This article continues the series which I started with Best of British, Canadian, French, German and Italian Pedal Builders - some of which could do with updating probably, but frankly I prefer doing new stuff. It turns out that Greece is actually a significant hub of activity with a number of Internationally renown brands.
I feel the big 3 are Crazy Tube Circuits, JAM Pedals and Tsakalis Audioworks, while VS Audio also has had some significant publicity fairly recently and particularly in ...
For this particular selection I tried to get in as diverse number of types, along with all the usual favourites - every year I have readers asking me why I left this one or that one out - so this year is the time for including Menatone in the selection. Obviously between years some pedals rise in prominence while others fall - my intentions are always to provide as broad a selection as possible while still covering all my own personal favourites.
There are a few new entrants since 2018...
So you may have read last year that I went a little overboard with fuzz type pedals - aiming initially to build up an essential reference collection of 30 of the best - I then published my ’2018 Year of Fuzz Tone Quest’ just about half way through that year - featuring 40 pedals, and right now, my current fuzz quota is running at exactly 100 pedals - with 82 compacts, 11 minis and 7 medium to large pedals making up the collection.
This overview is 24 of the best ’...
I’m known for my 12 Degrees of Saturation Methodology and organising drive/dirt pedals into a specific category. I do however also like multi-talented multi-tankers, and have always had one or two all-rounder multi-drive overdrives in my pedal-chain. In fact of the 9 listed here I have all but the last featured, which also happens to be the most recently released - by Greek Boutique Builder Tsakalis - that pedal is currently only available in Greece - direct from the maker and from one or...
My big thing his year - apart from the usual pedal-chain ToneQuest has been my separate ’Year of Fuzz’ journey for which this article will probably be a Part 1, even though I’ve already reached most of the goals I set at the start of the year, and am somewhat over quota! When I first started down this road I really did not know too much about fuzz beyond Hendrix really. I did not realise how much fuzz was actually used on so many of my favourite records and tracks. I also love...
I am known for writing lists and cross-tabulating and cross-referencing the contents thereof while I consider which is the best / preferred choice for me. Note that there is never really a ’best’ overall pedal, simply the one that best fits your circumstances and needs. I have lots of characteristics and attributes I look for - including a compact pedal enclosure size, with versatility and added smarts - great tone is sort of a given here. I an one of those tone-tweakers who quite ...
The more I get into Fuzz, it seems the more I have still to learn. There are so many different flavours even within the familiar individual fuzz families and tropes - you have at least vintage, modern and hybrid variations, but also more overdrive-style and smoothed-out and tamed-down fuzzes, as well as supercharged high-gain versions too. So each category can have so many different alternatives that you can quickly get overwhelmed by option paralysis. Yet I have persevered to carefully curate ...
As an update to last year’s piece, and in line with my slightly tighter real estate now (39 pedals), I have decided to go all out on compact format pedals on this occasion. As a subset of my ’12 Degrees of Saturation’ we are dealing with stages 2 to 6 in essence, which largely covers 6 families of overdrives in order of how I set their gain level (increasing amounts) - ’Klon’ type, ’Tubescreamer’, ’Dumble’, ’Blues Driver’, &rsquo...
This piece follows on from my recent 6-part overview of some of the best fuzz pedals available, and updates the 18 best fuzz pedals article from last year. In the main I’ve picked out my favourites of what I’ve noted recently and those I already have and love. Of the 20 main ones featured I have 13 already and intend to get as many of the others as I can get my hands on.
Some of these pedals are relatively difficult to source for UK residents, and a few have been ...
So this is the final of my recent series of Fuzz pedal overviews / wishlists. It contains all those Fuzz pedals I really like that don’t properly fit into any of the previous categories. If there is a trend here it is that some of these are dicontinued, while others contain a mix of both Germanium and Silicon transistors.
I already own 4 of those listed - The Brothers, BitQuest, Side Effects Woolly Mammoth and Zvex Vertical Fuzz Factory. All the others are on my wishlist and I ...