The Boss DS-1 legacy is vast - including as Boss’s all time bestseller (1.5+ Million sold), as well as Kurt Cobain’s weapon of choice! It’s fairly significant in my GPX reference collection too - as the Distortion Circuit I own the most variants of (not counting my Big Muffs which I classify more as fuzzes!).

This article was triggered by the recent launch and arrival of the superb PastFX OG-2 - which is probably my favourite of this type to date, while the others featured here each have a ...

The Kramatorsk Wah Rocker is an extraordinary 3-in-1 pedal that merges multiple modified circuits into one wildly creative stompbox.

Controls - DRIVE } Drive; FILTER } Balance (Dry>Wet Mix), Decay, Treshold; BOOST } Volume.

At this pedal’s core is an envelope filter loosely based on the classic Guyatone WR2, with a dedicated Balance pot replacing the traditional clean switch to give you precise control over your clean-to-filtered signal blend (Dry>Wet Mix).

From there, the signal hits ...

The Ivan Mazepa 2 takes Drunk Beaver’s celebrated 2022 tribute to the fuzz section of the rare Soviet Poltava Fuzz-Wah (1975) and packs it into a pedalboard-friendly 125B enclosure — roughly half the size of the previos 1590BB version. Entirely distinct from classic Western circuits like the Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, or Fuzz-Tone, this unique hybrid design utilizes NOS vintage Soviet transistors (Silicon KT315B and Germanium GT310B) paired with low-noise modern components to deliver an ...

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 ...

By cool evolution we mean a DOD Grunge Distortion mixed with a DS-2 style gain stage instead of the Opamp, you get a tweaked EQ and a higher clipping threshold!

The Druzhkivka Grunge is Vitalii’s heavily modified homage to the infamous 90’s DOD FX69. He’s taken this classic high-gain distortion and radically evolved it for modern pedalboards, starting with a completely redesigned gain stage that utilizes a discrete op-amp architecture — similar to the beloved DS-2 — for a more dynamic and ...

The Huliaipole Anarchy Fuzz is a radical evolution of the classic Jordan Boss Tone circuit, meticulously re-engineered for unparalleled tonal flexibility and dynamic response. Moving away from a standard silicon setup, this fuzz utilizes a unique hybrid pairing of a Silicon 2SD1330 and a NOS military-grade Germanium 1T403 transistors, with the entire gain stage completely re-biased to perfectly accommodate the Germanium component. 

Vitalii has introduced a dedicated ’Texture’ control to ...

Back in 2003, Dan Coggin’s Dinosaural created a silicon transistor circuit which sort of combined elements of a Tube Sceamer and a Tone Bender - and hence the ’Tube Bender’ moniker. I believe the earliest models were in Silver sort of 1590BB style enclosures, and the later ones were in Black.

From 2003-2007 a total of around 150 were made. And in the intervening years several takes on that circuit emerged - including the Aion FX Wyvern in 2020, and the Drunk Beaver T-Rex a year later - ...

In the wake of my recent RangeMaster rundown I thought it would be fun to list those stand-alone units which ended up in my reference collection. I have a huge affinity for treble booster - where the majority I own are on combination pedals - including Plexi-Range types and Fuzz-Ranger types - overall around 30 treble boosters of various guises, and mostly in Germanium format.

My purely stand-alone RangeMasters / Treble Boosters kind of number 14 - while the CTC Constellation is kind of a ...

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...