2022 FX Expo Highlights

thebondedwarehousestourbridge.co.uk

As mentioned - the venue and location had some challenges. As Stourbridge Town is not particularly easily reached by train - coming up from central London took nearly 4 hours and involved several changes.

I had left London in the warm glow of afternoon sunshine - a little cloudy in places, in fact the occasions sun-shower around noon, but generally very comfortable summer weather in the mid-twenties. As soo as I hit Stourbridge Junction though the temperature seemed to have plummeted significantly, and then the skies opened up. So I arrived in Stourbridge Town in a deluge of rain and with the thermometer around 11 degrees - quite the shock to the system. I had intended to explore the town centre and find something to eat serendipitously - but that plan was pretty much trashed on arrival.

There was no taxi rank anywhere near the train station - but a massive bus station rather. My Premier Inn was less than 10 minutes away on foot - and so I shuffled off to the hotel and decided to take dinner there instead.

Sunday Morning was quite a different day - bright with a touch of cloud - but less foreboding than the previous day, The Bonded Warehouse venue was but 10 minutes walk from the hotel - albeit alongside 2 fairly busy dual-carriageways. While the venue was easy to find and quickly reached.

It seemed almost as if Alex had been waiting for my arrival as he was the first one I clocked waving from a far. I then got to meet Maisy for the first time which was quite the delight - and on to doing my various circuits of the two floors.

The relative position of the venue was not bad - but it was entirely short of catering and typical amenities. There was nothing nearby really - you could go back along the dual-carriageway for several minutes - and you would eventually come across a Greggs, KFC, and McDonalds - but not quite close enough to be useful.

I was on my feet for the entire 7 hours of the show - did not stop for lunch, and was rescued at the end of the day with two bottles of water courtesy of Alex and Maisy.

I found the venue generally to be quite charming and pleasant really - while the upper level had no ventilation and soon got a bit stuffy. Alex and. Maisy asked for there to be a Food Truck onsite - but the venue owners would not accommodate any such arrangement. Similar to New Bingly Hall (for the Birmingham Guitar Show) both these venues are rather remote and overall lacking in amenities - while toilets were clean and exemplary with everything working well.

A fair few attended the show, but I can only think more would have attended had the destination been somewhat easier to reach on public transport. Overall it was a fantastic day really - I met loads of great people - including friend Steve Dennis from FX Pedal Planet who was there to do the rounds too.

I of course started by checking in on good friend and organiser Alex Millar, before moving on to one of my oldest pedal pals - Joe Light of Joe's Pedals - I then went where my senses guided me until I started flagging from lack of nourishment somewhere around 4. I stayed right to the end though but did not have the energy to do another circuit or two of the venue - meaning I did not quite get to everyone this time around - so apologies to Richard at Alder & Ash, 'Donk' at Goliath FX, Gwion at Holy Island Audio, James's Home of Tone, Pedal Patch's Phil, and Vein-Tap's Ben. I would have liked to have covered everyone, and I'm particularly disappointed with myself that I did not get to home boy James Gascoigne in time - who could surely have given me a thorough debriefing on his home-town.

NOTE that Pedalboards of Doom recorded video of every stand as far as I'm aware - and I will reference those appropriately here - as and when they materialise - just a couple done at my time of writing this!

zandercircuitry.co.uk

I've been very proud to watch Alex's evolution over the years. Where when I first encountered him he was mostly selling BB-enclosure mid-size pedals with generic Davies Molding 1510 knobs which enclosures I said at the time rather reminded me of Brian Wampler's output. I encouraged Alex to seek out more distinctive knobs that he could build a brand around, and to try to shrink those mid-size pedals down to compact enclosures.

I'm not saying I was the sole encouragement here - while I was certainly that niggling voice at least once or twice a year. Alex evolved the raw enclosures with single colour line artwork all on his own - I had not influence there, and it was a brilliant decision. I had told Alex that if he shrunk his pedals down and stuck better knobs on them - I would buy the entire range - and that's precisely what I've done.

In doing all of this I feel Alex has elevated his brand up to the UK top tier - where he can justifiably sit at the same table with the best of UK mainstream builders - now including Fredric Effects, Origin Effects, Rainger FX and ThorpyFX.

I've still to do a full range overview for Alex - that article is for sure coming fairly soon.

