The Ivan Mazepa 2 takes Drunk Beaver’s celebrated 2022 tribute to the fuzz section of the rare Soviet Poltava Fuzz-Wah (1975) and packs it into a pedalboard-friendly 125B enclosure — roughly half the size of the previos 1590BB version. Entirely distinct from classic Western circuits like the Fuzz Face, Tone Bender, or Fuzz-Tone, this unique hybrid design utilizes NOS vintage Soviet transistors (Silicon KT315B and Germanium GT310B) paired with low-noise modern components to deliver an ...

OFX is shorthand for Oliver FX, named after Brit Richard Oliver, who is 1/3rd of the Chasing Tone Podcast - alongside Brian Wampler and Blake Wyland. He’s long held an interest in DIY Pedal Building and Breadboarding, and with some help from Brian managed to finalised the circuit that became the Purple Ohm Fuzz.

My friend Adrian Thorpe of ThorpyFX was initially meant to be the silent OEM Partner for this project, but Tom Quayle let the cat out of the bag during his demo - that ThorpyFX ...

One of these has been on the cards for a while - I really like this type of Ge/Si Transistor Switching Fuzzes - essentially a switchable hybrid Fuzz Face variant with 2 sets of Germanium and Silicon Transistors onboard that you can set :

Q1 | Q2
Ge + Ge
Ge + Si
Si + Ge
Si + Si

So 4 different Transistor Variations out of such a circuit. The Colombeta is the third I have of this type of circuit - and it has the most diverse set of Transistors - with every one of the 4 ones onboard being ...

A super busy month - with plenty of highlights and heatwaves.

My house is finally cooling down as I write these last few observations - we’ve had around 10 days of oppressive heat now, and there’s another wave on the way at the end of this week - which makes for very difficult conditions to have sessions with said pedals.

We’re in the final consequence of global climate change now - with increasingly more extreme weather patterns occurring - alternately cold snaps, heatwaves, and torrential ...

Stonegate FX is a new brand to me, seems like it’s been around for a while as there are 6 pedals on its roster - where this The Figure Filter Fuzz is the most intriguing one by far!

I features 2 fully parametric filters - which it calls Mid and High, while they’re really Highs and ’Air’ essentially. With the first one covering 1kHz to 4 kHz, while the second targets 9kHz to 14kHz - which is super high!

We then have 2 level controls - a Fuzz Output - i.e. the Fuzz level going into the ...

Marcus’s second pedal is as equally textured as the first, but with a very different emphasis. Massively evolved from a Zonk Machine, it has the same Volume and Clean Blend controls as the Ballam, but then mixes things up further with expansive Disintegration Bias, and Slump Input Gain control.

You can go from thick and full-bodied Fuzz and Drive sounds, to starved and fractured decay.

The Bias is at its Max Clockwise - wind back for Starve!, and the Slump Input Gain it at Max ...

Sunhaus’ Marcus first contacted me in the middle of May to ask for support for his 2 Colourway Series pedal launches. Where I noted that for a strong launch you would really need to have at least one demo for each, and a few more technical details on each of those now established to be - very distinct sounding Fuzz Pedals.

And so here we are, just about a month later on or so - with all the appropriate collateral now prepped and 2 formidable demos delivered by Brett Kingman. To fully unveil...

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 ...

Normally when you encounter 3-transistor fuzzes you assume Tone Bender territory, but that is not always the case - in the Horrothia Lütz the output profile is mostly classic Fuzz Face, and for this Freaky Fuzz the output has an interesting sort of rasp to its character - it’s more textured than your typical Tone Bender, a little more ragged - but with a similar gain-range. It’s like a slightly unruly / wilder cousin to Tone Bender.

Pedal Pawn described their fuzz perfectly here :

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