And so onto the Distortions of the year - the smallest group stage this year! There’s no particular logic as to why there are just 20 Disortions this year. There were a further couple of acquisitions that I was disappointed with - and I deliberately left out of this selection. It’s mostly a case of what appeals each year - and evidently there weren’t that many appealing ones beyond those I acquired. I’m not aware of any particular ones that are still in the wind. The last one in was the ...

36 outstanding Boost and Overdrive pedals  featured here in various sizes - 35 of which are already in the reference collection - with the Superlunar SR-01 the last remaining straggler!

The rules of the game are that I can only finally recommend pedals that I own and have lived with, while I can also feature a few other intended targets in the overview which I fully intend to acquire (like the Superlunar SR-01) - but those can’t feature in the final rankings. So there is only one remaining ...

So I’m a huge fan of high gain Doomy Fuzzes - with already favourites including the Blackhawk Balrog and the Lichtlaerm Altar.

I’m delighted to report that the fierce and amazingly textured High Gain MOSRAWR Fuzz is wholly up to the task too. Each of my now 3 favourites hits slightly differently - with the Balrog still the King of Sludge - it just has that sticky low end that delivers exactly the right texture for that. Make no mistake - these are all top-tier Doom Fuzzes - with ...

We used to see quite a few ’Tourboxes’ back in the day - Basic Audio for instance used to send those out for promotional and review purposes - so artists could sample several of their pedals at a time - and get a good overview of he range of pedals offered!

So RhPf’s Thomas and Simone are kind of reviving an older tradition - with some modern twists to it! I really love this initiative - and look forward to seeing the various different chapters of the ever evolving Tour Board Diary! Will be...

Another super busy month - where the lack of a holiday is really starting to impact my wellbeing - as I’m about as shattered and burned out as is possible without going entirely into meltdown - I’m teetering on the edge!

Here follow the highlights of the month - which I normally try to limit to around 10 elements - but stand at 12 for September. No show or onside attendances this month - while plenty of other activities - and some killer releases of course!

• Jo Quail @ the Roland Store,

When I first clocked the Tri-Harmonic Phalanx it brought to mind the VFE Triumvirate Multi-Band Distortion - which was the fist device I encountered that split the incoming signal into 3 different frequency band gain stages that you could adjust and combine in parallel. That Triumvirate seemingly has exactly the same 6-Knobs control topology (3 Big, 3 small)!

The Triumvirate is obviously a forerunner here - and that makes use of 2 x TLE2074 and 1 x TL7660 IC’s / OpAmps, and the 2 x BS170 ...

August turned out a little bit different than expected. Not so many releases - as expected - but really busy regardless - with a number of Marquee Events and Articles throughout the month. With the king of the crop being the Extended Capacitor Primer - to which I’ve just added a further section on Capacitor Lifespan. Obviously I hit 15,000 followers on Instagram - which is a significant achievement - a really killer month all-round with some big articles - meaning I’m a little bit burned out ...

So this Mo(s)ghoul is the sibling to the previously reviewed Mosferatwo - where both are hybrid soft-and-hard-clipping MOSFET drives. But where the Mosferatwo leans much more towards soft-clipping overdrive, while the Mo(s)ghoul really sounds like a hard-clipper distortion. You get a kind of twin peaks output to the Mo(s)ghoul - where at times it sounds like 2 double-tracked guitars, and sometimes it even sounds like 3 - largely dependent on where the Mids are set.

It’s like a lower-gain HM...

July was a tough month for me! Plenty going on for sure - and I had a particularly traumatic Sunday a couple of weeks back - when I was unable to get any sound out of my pedal-chain for the best part of that day. At the end of that I retired incredibly frustrated and kind of distraught - which zapped whatever remaining energy I had - and left me entirely shattered.

After a night’s sleep - I turned up  a little sharper on the following day - and was able to fairly quickly and systematically ...