An interesting fact is that this collaboration almost happened several years ago, but evidently the timing wasn’t right then for various reasons. This time around though there was an added ingredient in the mix - ’Yours Truly!’ - and I was somewhat instrumental in bringing the two sides together and finally making this happen!

It’s great news for us Brits - as these Lastgasp Art Laboratories Pedals have always been somewhat beyond our reach until now.

I obviously recently covered my 9 ...

Around the same time last year as Luca Romanelli announced the retirement of Mastro Valvola, my good friend Mike Vickery announced that his Vick Audio would cease pedal production too. Not many know that Mike was my Big Muff Mentor really, and I really got the full grasp on what distinguished one Big Muff variety from another - via a series of highly involved chats with Mike back in 2020.

Mike is / was one of the very best producers of Big Muff style fuzzes - with the general acceptance ...

I always get pangs of sorrow when a pedal brand retires for one reason or another. Late last year Luca Romanelli announced that he was pulling the plug on his Mastro Valvola pedal brand - which at times I have referred to as ’The Strymon of Italy’.

There are so many complications and complexities with pedal-building in general - chip sets and key components increasingly harder to source, and numerous challenges with logistics and red tape. It’s a wonder more of these don’t go to the wire. ...

As mentioned previously - I meant to feature Lastgasp Art Laboratories (LAL / Lastgasp) quite a while back, but access to pedals from the UK has been rather limited, and most of these therefore fairly hard to come by! I detailed how there were only two properly active current dealers that had most of the range in stock - my good friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique in Germany, and Perfect Circuit in the USA. I also was instrumental in getting Joe’s Pedals’ Joe Light to connect with Lastgasp’s ...

I’ve long been a fan of Mad Professor’s gain pedals - which of course mostly owe a lot to Björn Juhl - bar the Simble Overdrive (Dumble) by Lassi Ukkonen. Which by coincidence happened to be my very first Mad Professor pedal several years ago - and in fact my very first Dumble style overdrive - of which I have several now.

So the Simble was my first Mad Professor - and the Custom Stone Grey Distortion the most recent - alongside the 20th Anniversary Royal Blue Overdrive. The Royal Blue came...

The second phase of the Reeves Electro DaughterBoard Series sees 4 cool takes on the 2-Transistor Fuzzes which evolved in 1966. We’ve already had a taste with the more modern-leaning and mid-forward Facet IZ Fuzz Face, where we also have takes on the Tone Bender MK 1.5, Vox Tone Bender, and original Arbiter Fuzz Face Distortion. You then get an opportunity to order the Facet IZ again at the end of the month (28th Feb) - and indeed you can order the whole set of 4 then if you wish!

Each of ...

Misha Mannsoor’s Horizon Devices has quietly made its way to 4 superior modern tone enhancers. It kind of set the mould with its specialist Metal tone enhancing Precision Drive, then came its Apex High Gain Preamp, then the Flux Echo/Reverb - and here we have a very unique take on a Compressor.

Horizon Devices’ slogan is "Sound great, and be easy to use" and that theme is very clearly carried through all 4 pedals which are about as straightforward a pedals as you might expect to encounter -...

This is a project that has been going on for a while. I was just missing the Soma ’63 Vintage Preamp and the Sucker Punch High Gain Distortion - both of which I managed to source recently at relatively reasonable prices.

Out of this collection of 9 - quite a number are now discontinued - the Supa Cobra Overdrive and the entire bottom row - Hammer Distortion, Little Samson Overdrive / Distortion, and Sucker Punch High Gain Distortion.

I’ve always considered Nick Greer to be the King of ...

I’ve followed tkog / The King of Gear for many years now - and have had the Mini Glitch in the reference collection for quite a while - a really cool and relatively simple but impactful Micro-Sampler. I believe that first materialised properly in 2018 - where I’m aware there were a few earlier sort of prototype versions before then - while I think the final design occurred some time in and around 2018.

Around a year later, tkog then introduced its Oxford Drive - which I understand is an ...