All those pedals together on the same board really look magnificent  - there are so many here that I like - all are well worthy checking out. This year saw the two final updated editions enter the fray - so now we can look forward to something entirely new from Alex - probably early next year for that though!

You should definitely check out the recent releases - Cafetiere Distortofuzz (Harmonic Percolator), and Terrafirma Power Amp Distortion (Model T) - if you haven't done so already.

joespedals.com

Joe is one of my longest standing pedal-buddies - and as the elder statesman of the pedal trade - he should be every pedal aficionado's best friend. I certainly consider myself very lucky to have Joe as a friend. He was one of, if not the first to build up a professional portfolio of imported pedals when working at No.6 Denmark Street 'Vintage and Rare Guitars' in the early days. And after 10 years in London he moved west and carried on his trade courtesy of his superb Joe's Pedals Boutique.

Joe brought with him near enough a candidate from each of the brands he supports - which is no mean feat. The above potograph was one of the earlier ones before the full complement was out on display. Notable among them a proper original Klon - next to the KTR, and one each from the Fuzz Lords / Fuzz Gods - Stu Castledine, David Main, and Steve Williams - in fact you can probably include Ghost Effects' Ian Sherwen in that number too now.

I have acquired a vast number of pedals from Joe over the years- his selection is one of the very best - and he still has connections which few others do. The Joe's Pedals site is a genuine treasure trove.

I did a full potted history of Joe a while back if you want to read up on his illustrious history!

And if you haven't yet got a Spiral Electric FX Demhe Fuzz - now's definitely the time!

ritualdevices.co.uk

I first bumped into Wub at the fairly recent Birmingham Guitar Show - where we got along famously. In my usual way I made some recommendations for minor improvements - and incredibly Wub has taken those to heart almost immediately on his two new pedals - The Jackdaw Overdrive (Electra circuit), and Fay Fortune Phase-Vibrato - which I'm calling a Fairy Dust Modulator as it brings on all manner of fairy-like shimmers, and swooshes.

The Fay Fortune joins my two other perennial Ritual favourites - the EVOL Fuzz / Distortion and Grimalkin Fuzz (Green Cat!) on the shopping list - I'm just waiting for Wub to bring those other two in line and then I will negotiate on the full set!.

Wub's acid-etched, hand-painted and buffed pedals have an almost Victorian enamel trinket box quality - which is really stunning if you get close enough. The only minor impediment was that the brand mark / logo wasn't particularly visible or fully legible - so Wub introduced a logo-fill surround which really makes the whole thing pop now! 

I said that at the Birmingham show that Wub had really found his stride as such - and this final tweak is just the icing on the cake. I'm so excited to see how good the range will look once all the pedals are brought into line. Ritual Devices is definitely one to watch!

bleakdistrict.co.uk

Phil was another new friend made at the Birmingham Guitar Show - and it was great to see him back again with his very friendly bass-player sidekick - who's name I still struggle to remember. You could not meet two nicer gentlemen!

They were introducing two new pedals at the show - the Slate JFET Preamp, and Rec Head - a sort of dynamic vibrato/chorus mixed with a cassette tape style drive and filter.

My picks of the bunch are still the recently finalised Miraj - phaser / vibrato / uni-vibe, and the brilliantly named Tapescape - modulated tape style delay.

Of course we had a long dialogue on design aesthetics and colorways - and I touched on the fact that the new Rec Head has a much warmer combination of tones - versus the existing cool and sophisticated more subtle tones. To me it looks a little like the odd one out for the range - but that need to be a bad thing!

Phil is building up a very formidable collection here - and the design choices here are particularly smart!

emmergyfx.co.uk

This was my first time meeting Michael Gardner - and what a serendipitous occasion it was. Michael is another builder who seems to have just hit his stride fairly recently.

I love the new colourful abstract art decorated Gristle Throbber (Mad Modulator Tremowah) and Blow a Wish Fuzz (Deluxe Flaming Cake). With those mostly pinkish graphics, colourful knobs, and white-out text - they really pop! And it's just as well that those are two of Michael's flagship pedals - they look head and shoulders more appealing than all the other varieties.

This is the direction I really like - and that's precisely what I'm encouraging Michael to follow - he's hit a winning formula here - more of the same please!

tatefx.co.uk

I've obviously just fairly recently caught up with Stu at the Birmingham event - but these builders are all somewhat prodigious. So he of course had a another new prototype to show off - a variation of the Raise the Dead Fuzz - with a diodes Octave up on a second footswitch. Something I for sure can get totally behind.

