I first featured the Old Blood Noise x Emily Hopkings Parting back on January 21st. All the demos were great, but I was massively put off by the overly cluttered nature of the artwork. Even in the early monochrome edition - that ultra busy design made it really hard to even look in the direction of the pedal - I imagine anyone on the spectrum would not have reacted well to that design. It kind of drowned out the functional ability of the pedal - and made it look far tricker to deploy than it ...

We pretty much know the score by now - the same exercise of innovations and improvements that was applied to the BigSky MX - has now been applied to its Delay sibling. We get all the goodness of the original - with vastly enhanced abilities - including 2 simultaneous Stereo Algorithms - much like the Empress EchoSystem has done for a quite some years now.

The number of core surface Models / Algorithms is still 12, and some of the older ones are concealed within options of those 12 updated ...

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 ...

At one stage there was a 50/50 chance as to whether I would make the show - as there were significant disruptions on the Liverpool Street to Norwich line - which meant a bus replacement service between Colchester and Ipswich. Some of the journey times quoted were up to 4 and a 1/2 hours each way! In the end the door-to-door was closer to 3 hours in total! The journey up including the coach was actually more fun that the journey back via Cambridge. Cambridge has obviously sinned grievously as ...

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...

I’ve finally picked up a Hotone Verbera (normally $299 / £249), where I paid £229 at Andertons - super good value, and I’ve been incredibly impressed right from the start. The control interface is mostly pretty intuitive - and the value of this pedal is hard to beat. It could even be my favourite Reverb workstation to-date - but it’s a little early to call - I normally give it at least a few months!

It’s been a long time coming - and has been held off for quite a few months by a combination...

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 ...

These 3 new pedals bring the JHS 3 Series roster to a very versatile 19 units. These 3 are a little more left-field and adventurous than the rest - and largely an acquired taste. I have a lot of time for Bitcrushers and Glitch Delays - and own a few of those varieties, while I’m a little less au-fait with Ring Modulators. Ringmods for me are often tremolos or vibratos gone wrong - but there are some handy examples of those which blend in gain and other complementary sounds to make more musical ...