I’ve been on friendly terms with Oleg from Russia’s Shift Line electronics for a number of years now - mostly on account of his killer original Termofuzz - first released in 2011. I’ve championed that super versatile fuzz for years, and long advocated for a reissue - which finally happened around the middle of last year. Obviously there is understandably no way to get products out of Russia to the UK these days - I’ve no idea how the Australian I bought this off managed to get one - possibly ...

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 - ...

Props to Thorn Soundlabs for a fantastically versatile circuit that easily takes you into Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, and Big Muff territory - depending on how you dial it in.

It has a really potent tone-shaping ability - combining 3-Band EQ with semi-parametric mids and a Damping control. And 2 toggle switches to deliver different characters and timbres.

Controls - Gain, Damping (Tighness), Mid Frequency : 300Hz > 2kHz, Volume, Character : Smooth, Natural, Hot!, Hard Clip : Off / On, Bass,...

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 ...

So my Gamma Radiation has landed, and it’s a superb distortion pedal every which way - plenty of range and gain, and dual Tone controls which give you expansive shaping.

The Gamma could not be easier to dial in - I was up and running with my favourite tones in just seconds.

For me I set the Level and Gain first, and then the overall EQ via the Tone control - where you can then shape the balance of Bass (CCW) and Treble via the  Medial Energy EQ.

I like things pretty full-throttle, ...

The Bashtanka is a mostly unadulterated take on the recent EHX Big Muff 2 circuit. Vitalii wanted to explore the potential of that circuit, with additional fixes for Low-end filter (e.g. 0.7Hz filtering in the original gain section looks odd for an audio circuit and might cause issues); Vitalii moved those to 15Hz.

The key mod is a tone switch which sits between the Big Muff tone-stack and a simple Low Pass Filter (louder, no mids scoop). On the components side - Vitalii deployed MC4558 ...

So this is the formalisation of a previously introduced theme - where I pick out 4 potential targets per new . mostly new brand to me. This is the first in a new series!

I have featured Mozztronics on the site before - for their FZ-1 Maestro take - as part of the ’2020 Key Fuzz Categories Edition’ feature. While I’ve not done an overview before.

I recently came across the GD-1 Bone Breaker and was intrigued enough to order one in (should land within a couple of weeks) - it delivers 5 ...

You should recall I was very keen on the Teaching Machines FuzzBillion last year and made that my Pedal of the Year 2025. Where this Big Fuzz Console is already a hot favourite for that honour this year!

It is based on Darren’s Big Muff breadboarding circuit - that he uses to develop his various Big Muff variants - where he can experiment with different component values - in pursuit of the perfect output for that style.

He’s formalised and refined his development circuit - to form this ...