I keep pestering Stu for a prurple edition Germanium Raise the Dead, and Cosmic Purple edition of the Antares. And I've told him he needs to have a fetching colourway for his forthcoming 'Raise the Octave' too!.

It's always a delight to catch up with Stu - and I always end up talking enclosure graphics and colourways - there's nothing wrong with the internals - I just want a more special box to host them in!

I should really have more Tate FX pedals by now - bring on those colours - and they will surely be added to the reference collection!

lifeisunfair.co.uk

Another first encounter - this time with Life is Unfair's Michael - who has his fingers in a lot of pies - and did for a long time take over the manufacturing of Devi Ever pedals - while that individual is back on the scene again and in the process of re-starting their own productions once more. Michael has collaborated extensively over the years including on the Rorschach with Holy Island Audio.

He tends to specialise somewhat with smart dual parameter expression pedals - where a number his pedals deploy joystick controllers, and utilise CV inputs for syncing various signals together.

A lot of what Michael is currently working on is more intended for tabletop control - versus pure floor-based stompboxes. A fast growing area where the Empress Zoia, Poly Beebo and various Chase Bliss pedals are very active - which rather more caters towards synth / modular-synth / Euro-synth type players - but also a sort of new bread of 'tweaker guitarists'.

I remain to be convinced that you can finely control such a joystick with your toes - but I'm open to persuasion. Michael was also hosting the pedals of our mutual friend Will Gallucio's Triungulo Lab - where Michael actually designed a number of those circuits!

Michael is definitely one too watch - he's for sure involved in some interesting innovations and collaborations - while not all of them necessarily readily appeal to me - I look forward to when our paths may converge again!

nrgeffects.com

I was delighted to have quite so much of Neil's time as he patiently guided me through his whole range and the concept thereof. The idea is to generally switch towards more batch style manufacture of the Monochrome variants - where there are already a number of Minis in the range, but so far just a couple of fully finalised 'compact' / deluxe editions. 

The Mauler Feedback Fuzz has already been successfully launched - with the Poker Treble Booster very imminent. All compact pedals will have Deluxe / Extended Feature variants - as well as more streamlined Mini editions.

There are two more Monochrome Compacts in the works - The Gnawer (Rat adjacent distortion), and Purrer Low-Gain / Soft Clipping Overdrive.  The Minis come in at typically £189, the Monochromes at around £300, and the colourful hand-painted custom editions at around £30 more - so you can essentially choose 3 variations for each option.

Neil's forte is in his meticulous wiring and super well-considered parts sourcing - which yield lots of subtle results - including the really neat LED Fade-in / Fade-out effect.

The idea here is to get the range more streamlined to make the manufacturing process somewhat more efficient. Neil actually particularly enjoys component assembly and wiring - which many builders find somewhat therapeutic - while others can't farm that work out quick enough!

I am very grateful now to have a solid understanding of what Neil is about and how he operates. And now I just need to start adding some of these to the reference collection.

I wil be liaising with Neil once he has formalised the 4 core Monochrome Pedals - Gnawer, Mauler, Poker and Purrer - and will be doing a feature on said quartet likely a good few months out still. I've promised not to pester Neil for at least one calendar month - which means I will be chasing him up at the end of July next!

There's a real dilemma here about what to go for - as I really like the original Full Colour variants, but feel that probably the Monochrome ones are more practical for my own needs. We'll see - I may very well have a mix of each eventually!

horrothia.com

This was certainly a meeting of minds as Tom and I have very similar aesthetic sensibilities and I'm a big fan of his aesthetic, typographical and component choices!

It's been wonderful to watch the Horrothia brand evolve and grow - each pedal better and more refined than its predecessor - with me teasingly noticing the concurrent elevation in price!

There's just 3 official pedals to the range right at this minute - but each is a future classic - the Type One a smartly simplified version of Boss's Magnificent CE-1 Chorus, the Teeth a classy High-Headroom Overdrive, and the Berkeley a wonderful 60's Liquid Leslie Vibe.

The Berkely sits at the top of the tree with its smart start-up switching bypass modes - accompanying that superior component selection. Everything on the Berkeley is very much on-point - with my own exception of preferring to have the right outer knob as Rate - i.e. swapped with the Volume - for easier foot and toe manipulation of Rate. That's the only thing I would change on said pedal - it's very much vorsprung durch technic inside and out.

