One month after The Guitar Show we’re back in ’Birmingham’ again for a brand new venture at a brilliant venue - within walking distance of Birmingham’s New Street Station - while I will probably take a taxi - depending on prevailing weather conditions of course.

Noise Maker Market is at Centrala, Unit 4 Minverva Works, 158 Fazeley Street. Birmingham, B5 5RT.

It takes place on Sunday March 29th, and runs from 11:00 to 18:00 - with the show taking place on the first floor, where there is ...

This Three-Gain-Stage / Triple stacking preamp utilises unique Dr. No designed special Silicon Skullsistor Transistors - with one per each of the 3 stages. I’m not 100% clear as to whether the Doctor manufactures those in their entirety - or just moulds the skull casings over the top of a special and specific TO-92 style transistor. Either way it’s really cool!

So apart from those custom Skullsistors we also have a gorgeous artwork and unique custom made flocked chicken-head style knobs and...

So JHS have deliberately gone a little off-the-piste ’nasty’ here - where these monophonic effects glitch out in interesting ways when you try to play more than one note at a time. Even single notes can glitch out every now and again.

I already have a few pedals that cover similar ground - often using a CMOS chip at the heart. Some of the most fearsome of those can become pretty untameable - depending on how fine you set the input sensitivity.

Controls - Volume, Dry/Wet Mix, Oct-, Oct+....

Hearty congratulations to showrunner Jason Hunt for the most successful show day to date - with 3,000 visitors through the doors on the Saturday alone! The queue was already massive and nearly the whole length of the building when I arrived at 09:30.

It’s always good to attend on the first day - especially if you want to be sure of grabbing the best looking of the new releases - and particularly the one-offs on the Hello Sailor Effects stand!

This was another great show for me - with ...

February is always something of a lull - particularly after the hyper busy NAMM-inflected January. This month is the doldrums of the calendar where not much gets releases. I did though manage to land a decent selection of a dozen pedals - obviously some from the previous year. With the Sinvertek MGAT-1 EVO being the standout pedal landed - where the Klowra Gnash and Wampler Golden Jubilee were pretty spectacular too. 3 x Klowra pedals on the board this month - all excellent!

Of course there...

So the Artist formerly known as ’Atom’ is now the much evolved ’Alkene’ Edition - a unique take on the Nobels ODR-1, with several modifications.

The long best considered element of Browne Amplification’s celebrated Protein Dual Overdrive has typically been the ’Green’ Nashville Overdrive channel. A very unique take on the Nobels ODR-1.

Over the years the circuit has been revolved and refined, and is now arguably the best sounding 3-knob ODR-1 - while you still have stiff competition ...

Pedal Jungle brings you a unique colourway edition of the legendary Montreal Assembly Count to 5 : 3-Mode Digital Sampler Delay. I picked up a classic original blue edition of this pedal back in 2018. Its tiny size conceals a fairly substantial feature set, and this was one of the very original glitchy delays.

I’m not aware of these ever being for sale in the uk previously - where we get the further bonus here of a unique custom black enclosure with white knobs colourway.

The Count to 5...

The SIXTY8 was one of Lawrence Petross’s first officially branded pedals. That materialised back in 2016 originally. Early versions had a ’Gain’ push-button - which presumably allowed you to flip between Green and Red channels early on - before that featured was incorporated into the footswitch.

I’ve long toyed with getting one of the SIXTY8 pedals - but that was Lawrence’s only Marshall pedal with just 2-band EQ. I’ve

always felt that a MIAB type really needs the full 3-Band EQ. In fact ...

I have been on an octave fuzz mission of late - building up towards a major rundown of 40 of my favourite ones (around half of my octave fuzz collection). I thought I had just 2 more targets to go - while I would really love to land this one also!

I’m a sucker for wood-panel pedals, and have a few of those varieties. I really like the aesthetic and format here. This is a really cool and expansive fuzz pedal.

Controls - Tone, Mid, Glue (Bias), Volume, Mids Cut Button, Bass Boost Button, ...