So of my recent Lichtlaerm Trio / Trifecta - this was the one that I first got properly to grips with. I thought I would tackle them roughly in order of gain and aggressiveness - so the Altar is first, the Gehenna is next and the Medusa comes after that. I may have to switch the order later - pending my final results. While the Altar impresses almost instantly!

I’ve been keeping tabs on the Altar pedal for about 4 years now - watching it evolve and improve - and in its latest incarnation is...

It’s been quite the epic journey for me to get to Lichtlaerm Audio - which goes all the way back to February of 2020 - where I believe I was the first Pedal Blog to feature Daniel Ringl’s original first incarnation line of pedals - which had white graphics onto black facias , on top of wine-red gloss-finished enclosures (Update! - looked like white print in photos, but Daniel says - "the old line-up was silver prints directly on smooth black enclosures - the photos looked a bit white but it was...

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 ...

Joe Halliday’s latest ShipWreck FuzzStortion has been through quite the development journey. Initially based on the request of a friend to make a Higher Gain HSE pedal. It combines a JFET preamp section with some beautifully amp- and fuzz-like dynamics and characteristics - and produces rather exceptional long singing sustain.

It’s basically a discrete transistor style distortion - with an initial JFET preamp section to deliver more organic feel under the fingers. Then it hits something ...

This new hybrid fuzz pedal is in a similar format to Subdecay’s recent PixelWave Phase Distortion Synth. It has the same 11 Mode (0-10) Mode Selector and overall 5 knobs + 3-way Toggle Edit Mode switch. Obviously quite different parameters and output - but same in layout and similar in function.

Controls -  GAIN / Pre-Comp, TONE / Pre-HPF, OFFSET (Bias)| MIX / Pre-LPF, VOLUME, EDIT MODE : PRE / ANALOG / Shaper, FUZZ TYPE : 1-11 / Chorus & Flange, Hold Footswith to Save Preset.

This ...

In my recent review of the Kernom Moho Magmatic Fuzz - I already lauded it to the high rafters as the greatest Multi-Fuzz pedal ever created. It’s the perfect tool for proper fuzz fans - and in particular for those who have fully mastered the relatively tricky Zvex Fuzz Factory and similar - all those should get along with the Moho fabulously. Newbie fuzz fans may find the device a little tricky to dial in - as every knob impacts the texture and tonality of the output - so pretty much all 6 ...

I’m a little late with this as I had to wait for mine to arrive - and all of batch 1 was sold out before mine landed! So the plan was for this article to go live when batch 2 was ready - and you should grab one while you can - these will go really fast - they’re priced to be snapped up very quickly ($150).

The Hoverla is a little similar to the 10th Pedal Drop Sumy - which was Germanium also, while the Hoverla has a different Pickup Simulator Transformer (with hotter 2.5H inductance), and ...