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...

Another totally mad month for sure - loaded with frenetic activity and peppered with highs as well as crushing disappointments. The first give-away for GPX didn’t quite hit the highs I expected (said give-away closes tonight at 23:59 BST). And there are some weird gaps in the entrants’ home countries - certainly no shortage from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or much of mainland Europe. I’m active in a lot more countries than have so far entered the give-away, so I don’t fully understand why ...

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 ...

February can often seem a rather odd month after the hustle and bustle of NAMM Show January - where a lot of new stuff always gets announced - while increasingly outside the NAMM schedule - but certainly in and around it! Projects delayed from the previous year often get released in January, but this year those kind of seem to be more spaced out - with some not feted to happen until March / April. February always seems slow compared to January, and that sometimes extends into March too before ...

I’m a huge fan of the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal Circuit - and its classic all-knobs-dimed output - somewhat harsh and searing Swedish Death Metal / Buzzsaw / Chainsaw / Twin Peaks Extreme Distortion tonality. While actually this Homework Series Metal pedal is not really that - you don’t ever fully get up to those levels of harshness - so this is not the pedal for those that want to exactly replicate those more extreme classic metal sounds.

Rather - what we have here is more of an Extended Range...

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 -...

So 2024 is off to a pretty spirted start! I treaded myself to 2 pedals right at the tail end of the year - the Poly VERBS puts in an appearance in this month’s selection - while the Reeves Electro BHS-D is running a touch late and will be part of the February selection instead.

This time of the year has to be mostly about NAMM - while I feel that a lot of builders kind of took away from NAMM and launched / showcased their new release in advance!

I’ve still to make it to NAMM - timing’s ...

As soon as I saw this I thought - ’mini Boss OD-200’ - at least in concept. Zoom effects are fully DSP as far as I’m aware - so we don’t get a JFET input section like on the Boss and Strymon Hybrid / Digital gain pedals - while there should still be plenty of interesting flavours to be found here. The Bixonic Axentrix and Mooer Model X Preamp X2 were both instrumental in convincing me that you can get really decent gain voicings just from digital - also the Neunaber Neuron - all stand-alone ...