I commented on this new trio already in my recent monthly pedal-chain update post. When the first batch came out I noted that this style of unergonomic enclosure was not really to my preferences - it was overly large, and even worse - it had its knobs mounted on the top edge - facing away form the player - making it difficult to see exactly how the fuzz is set up. Then as now, I’m of the same mind that these are really rather unergonomic and unnecessarily large pedals. Moreover, and apart from ...
This article has been a long time coming - I’ve teased it a few times now - but there was always one or two pedals missing from the list - and in fact new varieties and iterations inbound! I have all of these in the reference collection now bar the Analog Alien Bucket Seat Overdrive and the super rare Keeley Bootlegger Overdrive - which was a Sweetwater Limited Germanium Run of the Red Dirt - back in 2016.
I probably won’t be getting the Bucket Seat as I don’t really see the point in that ...
Each of the months this year has been pretty exciting in several ways while we’re still facing various unprecedented delays in getting our hands on new pedals. I’ve had numerous talks with industry insiders this month and it seems that the order cycle for certain components - particularly in any sort of quantity - is as much as 18 months now. Shipping costs are still near an all-time high, while some of the container shipping is starting to come down a fraction - but still nowhere near pre-...
Back in May I asked ’Which Basic Audio Fuzz should I get next?’. And we had lots of suggestions and recommendations - thanks for your participation! - the leading ones included :
Some of these were already on my Hitlist. While I have around a dozen Super Fuzz varieties in my reference collection to-date - so I’m not necessarily looking to add to those any time particularly soon - I also have a fair few Fuzzrite types now - while the Bye Bias and ...
Readers should know by now that I’m a huge fan of ’King of Fuzz’ John Lyons and his Basic Audio Imprint. I don’t believe anyone is more prolific than John - who has turned his hand to pretty much every fuzz variety there has been over the years. With a superb quality approach which marries practicality with aesthetics, extended features and superior sounds!
His current active pedal range consists of around 40 key fuzz varieties, while over the years he must have made around 100 different ...
Readers should know by now that I’m a huge fan of the overlapping genre of Fuzzy-Drive and Fuzzstortion style gain pedals - which tend to cover a variety of Fuzz, Overdrive and Distortion pedals - which all have a certain fuzzy character to them where they blur at least a couple of boundaries.
For me the sort of archetype of that sound is the Bixonic Expandora - while there are a great number of pedals that fall into that same sort of catchment area - and the 28 listed here are just a small...
So this is the culmination of my first ever ’Boss Month’ concerted focus on everything Boss! I do hope you enjoyed the broad sweep of all those articles - and had some fun with my speculative projections and suggestions. The natural end to all of that is of course to set out the pedal-chain as a Peak Boss implementation - using what I have within my extensive Boss collection. I of course had to add a few more units - but only a handful really. I’m guessing some who don’t read my text ...
This article has been much requested - following on from my similar takes on the 7 Key Big Muff varieties and 9 Key Tone Bender varieties. I’ve sort of covered this a little bit before courtesy of my 6 Potent Fuzz Face Pairings feature and also my piece on Key Fuzz Transistors, while this offers a more comprehensive and expansive overview.
Everyone knows the story about how Ivor Arbiter of Sound City / Drum City fame sort of adapted the MKI.V Tone Bender format into a mic-stand-base ...
This is probably the most anticipated of my 12 Degrees roundups - and is a touch more complex and different to the other 2 in the series. Within each category here there can be a huge difference in character and output - for instance with Fuzz Faces going from quite mild to rather searing Meathead and Regulus VIII levels of aggression. So the gradual step up in gain per category doesn’t apply here. And because of circuit variations and differences in components and construction, each and every ...
I’ve had something of a David Gilmour and Pete Cornish fixation of late - obviously interrupted by homage to and celebration of the late great Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. There is just one final closing chapter on the Pete Cornish phenomena which is my listing of near match and sound-alike alternatives.
Pete Cornish pedals - the neater Deluxe line in particular are some of the very finest effects pedals ever created in terms of their beautifully and richly nuanced output - and ...