This is essentially the core of the large 8-controls Mountain Mover Fuzz shrunk down to compact dimensions - but with all the fierce essence retained from the original. The Mountain Mover uniquely combines the core character of a searing sort of Ram’s Head Muff with the added Bloom of a Super-Fuzz. It sound superb, and starts of fierce with even the Gain turned all the way down.

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 ...

I’ve known Holy Island Audio since the fabulous Stourbridge FX Expo back in 2022. And I’ve encountered Gwion a good 20 times throughout the intervening years - but somewhat embarrassingly still hadn’t landed some of those fantastic full-on sounding pedals.

It seemed that whenever I encountered Gwion at a show - he never had any stock of the very pedal I was after at the time. As for most small brands - Gwion operates on a Small Batch methodology - but more from an order-window perspective -...

I thought I should focus on my large format heavy-hitters for a change - where these 8 are some of my largest, most potent, and best favoured gain pedals. They are arranged here in alphabetical order, while they were released in the below chronological order. All 8 have featured heavily in my rig at different times - and all 8 are still very valid award winners and still in rotation. While the enormous girth of the Elektron Analog Drive means that is gets somewhat less of a rotation nowadays - ...

I initially covered this subject in mid-January - where I announced the arrival of the Tru-Fi Minis. 5 were initially made available, but at my time of coverage only 3 had reached the UK. Since then Teddy has released 3 more variants - and now 8 Minis in total have been released.

All 8 Mini Editions are now at Joe’s Pedals in the UK - priced at £199 each, where the original Tru-Fi USA price is $199 - all very fair.

Each of the 8 pedals are equivalent or better than the original larger size...

My pal Scott Hager of Axe and You Shall Receive first brought this pedal to my attention when I wrote up the history of his dealership back in 2021. Scott had a connection to Glenn, and stocked the Moonrock Fuzz in the early days of his dealership. Alas Glenn passed away in 2014 - and this is the first major revival / tribute we have seen since then.

The Moonrock circuit is a unique Multi-Voice - which starts off with a gated Swelling / Blooming output - which when you crank the Fuzz knob ...

After the quiet comfort of February, March unleashed an avalanched of work - both in terms of new releases and acquisitions, but especial in the field of Guitar and Pedal expos - where I attended 3 within a month - first The Birmingham Guitar Show at Cranmore Park, then the London Synth and Pedal Expo at Studio 9294, Hackney Wick - and then back to Birmingham for the Noise Maker Market at Centrala, Digbeth - all grand events.

I burned myself out a little this month, and came back willingly empty...

This project has been a long time in the making - I actually started off this compilation properly last autumn, and then have iterated the final selection a number of times since then - before reaching this final format. I apologise to anyone whom I’ve inadvertently left out - I still have a number of Octave Fuzzes to require - that task is never ending!

I own around 80 octave fuzzes so far - and this is near enough half of those - where I’ve mostly leant into compact editions - and ...

Probably the strongest selection of the year - each one of these is amazing and sounds killer. But then agin similar was true of the Overdrives. I’m very much a fuzz fanatic - so his selection has to take the edge - what a selection!

This selection includes 3 from EarthQuaker Devices, 2 from Drunk Beaver, 2 from Fjord Fuzz, and 2 from ThorpyFX.

It also includes the likely pedal of the year - within a selection of 10 award winners here - these are so good - I could have labelled even ...