I would make some tiny tweaks to the other two - swap out the main tiny LED on the Teeth for the larger type per the Berkeley. And on the Type One swap out both LEDs in the same manner - and replace the central knob with a slightly bigger one. The last mentioned step has already been done once for a custom edition. 

The Berkeley is the prettiest one of the range - so this is just an exercise of bringing the others in step with that - after all the Berkeley has hugely benefitted from hindsight. Once all three are up to spec - I will put in place a plan to acquire them all!

Tom was also experimenting with a new 'Triage' Fet Preamp in lower cost enclosure  - with more bog standard knobs and no arcade style footswitch. I accused him of trying to sabotage his brand (in a friendly manner of course). Horrothia's quality is entirely reflected in the three pedals to-date - the new prototype looks nothing like the others and will only detract from those elevated values set.

I say it's important to keep all the salient brand markers in place to reinforce the very values of the brand - which have so strongly been built up by the original trio. By all means try to keep the prices down to a degree - but never at the cost of loss of quality image.

Tom has for sure carved out a hugely appealing brand in a relatively very short passage of time.

fredric.co.uk

It's somewhat strange that I only really properly connected with Tim at the recent Birmingham Guitar Show - where he now seems a very familiar friend indeed.  I'm still in the process of crafting a specific Fredric Effects feature - which will also be my route into the brand.

There had been a plan to concentrate on the 4 leading big wedges - Super Unpleasant Companion Nouveau, Utility Percolator MKII, Verzerrer East German Distortion, and Dresden Synth Fuzz.

While now - as Tim is in the process of transitioning all his compact / mini pedals to new mini wedge enclosures - it makes more sense to concentrate on a newly minted quartet of mini wedges.

There's a really cool new version of Mini Harmonic Percolator - I would add the Blue Monarch Bluesbreaker to that, also the Duo Face Fuzz, and probably Regent 150 preamp. While of course the new baby-blue Zombie Klone is really cool too - maybe the feature needs to be on 5!

I'll see what Tim and I decide upon - for sure Tim is heading in a really promising direction at the moment. It will also involve some streamlining and rationalising of the range - and shedding some of the weaker performing ones.

Good times ahead for sure - and plenty of really cool pedals to be had. I have criticised Tim in the past for his somewhat inconsistent approach to graphics - while I'm generally happy that there are so many now that actually do suit my aesthetic sensibilities. I'm certainly not trying to remove character from the brand - just trying bring everything into step so all can live up to their promise!

leylandpedals.co.uk

This was actually my only game plan going into the show. I had seen Cale's website when doing the show preview - and was encouraged to finally acquire a Boss DF-2 - which I had been after for a while - but until that point had not been able to source one at the price and in the right sort of pristine condition I wanted. 

So Cale inspired me to get a DF-2 for him to Modify per his specialism, In fact he not only modifies DF-2's his very flagship pedal is very much inspired by that Boss original too. So I thought I should get both modified and inspired Hum Along versions which I could go head-to-head with in a feature.

Cale's second favourite pedal of mine is his Tatctave Octave Fuzz - but where I would prefer the Octave to be switchable via a second footswitch rather than the existing central toggle-switch, the Oversaturated Market High Gain Fuzz is great sounding too - while I feel the tiny LED does it a disservice with that large engraved graphic - and I would really prefer to have this pedal in a more compact enclosure eventually.

Same pretty much goes for the Head Full LoFi Analog Style Delay - it needs something a little extra to make it 'pop'!

If you compare the 3 raw versions with the black enclosure of the Hum Along - the grapihhics aren't quite so stand-out and attractive - and they don't have the added cool of those star-shaped LED surrounds.

The Hum Along is already the flagship and bread-and-butter pedal of the range, while the others need to step up to match its appeal At least that's how I feel about it.

All 4 pedals sound great, and there's much to like here for sure - we're really just talking about finishing details - which though can make the whole difference for a purchasing decision. Cale is very young and enterprising and I'm really looking forward to see where he's at in another year or two!

seanmandrake.com

Another wonderful encounter with the super warm and friendly Sean of Audiostorm

He already has a pretty killer Quad Screamer Overdrive flagship pedal, in that unique horizontal wedge shape format - with green accents via knobs and buttons. Sean also shared the forthcoming follow-up 5-knob edition which is absolutely killer!

