January has been a bumper start for the year - with lots of killer arrivals - especially the DSM & Humboldt Dumblifier which I’ve been hugely impressed with.

Also my most formidable NAMM coverage to-date - where I only started work properly on the 8th of January - but have managed to do 60 articles since that time - which is a record of course, as is the week of 20 posts.

I feel I covered all the key moments - and mixed up new and old in my usual inimitable fashion.

There was ...

Freqscene has evolved a pretty cool new Drive pedal - which combines elements of Cocked-Wah and the balancing of Clean and Wet / Distorted Signals. The Gain switch gives you 2 levels of gain - in a lower / higher fashion. 

The Humans Drive covers a variety of sounds - including of course elements of Mick Ronson and QOTSA - depending on where you set the Sweep and Clean Blend.

The Drunk Beaver Forest Song uses a resonant filter to similar great effect. And I have at lease a couple of ...

Mad Professor strips out the Sweet Honey Overdrive portion from its original mid-size Super Black Fender Blackface style Preamp - for a more streamlined and pedalboard-friendly experience.

The Super Black Mini retains the main controls :

Super Black Mini Controls - Bass Cut Switch, Compression Switch, Presence, Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble.

Where when you compare it to the original :

Super Black Original Controls - MAIN } Bass, Middle, Treble, Gain, Volume, Presence, Bass ...

As we’ve seen with Tone King sharing Friedman’s IR Tube Preamp Platform for its two floor-based-amps, we now get 2 different roll-outs of Synergy’s Machine Learning Power Amp Platform for 2 very different audiences. With a full-fat Amp-top / Rack unit for Friedman, and a more compact floor-based Pedal unit for Wampler. 

The Friedman IR-Load is the all-singing and dancing unit - with a much higher power load - which David says should work for amps of up to 200W. The genius of this solution ...

The RoomMate D’luxe was announced at NAMM, where the Fuzztopia was out late last year - where I did not manage to fit it into my schedule.

It seems very timely now since the RoomMate D’luxe is in the same format - and those 2 pedal pair very well together. 

The RoomMate D’luxe delivers 8 x Tube saturated Modes covering off all the main Reverb food groups - Room, Hall, Plate and Shimmer Hall.

And the Fuzztopia Dual Channel Fuzz + Distortion is fairly distinct for having separate Dry ...

This is the 2nd Iteration for this article - where we go from a selection of 13 to 16.

I landed 4 of these these last year - the Crazy Tube Circuits Heatseeker, Flattley Outlaw, Fortin Kali, and Tubesteader Gainlord.

And two early this year - the Car Martin PlexiRanger and Seymour Duncan Diamondhead

We have 4 distinct types of pedals here across 4 format sizes (Compact / Mid-Horizontal / Mid-Vertical / Large) :

1. Dedicated Dual Channel Plexi + JCM800 Overdrive / Distortion with

The Klowra Verdict definitely sits within POG territory - but with a much broader set of features and functions - including 2 variations of Freeze and Ramp Hold effects on the Footswitch.

Along with numerous shaping elements to get even more out of those octaves. Including Low Pass Filter and Attack and Release speeds.

This is a very finely honed high-fidelity device that performs superbly however you configure those settings. ...

In the wake of the quite superb recent Olbia Super-Klone - which is my favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrive to-date as well as by far and away my favourite evolved Klon sound. I thought I should do a roundup / overview of my other favourite Drunk Beaver Overdrives too.

This listing and visual is roughly in order of my preferences - where fortunately - the first 5 pedals listed are mostly on general release. Vitalii has made 26 Overdrives so far by my count. Actually there’s a couple of earlier ...

There is of course a decent amount of sharing between Boutique Amps Distribution brands, and the Tone King Imperial Floor Amp owes everything to Friedman’s IR Platform - upon which it is built.

Obviously it’s been tuned to replicating Tone King’s Amps, first the Imperial, and then the Royalist. Each of those have different parameters in accordance with their source amps - and are built up on very similar circuits - but somewhat miniaturised.

The Imperial Floor Amp has already been a ...