An introduction to and overview of the Flattley Boutique Effects Family Business run by Paul, Jan and Phoebe. How it all started, what were the original pedals created, which are the perennial bestsellers and how the business has evolved.

I have known about Hello Sailor Effects for several years now - where I initially found it somewhat tricky to figure out and properly define what the brand, and its voyaging, slightly mercurial agent / effector were all about. It all started to come together towards the tail end of last year - where I finally picked up on the patterns and connections between the now well over 400 shipshape pedal creations made to date.

It then took the best part of half a year to get all my ducks in a row -...

Neural Devices is Mariano Vera - a Tulancingo, Hidalgo native, Electronics Engineer and Graduate of the Universidad del Estato de Hidalgo (UaeH - 2021). My first introduction to Mariano’s Neural Devices brand was courtesy of a juno.co.uk subscription newsletter back on 13th of April earlier this year. I initially thought this brand had something to with Darkglass Electronics and Neural DSP - but I quickly realised it was based in Mexico, not Finland - and so therefore a totally stand-alone and ...

When I first encountered Colortone Pedals I was immediately struck by the beautiful attention to detail and craftsmanship of these intricate stompboxes. And it was somewhat exhilarating to trace back the origins and evolution which brought them so quickly to such a well-formed place.

AD Hauser has been involved in pedal-building for around 5 years or so - where the Colortone brand first appeared on a pedal in the latter half of 2019. By day AD is a Film Colorist - where he patiently and ...

I’ve been a huge fan of Magnetic Effects from my own first encounter really - where I think Christian started down this road back in 2011, with the company / brand fully formalised a little later in 2012 as far as I can tell. A wonderful legacy comes to a close - at least for the foreseeable future as Christian is supposedly in the process of moving to Japan - and running the business from there would have far too many complications.

Christian is of course not just an excellent pedal ...

It is with much sadness that we bid a fond farewell to Tom and his faithful companion Cooper - who have now retired from the Cooper FX brand as such. Tom’s protégé Dan will continue to make his new Expression Generator and Signal Path Selector utility pedals as long as there remains a demand for those.

The Cooper FX Generation Loss, Arcades and Outward though have all ceased production. While there is still some hope that the final Arcades Modular Card - based on the DigiTech Space Station ...

I feel very privileged and honoured to be a long-standing friend of Daniel Thornhill - whom I believe to be the King of the Modern Fuzz. In fact the ’FF’ acronym can be just as synonymous for Future Fuzz as well as Fjord Fuzz - as Daniel mixes up the very best of old and new to create the most extraordinarily visceral and lively of fuzz textures.

Daniel’s circuits generally use super-reliable high-consistency modern components which allow him to hone each circuit to the finest degree - ...

I’ve noted elsewhere that I’ve entered a phase of exploring Brooks Blackhawk’s range of formidable pedals - where this article is really just a short summary introduction to some of the key aspects of his broad range of overdrives, distortions, fuzzes, and preamps. Brooks also makes very formidable Tube Amps - which I will not be covering on this occasion. All pertinent details and references can be found on the Blackhawk Amplifiers website. The purpose of this article is simply to give you a ...

I’ve been peripherally aware of Mike Vickery’s Vick Audio for a long time now, and have to date included his Mount Pleasant Blues Breaker, Overdriver Power Boost, and Tree of Life Overdrive in their respective category roundups.

This article was partly triggered by two events really. Following on from my doing a feature on Steve Mac’s Pedalboard (Aussie Pink Floyd) it heightened and reawakened my interest in everything David Gilmour - which led to my article on Pete Cornish’s Deluxe pedals ...