I noted that the 2 graphics either side of the central knob looked like some kind of florid green man type swirl - but were actual ogres or goblins, while the Audiostorm logo in its sort of red and yellow stripe variation is entirely illegible at the printed size.

I recommend labels in black, and logo in same single accent colour as the buttons and knobs - and no need for the funny goblin graphics. While I do quite like the Fire Sprite and Bee icons used for the main site logo. There's obviously several ideas coming together here and they've not quite fully settled yet on a core template. The same is true of the Trident ABC/Y Box - great main artwork but illegible brand logo. Also on that pedal most of the graphics are shades of blue, while the logo is still red and yellow stripes. I would simply play within the same colourway - will look more polished and overall much neater.

I feel Sean here is on the cusp of hitting his magic formula and I look forward to seeing the whole range snap into tasteful consistency.. Again these are only very minor tweaks that can though have a lasting positive impact. I look forward to owning at least a 5K Quad Screamer at some stage - when the stars align!

www.indifferentengine.com

Indifferent Engine is essentially Adam Paul's musical alter ego which he also uses for his fledgling open source pedal brand. And where his stand was mostly manned by extraordinary journeyman engineer and circuit builder Tom Wilson - who designed and developed much of the Janky Tape Echo's circuit and functionality.

The Janky as we shall call it is a fairly unique kind of open source project where all the schematics are available - but you first have to 3D print a number of the components before you can then source parts and start assembly.

This actual real tape echo machine is slightly larger than expected - and a lot deeper than I presumed. While Tom thinks that the circuit board height can probably be shrunk further by a couple of centimetres or so. The whole thing is really impressive - and the 3 colouway editions on the stand - in neon green, orange and pink look really attractive. I'm led to believe that you can use any ordinary compact cassette tape - while all 3 displayed models had very distinct capstan reels - which may very well indicate that tape needs to be transferred to a specialist spool.

Currently there are very few households who own or have access to suitable 3D printers - and so Adam and Tom will be looking towards making kits for these in batches. No decision has been made on any kind of fully-assembled offering - while I perceive this still to have a foot in the beta testing camp - with a number of recent iterations.

For future viability the tape needs to be cartridge-based to a degree for easy maintenance and replacement. And when compared to any other proper tape delay unit - the Janky is absolutely positively tiny - while still very large relatively for the average pedalboard - which you can see by the two regular pedals to the side of the main green machine at the front of the stand.

There\s no pricing available for the Kits yet - all of that is being worked out. Will be fantastic to see this in proper production eventually - this sort of thing deserves to do really well.

Oh and of course this stand was fairly easily the best in show - there were for sure some other decent attempts - but those several old-fashioned television sets with white noise - just inspired really - and kudos to Adam for bringing that all to the show - you need a proper mini-van to transport all that hardware - added to the extra setup time et al - just really commendable and highly visually striking!

Tom Wilson of course also designed Stonedeaf FX's killer Tremotron Tremolo - one of my all-time favourites - as well as of course the Syncopy Analog Delay, and alas the rather short-lived but killer Stonedeaf FX SD-30 Amp - Tom is for sure a prodigious talent - and  I hope more builders make use of his skills!

brightonion.co.uk

Yet another enlightening chat - this time with Bright Onion's James Murphy who has an interesting conundrum - but can easily afford just to leave it - as the business is really ticking over nicely and he doesn't feel the need to market or advertise - or even further enhance or sharpen his branding.

He focuses on all those essential switching, looper-switch, and patch bay style pedals and connectors - also AB switchers and the like. He uniquely offers each pedal variant in a wide variety of enclosure and label colours - and you can quite happily go for full-stealth black on black or black on dark grey should you wish.

The challenge with these sorts of pedals is the ubiquity of the nature of their usage - and where it can often be a race to the bottom on pricing. While the offer of all those different colourways seems enough to hold sway - and James really doesn't need to worry that his logo isn't particularly stand-out or memorable on some of his pedals.

We brand builders often deploy key brand characteristics and values to help shape the brand's sales and adoption process, while here everything is ticking over so smoothly already - that it's the brand rather than the service that becomes ubiquitous. Of course you can maintain status quo as long as no one else is doing the same sort of thing - without strong brand markers which build on loyalty - it can all too often become somewhat challenging.

