Much like with the recent 32 of the Best Compact Overdrive Selection I now own all these Mini Fuzz Pedals featured here. Actually where the Decibelics The Reverend (Mini Expandora) has yet to be officially released - I should be receiveing the latest prototype any day now, and judging by Guillem Vilademunt’s previous Mini Masterpieces we have every reason to look forward to that one.
Other than that - everything is now in the collection - while this larger quest is nowhere near complete yet...
And so to the final pedal category roundup - ’Time-Based Effects’ - before I reveal the Best of the Best New Pedals for the year. This category is not quite as congested as the others - and while last year was for sure the year of the reverb - we did see a few more prime examples during the year. I guess this year was also to a tiny degree the year of the Analog Delay - with some great new contenders there too!
For my own preferences - I am almost entirely a Stereo Workstations guy when it ...
This is the 4th of my recent ’12 Degrees’ Series - this time moving beyond the boundaries of gain / saturation into the area of modulation. There are of course many more than the 12 modulations I have selected here - there are aliasing, ring modulation and lo-fi signal degeneration effects as well as more complex multi-combo effects, splicers and complex pattern modulators - including for instance the excellent recent Big Ear Albie. Of course the more obscure the category of ...
This feature was prompted by the recent arrival of Electro-Harmonix’s New Compact Mainframe Bitcrusher pedal. It encouraged me to consider what else was available in the marketplace - which is how I always appraise new pedal introductions.
I have dabbled in bitrcrushers a little bit over the years, but don’t yet have a pure-play single-task bitcrusher pedal, while the Iron Ether FrantaBit has been on my wishlist for the longest time. In my featured selection of 9 - only 5 ...
My readers will know that I’ve featured Joe’s Pedals a fair few number of times on this site - in reference to where I acquired several of my own pedals from. My first introduction to said boutique was in search of Marc Ahlfs’ Skreddy Pedals. In fact 5 of my 8 Skreddy’s have come from Joe’s and I would have gotten more had those been in stock when I needed them - such is always the luck of the draw with pedal acquisitions - in that you cannot always get everything you want from the one source. ...
There have been a number of new Tremolo pedals fairly recently released, and in fact I was tempted to acquire another in a roundabout fashion. The catalyst was actually the new Rock Fabrik Effects Kuek Touch Sensitive Dynamic Tremolo - yet that comes in a medium vertical BB enclosure and I only have space for a compact. So luckily Anasounds entered the scene with their own version new Ages Harmonic Tremolo which did much the same thing as the Kuek - but in my preferred size / form factor!
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When I started this roundup a few years ago, there were only 9 pedals in my selection, while this latest edition has 28 - which will likely be the maximum number I display here - I will just ongoingly swap in newer and more interesting pedals as and when I come across them - for future roundups.
I’ve long since singled out Fuzz Pedals as being particularly suitable for the mini format - and in fact my first long-term pedal-chain fuzz was the still excellent EWS Little Fuzzy Drive...
I had been trying to find an angle on on the very new Subdecay TremCoder when the even newer compact Malekko Goatkeeper arrived on the scene. These are certainly not exactly the same kind of thing - but they both offer a variety of Tremolo Wave Shapes and Patterns - which give your playing style very interesting textural and rhythmic possibilities.
At the basic level these are quite different technologies with the Malekko being analog while the Subdecay seems to be digital to some ...
I’m sort of getting to full saturation point with drive, distortion and fuzz pedals - with my ’2018 Year of Fuzz’ coming to a close it’s time to direct my attentions slightly further afield and in new directions. I’ve always had an interest in sort of randomised textural effects - which means that my next significant area of interest will be that roughly defined by the category of ’Glitch’.
Most of the featured devices here are different types ...
In going through all my various favourite mini Drive and Distortion Pedals, I thought I should round out the exercise by updating my preferred Mini Fuzz list which has grown and evolved over the years. The current number is 20 - with some additions, but also a number swapped out for better alternatives.
I haven’t really concentrated on Mini Fuzzes of late for whatever reason, but did put in a recent order with KO Amps for a sort of Skreddy Mayo Big Muff style mini. I’m ...