OFX is shorthand for Oliver FX, named after Brit Richard Oliver, who is 1/3rd of the Chasing Tone Podcast - alongside Brian Wampler and Blake Wyland. He’s long held an interest in DIY Pedal Building and Breadboarding, and with some help from Brian managed to finalised the circuit that became the Purple Ohm Fuzz.

My friend Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX was initially meant to be the silent OEM Partner for this project, but Tom Quayle let the cat out of the bag during his demo - that ThorpyFX ...

These are all long since sold, some even re-sold again. They were assembled in 2 batches of circa 25 pedals each (first batch happened last year I believe!) - these were priced at $550, and I’ve seen that at least one of the 2nd batch was later sold on for nigh $850 on Reverb.com.

R2R and Waterslide have essentially managed to get their hands on a consignment of old Industrial Timers Time-O-Lite Master Dark Room Exposure Timers - originally used for Black & White film processing timings. ...

The Bellows Fuzz Driver was first manufactured from 2016 to 2019, I actually acquired mine in 2020 -  a year after it had been discontinued, while there were still a fair amount in distribution - I bought mine from Andertons at the time.

It’s a very simple 2-Transitor, Single Diode circuit - which I place in my ’Fuzzy-Drive’ category - where when you crank it - it gives you that sort of overblown / console style fuzz. A really neat Fuzzy Textures drive with significant range - easy to dial ...

One of these has been on the cards for a while - I really like this type of Ge/Si Transistor Switching Fuzzes - essentially a switchable hybrid Fuzz Face variant with 2 sets of Germanium and Silicon Transistors onboard that you can set :

Q1 | Q2
Ge + Ge
Ge + Si
Si + Ge
Si + Si

So 4 different Transistor Variations out of such a circuit. The Colombeta is the third I have of this type of circuit - and it has the most diverse set of Transistors - with every one of the 4 ones onboard being ...

Riff Lord Mikey Demus of Skindred fame and Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX have collaborated for nigh on 7 years now on the Red Beard Effects project - but all good things must come to an end eventually - and that time is now! Mikey has become a proper chart-topping Rockstar with a #1 Album (You Got It!) and massive European and Australian tour in progress. Pedal Brands need a lot of time and effort invested in them - particularly on the promotional side of things, and Mikey just doesn’t have time ...

A super busy month - with plenty of highlights and heatwaves.

My house is finally cooling down as I write these last few observations - we’ve had around 10 days of oppressive heat now, and there’s another wave on the way at the end of this week - which makes for very difficult conditions to have sessions with said pedals.

We’re in the final consequence of global climate change now - with increasingly more extreme weather patterns occurring - alternately cold snaps, heatwaves, and torrential ...

Stonegate FX is a new brand to me, seems like it’s been around for a while as there are 6 pedals on its roster - where this The Figure Filter Fuzz is the most intriguing one by far!

I features 2 fully parametric filters - which it calls Mid and High, while they’re really Highs and ’Air’ essentially. With the first one covering 1kHz to 4 kHz, while the second targets 9kHz to 14kHz - which is super high!

We then have 2 level controls - a Fuzz Output - i.e. the Fuzz level going into the ...

Marcus’s second pedal is as equally textured as the first, but with a very different emphasis. Massively evolved from a Zonk Machine, it has the same Volume and Clean Blend controls as the Ballam, but then mixes things up further with expansive Disintegration Bias, and Slump Input Gain control.

You can go from thick and full-bodied Fuzz and Drive sounds, to starved and fractured decay.

The Bias is at its Max Clockwise - wind back for Starve!, and the Slump Input Gain it at Max ...

Sunhaus’ Marcus first contacted me in the middle of May to ask for support for his 2 Colourway Series pedal launches. Where I noted that for a strong launch you would really need to have at least one demo for each, and a few more technical details on each of those now established to be - very distinct sounding Fuzz Pedals.

And so here we are, just about a month later on or so - with all the appropriate collateral now prepped and 2 formidable demos delivered by Brett Kingman. To fully unveil...