With all that said James is obviously doing a lot of things right as his business is deservedly highly successful - and indeed I have one of his switchers too. The range of options James provides here is extraordinary, and you can totally customise the look of every pedal to fully match your specific requirements. Surely everyone's first choice for utility pedals!

raingerfx.com

I've crossed paths with David Rainger several times over the years - but this was actually the very first time I made his acquaintance - and what a delight! It looks like the big Freakenstein Chop Fuzz has now been withdrawn from service, and with the DFST-1 Stealth Fuzzes near enough all sold out - only one properly Rainger Fuzz remains in the guise of the Mini Bleep.

In fact the recent Echo-X delay attests to the fact that David is mostly now pursuing those mini pedals. There's of course two medium size pedals still in the range - the somewhat specialist Drone Rainger Delay - and the fantastic Snare Trap Beatbox. 

I really love the concept of the Snare Trap - while that logically sits at the end of your pedal-chain - and since the last circa 1/3rd of mine consists of stereo effects - alas the Snare Trap just isn't suitable for my rig. I would need Dave to make an updated V2 version with full stereo ins and outs!

The same kind of thing impacts my choice for the Echo-X and Reverb-X - which are also mono only. I still consider the Minibar Liquid Analyzer as something of a novelty and somewhat impractical - while I would be onboard if David devised some kind of cartridge system - where you can snap in different liquid modules - or even operate those on some sort of kaleidoscopic carousel. Surely that is the next step - doing some sort of oil-based kaleidoscope version of the Liquid Analyser - then for sure I will be onboard.

The reverse throb of the Deep Space Pulsar is really cool - but also somewhat specialised. I had quite a prolonged chat with one of David's very knowledgeable side-kicks / proteges - where we discussed over-sized vintage fuzz enclosure and why the Freakenbender Macaris Collaboration isn't really suitable for my needs either. Bring that into a sensible modern enclosure and I will get one for sure!

David is always full of surprises - and I always look forward with high expectations as to what he does next. Surely one of his next ones will be more aligned to my preferences! Undeniable cool, smart and different!

alderandashpedalboards.com

Alas there was a small list of a few brands that I didn't manage to get too. I was pretty much zonked out at 4 o'clock and had not the energy to persevere!

Readers will know that I don't have a conventional pedalboard setup - and in fact however pretty or functional these may be - whether Alder & Ash, Holeyboard, Schmidt Array, or Templeboards - none of those are really suitable for my use.

That said Alder & Ash are definitely the kind of thing I could go for - they're not quite as stylised as Schmidt Array - but offer a pretty similar product - whose entirely square form-factor may very well be more practically usable for several scenarios.

Simple concept really - superior woods with superior craftsmanship - thats' what's being sold here. Probably the best native solution for those boards on this side of the pond!

Next time I will for sure make a beeline for Richard to pick his brain on his own particular market segment!

goliathstudiosuk.wixsite.com

One half of a killer production duo - who also likes to experiment with electronics. I particularly like the craquelure textured pedals as I pictured in my show preview feature.

For me this brand is still very much focused on individual custom editions - where nearly every pedal is wholly different. To align with my way of operating we need to see some more consistent branding - and some proper official and consistent release candidates.

I see this very much as being in the finding its footing stage - lots of experimentation going on to find the right sort of direction to head out in. Currently it's a little too freeform for me to get involved - I largely deal with known quantities - and when I make recommendations - my readers need to be able to buy the same - which means that an entirely custom operation is not particularly conducive to me,

I thinks there are some seeds of good ideas here - while Donk will at some stage need to decide where he sticks a pin in it and decides to stand for something more quantifiable. For sure shows a lot of promise - with some really cool enclosure finishes - but seemingly still to find itsfeet as far as I can see,.

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I am of course happy to be persuaded otherwise!

https://holyislandaudio.bigcartel.com

I was gutted that I somehow overshot the Holy Island Audio stand - as I'm a huge fan of what Musician / Auteur Gwion Christmas does through his various entities - Better than Mending, Holy Island Audio, and This Hollow Earth.

Experimental musicians and noise warriors make for truly great pedal designers - and I would have loved to have picked Gwion's brain for what makes him tick - and how he manages to juggle all the different things he's involved in.

My most likely acquisition here has always been the Angel Teeth Overdrive / Distortion - based on the DOD250. I already have a penchant for 250 types - and this is one variety I don't have yet!.

