So for the end of year Fuzz selection the only pedal of note that came a little too late to be included in this roundup was the very recent Reeves Electro BlackHatSound Deluxe Wedge - of which only 15 units have been made so far. Markus has promised me I can get copper insides when the next batch comes around - so I can complete my set!
Other than that everything of note that I’m aware of is included here in this selection. Again I own most of these - while there are still some down on the ...
This article has been a long time coming - I’ve teased it a few times now - but there was always one or two pedals missing from the list - and in fact new varieties and iterations inbound! I have all of these in the reference collection now bar the Analog Alien Bucket Seat Overdrive and the super rare Keeley Bootlegger Overdrive - which was a Sweetwater Limited Germanium Run of the Red Dirt - back in 2016.
I probably won’t be getting the Bucket Seat as I don’t really see the point in that ...
I’ve long been a fan of Matt Pasquerella’s Stomp Under Foot fuzz pedals - and probably don’t have quite as many of his as I should - while like I keep saying - you can’t ever have them all! At some stage I will need to do a more concerted effort in getting more of Matt’s pedals into the Reference Collection. For now though it’s kind of one pedal at a time! The Red Menace, Violet Menace and Civil Unrest have been long-term targets of mine - and I should really hurry up and add them - but there ...
Readers should know by now that I’m a huge fan of the overlapping genre of Fuzzy-Drive and Fuzzstortion style gain pedals - which tend to cover a variety of Fuzz, Overdrive and Distortion pedals - which all have a certain fuzzy character to them where they blur at least a couple of boundaries.
For me the sort of archetype of that sound is the Bixonic Expandora - while there are a great number of pedals that fall into that same sort of catchment area - and the 28 listed here are just a small...
This article has been much requested - following on from my similar takes on the 7 Key Big Muff varieties and 9 Key Tone Bender varieties. I’ve sort of covered this a little bit before courtesy of my 6 Potent Fuzz Face Pairings feature and also my piece on Key Fuzz Transistors, while this offers a more comprehensive and expansive overview.
Everyone knows the story about how Ivor Arbiter of Sound City / Drum City fame sort of adapted the MKI.V Tone Bender format into a mic-stand-base ...
This is probably the most anticipated of my 12 Degrees roundups - and is a touch more complex and different to the other 2 in the series. Within each category here there can be a huge difference in character and output - for instance with Fuzz Faces going from quite mild to rather searing Meathead and Regulus VIII levels of aggression. So the gradual step up in gain per category doesn’t apply here. And because of circuit variations and differences in components and construction, each and every ...
Readers will know me as a somewhat fuzz fanatic - with roughly half my collection dedicated to fuzz pedals, with over 30 varieties of Tone Bender, and more than 50 each of Fuzz Face and Big Muff varieties - mostly in the compact enclosure format - but medium, mini and large executions too.
I consider there to be 7 major varieties of Big Muff - as follows :
Triangle (1969) | Ram’s Head (1972/3) | Op Amp (1978) | Civil War (1993) | Green Russian (1994) | Black Russian (1998) | NYC Pi (...
I’ve had something of a David Gilmour and Pete Cornish fixation of late - obviously interrupted by homage to and celebration of the late great Edward Lodewijk Van Halen. There is just one final closing chapter on the Pete Cornish phenomena which is my listing of near match and sound-alike alternatives.
Pete Cornish pedals - the neater Deluxe line in particular are some of the very finest effects pedals ever created in terms of their beautifully and richly nuanced output - and ...
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. ...
It seems very timely that not long after I’ve finally landed my targeted Danelectro 3699 Fuzz - two further examples appear almost at the exact same time - Stomp Under Foot’s medium-BB-size Silver Fox and the full-size exact Foxy Tone Box replica from studio gear specialists Warm Audio.
In this instance you pay for feature-set and modernity really as the smallest box is the dearest at $199, while Warm Audio’s near original version with NOS parts is going for a very ...