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 ...

This article is mostly about the new Guitar Essentials Limited Edition of the Darkglass Anagram - which is exclusively available at Andertons in the UK, and Sweetwater in the USA. It is a noted ’Limited Edition’ while no finite quantity has been defined or declared, so possibly the limitation is solely by way of those 2 outlets!

There are so many interesting angles on this release. The fact that Darkglass and Neural DSP were both founded by Douglas Castro. Douglas sold Darkglass to Korg in ...

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 ...

So this dates back to the 50’s and 60’s when German Guitar Manufacturer Höfner (originally Austro-Hungarian, since 1887) designed those preamp circuits to be wired into its electric guitars of that time. This was done for the purposes of improving / enhancing the output of those guitars - where the preamp delivered a distinct, warm, and slightly compressed colour - which otherwise did not alter the core sound of the guitar.

Those early circuits were all Germanium and imparted a certain ...

So this new H9 is essentially a fully-loaded Single Core variant of the H90. The larger H90 predecessor allows you to deploy 2 x Stereo Effects simultaneously - and hence is referred to as a Dual-Core Multi-Effects Processor. Where the new Gen 2 H9 has all the same key features and functions as the H90 - but can only deploy a single Stereo Effect at a time - hence Single-Core.

The original unit had a cool looking but pretty useless onboard interface - which was mostly saved by the Bluetooth...

So Zorg has been around for 10 years now, and I’ve kind of covered them on and off for the last 8! - starting with their Zogverdrive. Most recently I’ve featured their Glue Fuzz and Love Philter - both of which feature in the anniversary editions - where only typically 5 are available of each unique Collaborative Artwork Edition, and 7 for the Colère et Bagarre Glue Fuzz MKII Edition.

You can read up on the Glue Fuzz and Love Philter features on this site!

Here are the 6 editions :

• 5

I’m a little late with this as Meris held back the press release until launch - so I was only provided with the details at the same time as everyone else - which is really rather unusual. I had a number of other projects already on the go - and so I’m a couple days late with this!

As always - each Meris device delivers way beyond its specific core category, its Enzo X for instance is almost as much a multi-modulator as it is a synth - and here we have lots of extras thrown into the mix - ...

Pictured above are the early-bird arrivals for the event, of course main man Doug, American adventurer Nolen, Doug’s friend Yas (pub liaison), and the pub’s lawyer Jason - who’s early riffing was so impressive - that no one wanted to go after him! All of us were in there by around noon!

This was my first time in Hanwell - thank the powers above for the Elizabeth Line - otherwise it would have been tricky to get to! Hanwell is the western-most town in the borough of Ealing I believe. The ...

May has been a little bit of strange month - lots of delays really, and waiting for pedals to land.

As inevitably happens most months - much was delayed this month, and I was unable to complete some of the larger articles - they will need to wait until next month, there’s certainly lots of projects in progress. Where new and imminent arrivals kind of scuppered several intended projects - hopefully they can be completed in June.

The first event I’m attending this month is tomorrow - as a micropub ...