Following in the wake of the very well received Noble Screamer (ODR-1 + TS808), and Muse Driver (AT / RK Modded BD-2), we now get 3 more in the same series - all at once.
The Blues Order covers Marshall Blues Breaker and Fulltone OCD voicings, the Angry Orange has EHX Civil War Muff and Boss DS-1 Distortion flavours, and the Super Rodent mixes up the Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive with ProCo Rat Distortion.
As before you get to mix or match the Tone Stack and Clipping Character of each ...
This article was actually inspired by the recent Fjord Fuzz SOL Fuzz-Vibe feature - where I got to thinking about extended range Fuzz Face style pedals. To my memory there is only the Carl Martin Purple Moon and Fjord Fuzz SOL in that compact Fuzz-Vibe format. I then recalled the Keeley Electronics Monterey - but realised there weren’t a whole lot of pedals in the extended format category - for Fuzz-Vibes - so I expanded the remit to cover ’Fuzz Face+’ pedals - essentially expanded feature set ...
Coming hot on the heels of my recent Blues Driver rundown we have here another superb candidate for the ’Adjacent’ category. Of course ’Adjacent’ meaning in the ballpark of - not exact replication - often just synergetic happenstance. And the Buzzing Bugs BB04 is actually a unique overdrive circuit which did not really set out to replicate those dual genres - but whose profile just happens to fall into Blues Breaker and Blues Driver territory!
Controls - Volume, Gain, Tone, Body (Phat).
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I’m so excited to get my hands on this new Pedal Drop pedal. Readers will long have read on this blog that I was desperate to get my hand on an original 14-Leg Opamp-loaded OD-1 style overdrive, but with some additional tone-shaping mods also.
And that is exactly what Vitalli has done here. He’s been able to source NOS Motorola MC3403 14-Leg Opamp chips which are the exact equivalent specs of the original 14-Leg Raytheon Opamps - which have the same core designation number - while rather ...
We’ve had a number of pedals released into Catalinbread’s Belle Epoch Tape Echo family - starting with the original 2015 compact edition. The Deluxe edition arrived 2 years later, and and 2 years after that we had a large-format Epoch Pre - Preamp/Buffer, which is alas discontinued now.
In fact 2024 kind of sees something of a replacement for that Epoch Pre - in the shape of the 4-controls Epoch Bias - Preamp/Bias pedal.
The range currently consists of 5 pedals - One large DLX, a mini, ...
February can often seem a rather odd month after the hustle and bustle of NAMM Show January - where a lot of new stuff always gets announced - while increasingly outside the NAMM schedule - but certainly in and around it! Projects delayed from the previous year often get released in January, but this year those kind of seem to be more spaced out - with some not feted to happen until March / April. February always seems slow compared to January, and that sometimes extends into March too before ...
It seems a long while ago now since I reviewed the V1 The Jack and The Kraken - respectively November 14th, and 21st of 2022. I had intended to tackle the remaining 3 Victory V1 pedals - The Copper, The Sheriff and The Duchess - not too long after that - but all kinds of other happenstances and priorities got in the way. So it seems a timely exercise to revisit the Victory V1 Series - which was / is a close collaboration between my good friend Adrian Thorpe and Victory Amps’ Martin Kidd.
It...
10 Years of Anniversary Tube Screamers - 35th, 40th, and 45th Editions. They aa seem to have been priced in and around $199 originally while current prices of older edition mint/new pedals can vary enormously.
Controls - Overdrive, Tone, Level / Balance.
I believe the internals are mostly the same, the 35th Edition has more protruding input, output and power jacks - and a very slightly different format. Interesting also how that one is labelled as TS-808 rather than the usual TS808 of ...
I had the v1.3 version of The Forest Song for over a year. That was already a fantastic candidate, while I had some issues with the Ge clipping mode back then - which suffered a little too much volume drop for my liking, and wasn’t quite as effusively harmonic as I know Germanium can deliver.
So Vitalii went back to the drawing board twice. Largely working on the ’Ge Clipping Challenge’ but also tweaking and refining the calibration of the other controls, voltage regulation etc. Readers ...
This is an incredibly exacting shrink-down of 2021’s Dumble-style Lightkeeper Preamp with the full flavour and all features fully intact - just in a significantly more compact and pedalboard-friendly enclosure.
I’m a little late to Vacuum Tube powered pedals - having dithered on the larger varieties by Kingsley and Tubesteader for quite a number of years. I once came pretty close to acquiring a Kingsley Minstrel V3 - but that was about it for a long while. Effectrode’s Tube pedals are cool ...