Interesting the Holy Island Audio website is almost always all out of stock - the only pedal currently available is the Octave Up / Boost Abracadaver Overdrive - with no controls.

Gwion's is for sure a person of interest - and as mentioned - I would have had quite a few question on how he got to where he is - and where he thinks he is going next!

homeoftone.co.uk/

I probably regret most having missed out on talking to local boy James Gascoigne - who's built up a really formidable brand in such a short time. He has excellent taste in guitars - with Jennings and Millimetric on his roster and a really smart selection of pedals and accessories.

I would have loved to chat with him about how he decides on what to bring into the store - considering he has his pie in so many different areas. Being known for pickups and wire harnesses, general guitar parts including knobs, guitars, and of course effects pedals.

He always has a really cool stand at the shows with something of a workshop theme to it.

Truth is I don't know too much about James and how he got into this industry - and I would have loved to know how it was building all this up in Stourbridge of all places - which to my mind doesn't have a particularly significant musical heritage but do feel free too challenge me with pertinent facts!

Stourbridge is rather tricky to get to form London - and I'm not sure when I will be able to meet James on home turf again!! 

I've been aware of his presence at various shows - but our paths have never crossed for whatever reason - there's always next year of course!

pedalpatch.co.uk

I'm something of a die-hard EBS Gold Flats Patch Cable fanatic - where pretty much my whole rig is wired together with said preferred patch cables. Phil only stocks the standard EBS line, not the Gold Flats, or the newer High Performance line which I might also be interested in.

I do confess I wandered past the beautifully appointed stand several times - Phil for sure knows how to set up a stand to best effect - and his was one of the most eye-catching and impactful at the show - while Indifferent Engine's ingenuity won the day as such.

I would like to have had a dialogue with Phil one of these days - while I'm not sure there is anything here which specifically caters to my own preferences!

vein-tap.com

I've always had an issue with Vein-Tap's slogan 'Most Stylish Guitar Pedals This Side of Valhalla'. As a proper Viking descendent through my Icelandic roots - and where Valhalla is Viking Heaven - then that claim is surely a lofty one for a brand that doesn't really have a noticeable uniform theme or style.

I've always liked the format of the Dark Arts Phaser and Dark Triad Overdrive - those two stand out for me in particular. While there really is no recognisable branding or theme across these pedals.

Besides the two standout compacts - everything else here really seems to be a much of muchness - I don't doubt that these pedals sound decent enough - but their looks are somewhat unrefined still, When I first encountered the Dark Arts Phaser - it kind of looked sort of like a prototype - but that is then it's finished look still several years later on!

Too many of these pedals look somewhat raw and prototype-y and just a handful of them have actual graphics. The pricing is not at all bad - but the pedal game has really changed over these past few years - and there has never been more competition.

I would love to help Ben find a design language here which he could then pivot across all these pedals - to give them the visual appeal that they really need to be competitive.

Do let me know what your thoughts are in this area!

What I enjoyed particularly at this show was its camaraderie and geniality - and having it as a silent show (headphones only) is part of what made it so successful - compared to the hullabaloo of the Birmingham Show.

I certainly enjoyed my time there even though my belly was empty and my feet sore - a good looking venue generally - and with some really great exhibitors.

I loved how many were smartly inventive with their stand layouts while not really breaking the bank in the slightest - nice to haves - like Tim Webster's logo light box - and many of those banners were superb. While Indifferent Engine was sort of in a class of tis own - while there were some other tidy stands.

Were I exhibiting I would surely be tempted to use some of those Samurai Style Banner Flags - think Kurosawa!

I would endeavour to be light and portable - while props have to go to Indifferent Engine for all that hardware they brought in. I saw a number of vans loading and offloading onsite - and many here really made a massive effort.

I would certainly come to another of these shows - Stourbridge again if I really had to - while I would of course prefer a venue that is more convenient to get to and has some proper facilities and catering options onsite!

I would love to hear from any of you that attended too.

Hopefully I haven't offended anyone here - my approach is entirely altruistic here - and I'm just making suggestions and recommendations to hopefully bring about more success for those brands that follow my advice.

I'm not always 100% right - and I always encourage people to seek second opinions - that said, much of what I offer here is very matter of fact!

I'm certainly looking to see where some of these fledgling brands are at - a few more years down the road!

The show was for sure good for me - hope it was good for you too!

Thank you again Alex and Maisy for arranging everything!