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 ...

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 ...

As introduced at the recent Leeds Pedal Show - Northern Stompboxes alone has the really attractive Limited White Colourway Edition of the Fuzz Fields Modulated Fuzz and the IT.. LFO Modulator.

I own and love my original Fuzz Fields Black Set, but would be heavily conflicted if I didn’t already own one of these - I would likely have a preference for the White Set if starting from scratch, but I don’t feel it enough to want to change my unit - I’ve already bonded with it! - and everything ...

This goes back to a demo that my good friend Pedal Experiments’ Phil did back in October of 2024 (2nd one below) - of the smallsound/BigSound Blarg o-tron o-tron.

He was in contact with Lucas from Rockwright around about the same time - they got to discussing the circuit, and decided to collaborate on an evolved compact edition of that circuit - which is what became the Phuzzmaphobia.

They weren’t the first to evolve the Blarg o-tron o-tron as the now alas defunct Dominican Republic’s ...

A slightly uneventful month in many ways - just the one event - the excellent sophomore Leeds Pedal Show - where I ended up picking up 3 pedals.

Some killer releases during the month, with a strong final flurry to make up the 10 notable article highlights. I’ve been very busy all month - and plenty of work has gone into this as usual, while there was somehow fewer large-scale rundowns and marquee features - more of that next month for sure.

HIGHLIGHTS for APRIL :

[Click on Images for ...

For me - these Dealer special White Light editions - are some of the prettiest varieties Spaceman has released to-date - with the white-out / snow-blind livery and striking cyan / teal LED’s - just gorgeous. I was missing the Atlas IV and Apollo VIIb - and Cream City Music and Axe and You Shall Receive were enormously helpful in getting those shipped to me in short order. I then spotted that my friend Scott at Axe and You Shall Receive also had a White Light Rumblefuzz II remaining - and I just...

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 own a number of PLL types - the slightly synthy harmonizing fuzz - and CopperSound has miniaturised that brilliantly. My favourite PLL’s are the Tark Audio Squidink, and the Beetronics Swarm - which are much simplified from the original Schumann PLL.

And this Ion is a simpler version still. Just one Fuzz (intensity) knob, and then a 3-way Mode / Frequency Selector :

• UP : High-frequency resonance; maximum filter sensitivity for sizzling, cosmic lift-off.
• MIDDLE : Balanced sensitivity;

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 ...