Probably the strongest selection of the year - each one of these is amazing and sounds killer. But then agin similar was true of the Overdrives. I’m very much a fuzz fanatic - so his selection has to take the edge - what a selection!

This selection includes 3 from EarthQuaker Devices, 2 from Drunk Beaver, 2 from Fjord Fuzz, and 2 from ThorpyFX.

It also includes the likely pedal of the year - within a selection of 10 award winners here - these are so good - I could have labelled even ...

My close association with Thorpy started back in late September of 2018 - at the now defunct Olympia UK Guitar Show. He was the first pedal maker I reached out to, and the first I connected with.

Since then ThorpyFX Pedals have become my 3rd most populous selection after Boss and Drunk Beaver. Those 3 brands alone contribute over 200 pedals to my reference collection!

The fact that I’m now at 31 ThorpyFX Pedals is a major milestone - and features every mainline MKII pedal Thorpy has made. ...

This has turned out to be something of a Thorpy month! - following on from the recent Manson Supermassive Black Fuzz and 3 Thorpy acquisitions this month - indeed the Supermassive is also engineered by Thorpy!

I thought I should do a quick retrospective of pedals and projects that Thorpy has been involved in.

I selected my favourite pedal from those 4 brands (some singular options!) :

• Redbeard Effects : Bearded Vulture Direct Drive with Octave
• Victory Amps : V1 The Jack Guthrie

What we have here is an incredibly potent fuzz - consisting of 3 x OpAmps, 3 x Silicon Transistors, and 2 x Blue LEDs - so the core fuzz flavour is already immense and richly textured - very much ’Supermassive’ in its output. And you then have an impressively powerful tone stack essentially - consisting of an expansive Filter [Warp] (350Hz > 5kHz) used in tandem with a wide-ranging ’Q’ bandwidth control [Dimension]. So essentially a sort of semi-parametric EQ - where you set your chosen ...

October was a super busy month - one of the busiest ever - with such a scope and scale and body of work covered - I’m quite shattered as a result!

We had of the penultimate Events of the year :

• The 2nd Woking Boutique Guitar Show
• Kempton Park London International Guitar Show

And around one dozen key posts  as below also :

• Letter from Dr.No
• Teaching Machines FuzzBillion Component Combinations Wheels Gain-Shaper
• Hangman fx DAGG’R Dynamic Auto-Gain/Gate Mighty Morphing Gain-Ramper

Rainger FX is one of the 3 Top Tier UK brands - alongside Origin Effects and ThorpyFX. David Rainger definitely ploughs his own furrow and is one of the Original Auteurs of the pedals scene - with ever distinctly different circuit designs.

Coming into this roundup I was short of a few Minis - where I picked up the Air Space Invader and Deep Space Pulsar from Macari’s, and the Echo X - from Andertons.

I don’t really have much need for the Deep Space Pulsar - that’s there largely for sake...

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,

It’s interesting that EQD has only just recently discontinued another of its Tone Benders - the MKIII style Park Fuzz Sound - which was discontinued as of the 16th of this month. Funnily the limited edition EQD Black Ash Fuzz which I own - was also a MKIII Bender variant. I still thought I should get the Park Fuzz Sound for a sense of completion, while I probably prefer to be picking up a MKII on this occasion!

I actually already have a Mini 2 Knob Tone Bender MKII - courtesy of the ...

I’m a huge fan of the TB MKIII circuit and have several varieties and takes already - from Basic Audio, Blammo, Earthquaker, Function F(x), JHS Pedals, Keeley, Menatone, MXR, PigDog, ProAnalog Devices, Red Noise, Tampco, ThorpyFX, and Tru-Fi - so it’s about time EHX threw its hat into that ring too.

And they’ve seemingly unleashed a massively extended range edition - with 6 knobs, a Fat Boost switch, and additional LED clipping option.

Controls : Fat : On / Off, Clip : Ge / LED, Volume,...