down the production of the TB-2W - while it had nothing to do with the Germanium transistors - which had ...

May turned out to be another pretty busy month as far as new releases and the overall collection is concerned. I personally acquired around 20 or so new pedals - with some further acquisitions not having landed yet.

Obviously a fair amount of new Overdrives and Phasers in particular - while May covered most of the key pedal categories in one way or another. And most of the pedal-chain additions for the month have been reviewed or touched on in some way previously - with the exception ...

Christos Ntaifotis’ CTC Limelight is somewhat overshadowed by its rather more celebrated Constellation Fuzz siblings (as recently featured on this site), while in several ways it offers a little bit more courtesy of its smartly calibrated 3rd Beam / Bias control. The Limelight is a slightly different circuit to the core of the Constellation, while it uses those same NOS Philips OC41 Black Glass Transistors as are featured in the current version of the Constellation.

I’ve ...

April has been another pretty formidable month - and at last I have the CopperSound Triplegraph in my hands - which presented some challenges in being accommodated within the rig. I’ve had to significantly adjust and rejig various elements and areas - including of course the format of the above reference visual.

This indicates the physical position of the Triplegraph at position #14 in terms of physical pedal placement - where it sits just before the CBA Automatone Preamp, while ...

As you may have guessed from the visual - I am now in possession of all 3 varieties of CTC Constellation - the original OC45 variety, latest Limited Edition CV7003 (OC44) variety (some of those still available if you’re super quick), and current generally available OC41 variety. Crazy Tube Circuits main man Christos Ntaifotis knew of my predilection for set completion, and very graciously supplied the missing piece - or the OC41 edition, in order to round up this compact collection. All 3...

With the fairly imminent arrival of the 3,000 limited-run edition Boss TB-2W Germanium Tone Bender MKII, I thought it opportune to do a brief potted history of Boss’s compact fuzz pedals. Note that according to latest updates, the wholly sold out TB-2W pedals will not be going out until late May now. This is a little later than the Late April/Early May date range that was the originally advertised. Each of those pedals requires separate hand-calibration and setup with extensive testing ...