Another strong month for sure! A little dominated by Keeley Electronics, but some solid releases over the month - with a crazy flurry towards the end - to coincide with Europe’s largest Guitar Gear Show - Mannheim’s Guitar Summit. It seems evident now that Guitar Summit is an event I should really be at - and I will make a concerted effort to be their next year.

As it was I attended just one guitar gear event this month - EarthQuaker Devices Showcase at GuitarGuitar in Camden - where I got ...

First launched in 2014 - the BitQuest Multi-FX / Multi-FX-Fuzz / Fuzz-Modulator - quickly became Dr Scientist’s most popular and best-selling pedal - and has held the line ever since - despite fierce competition from my other Frazz Dazzler Fuzz favourite! According to Ryan- there are only 2 core models of this pedal - the one which originated in 2014 - which holds all the way through to 2020 - while there are some circuitboard variations along the way too. Before 2020 you first move the Fuzz/...

The Octa-Psi has been over 3 years in the making - and I can see why! A pretty potent richly textured Fuzz voicing - particularly on the PSI (Max Undertones) Mode. On the other side we have the most fantastic polyhonic octaver and pitch-shifter with multiple Interval choices, and smart blending functionality - to accentuate, elevate, or ameliorate the key constituents. Also with killer Momentary Pitch Ramping - which climbs up to the selected interval and drops back down to the root - kinda ...

On first seeing this striking pedal you get instant Chase Bliss vibes - while this is an entirely new incredibly creative sort of glitchy circuit which Microlooper-style records its input into a buffer - where 9 x ’Playback Operators’ grab snippets from a 15 second Buffer and randomly play those back at different speeds and in different vector directions. The randomisation hits once per second where the 5 Playback Operator types get fired off randomly - i.e. some are played, some are not, and ...

Readers of this site will know that I’ve long admired the extraordinary sound-design talents of Cohen Hartman - who’s best known through his SpiralCaster Plays Pedals YouTube Channel. In my opinion he is one of the very finest pedal demo artists there ever was. He has a way of teasing out some truly unique tones and textures from most pedals - and taking them places where others just don’t or can’t seem to venture.

He did a slew of particularly brilliant demos in the lead up to my February ...

Electro-Harmonix often does superb introductory demos for its new pedals, and I must admit I was totally blown away by the vast Multi-FX territory covered by this launch. This POG III takes the Polyphonic Octave Generator circuit into entirely new territory - and has you covered for all kinds of other advanced effects.

Watching the demo, the following key territories are touched on :

• Slow Polyphonic Attack - backwards octave blend, somewhat Attack Decay -like
• 12 String sound with Chorus

I’m going to start this month’s roundup with a couple of conundrums that I’m still kind of wrestling with.

Firstly about my old friends at Sinvertek, whom I can’t but think that they might have jumped the shark with their latest release. It’s another spin off of the Scream Honey line - the 4th or 5th in that series. Mr Wu seems to introduce tiny improvements each year, and every other year we get a price rise too. On this occasion the offering is two pedals - supposedly both slightly different ...

As soon as I saw Tom’s artwork for this pedal it brought to mind a tropical reef - and I thought I would be able to do a pretty cool visual around that theme - which turned out somewhat high concept in execution - but beautifully contextual as far as I’m concerned!

Tom is the master of these kinds of signal manipulators and texturisers where I previously reviewed his Retroflect LoFi Tape Simulator / Modulator - which I really love too. The Flow Decoder is a similar pedal in its core utility...

So I’m on a hat-trick of onsite visits to Rainger FX’s Willesden Junction HQ. I was supposed to be there ahead of the MiniDrone launch, but a mix up in communications meant that I ended up there a few days after, and what an instructive visit it was. Just 2 of the team were present besides David - Baptiste, and Matt - who are featured in the above concept cover picture too. Of the two other regulars - Prav was away on vacation, and I believe Martin only comes in on one day of the week or so - ...