2022 September Pedal-Chain Update - Episode IX - a Ramble Through History

As strong a field of overdrive as I've encountered - all of these are superb - and deliver a vibrant and wide-ranging soundstage - the Slamurai and Parasite have amazing extensive range, and The Reverend is just so consistently high quality in its delivery. Each one of these is a classic in its own right!!

Note that with the Decibelics Reverend and Way Huge Red Llama onboard I will be finally doing my long-promised Billy Gibbons style overdrive overview - with some surprising left-field choices included!

• All-Pedal Slamurai Bushido Drive - Parlor All-Black Edition
• Colortone Parasite JFET Overdrive
• Decibelics The Reverend Billy Gibbons Style Overdrive / Distortion / Fuzz (Expandora)
• MXR Timmy Mini Overdrive
• OneControl Honey Bee 4K Mini Custom
• Way Huge Red Llama Overdrive MKIII Smalls

A few long-term targets here in the Tight Metal , Kult, OpenDrive, Kismet and Marvel 3 Drive. Hopefully I made a decent tribute to Tim Kruger - he will be missed - all of his pedals are fantastic, and I'm very grateful that I managed to snag one of each. The range on the Kismet in particular is immense! The Noise Space Audio's OpenDrive is Serrhi's sort of homage to the V1 Toneczar Openhaus - but with a lot of changes, and entirely different Ukrainian-sourced components. I always wanted to compact version also alongside my extended size Openhaus EQ - and this version is really clever with a second footswitch and some other intestine differences that set it apart from the pedal that inspired it :

• Amptweaker Tight Metal Jr
• Goosoniqueworx / GworX Kult High Gain Distortion
• Kuro Custom Audio T120 Slimline Matamp style Preamp
• Noise Space Audio OpenDrive High Gain Distortion
• Ramble FX Kismet Analog Distortion + 4 presets
• Ramble FX Marvel Drive 3 Red

Yet another bumper month for Fuzzes - aren't they all! (mostly!). Starting with Anasounds' Medium and Compact Full Story Modular Muffs - which I actually prefer to the larger Collector's edition - that one seems to suffer a relatively low output - while the two here are perfectly fine. I have the full set of Tone Cards with the Collector's Edition, and I bought the 4 Tone Cards Collaborations set too - where those are now occupying the two smaller pedals. All the original Tone Cards are back in the display case, and the Triangle and Civil War Cards (great combo) are now in the Collector's edition - which still doesn't sound nearly as loud as the other two with everything maxed out!

Of course I finally managed to snag an Animal Factory Chemical Burn, and my 21st Basic Audio Knight Fuzz. The Colortone Fuzzball is fantastic - I have a full review coming up - it's got a really interesting tone-stack - at least in terms of how it renders. Then there is of course the J Mascis episode - which I'm cool with now, and the bad timing on the King Tone miniFUZZ Si - just on the eve of the V2 Hybrid / Combined edition. I'm still glad I could complete that set though!  And finally we have the supreme Fjord Fuzz Berserk II - which is just effortlessly playable - a massive sounding warm and open fuzz which is the easiest ever fuzz to dial in! :

• Anasounds Standard Edition Mid-Size Full Story Modular Muff
• Anasounds FX Teacher Full Story Compact Modular Muff
• Animal Factory 1 : Chemical Burns Super Fuzz
• Basic Audio Knight Fuzz
• Colortone Fuzzball Black Russian style Muff
• Electro-Harmonix J Mascis Signature V2 Violet Ram's Head Big Muff Pi
• Fjord Fuzz Berserk II
• King Tone miniFUZZ Si

I rather optimistically declared this to be the 'Year of the Flanger' at the start of the year - but it's only really turned out that way for me - where I've scooped up the entirety of my shortlist - with just the top secret Sitek one remaining for this year. My friend Verlie at PastFX is working on further Flanger types - but likely early next year - while she has made 2 of my pedals pictured above redundant - with new improved versions of the Elastic Mattress and Hot for Flanger - which I've already negotiated on for next month - really looking to get my hand on those. Of the new ones there's nothing particularly to challenge my favourites - both the Supro and Walrus are rather subtle really and don't have the verve of my existing favourites here - they're all valid though and each delivers a distinct voicing. I have the Sitek one to go whenever Andy is happy with the final version of that - and I have a few more of PastFX's to get - they have a vintage version of the A/DA out in a few months - which I'm particularly excited about.

I'm also incredibly excited about the Ritual Device Fay - which just sounds so amazing - thick and expressive - and definitely encroaching on Uni-Vibe territory  - just a brilliant modulation - beautifully designed. It does need more output though on its Grit clipping stage - which is my only teensiest niggle!

The OBNE Float arrived alongside the Meris LVX - and I still need to figure out how I'm going to accommodate it on the board and when. It most naturally slots in where the Beetronics Zzombee currently sits - but I'm having way too much fun with that to swap it out any time soon - so the Float will have to wait its turn! I acquried the Float design OBNE Expression Ramper and Slider last month - so need to decide which one of those goes in on duty first! :

• DigiTech Nautila Chorus / Flanger
• Ibanez Mini Analog Flanger
• Mooer E-Lady Analog Flanger
• OBNE Float Dual Moving Parallel Stereo Filter
• Ritual Devices Fay Phase Filter Saturator Modulation
• Supro 1309 Stereo Flanger
• Walrus Audio Polychrome Analog Flanger

And the final one to land this month - was my long-awaited Meris LVX - I'm mostly just relieved to have got my hands on it as it's been such a long time coming - that for a time I wondered if I had somehow been missed off the first batch. Seems like we Europeans got ours a lot later than those of you on the other side of the pond - but I'm delighted to finally have it - and I will report back in depth when I've had a few weeks under my belt! :

• Meris LVX True Stereo Modular Delay System

For the first time I will be reporting and rationalising on those pedals I've decide should be added to the reference collection. Not everything that goes on the wishlist makes it in - as there are so many shifting priorities and new pedals arising almost every day - which render earlier positions redundant. 

These are definitely though the September arrivals / new entrants that impressed me :

• EHX BMP Hardware Plugin
• Kernom Ridge Augmented Analog Overdrive
• King Tone miniFUZZ V2 Si/Ge Fuzz
• King Tone Octaland V2 Octave Fuzz
• MXR x Analog.Man Duke of Tone Mini Overdrive
• PRS Pedals Horsemeat Transparent Overdrive
• Shift Line Stages Dynamic Drive Multi-Stage Overdrive
• Victory Amps V1 Compact Preamp Pedal Series - Jack, and Kraken
• Walrus Audio Eons 5-State Fuzz (Ram's Head)
• Wren and Cuff Anna signalled Carlos Sanchez / Coheed and Cambria Pedal

Not all are fully perfect - and I may still quibble about some aspect of the pedal - the price of the EHX BMP Hardware Plugin, the size of the Kernom Ridge etc. while all these have something about them that makes acquiescing more than likely.

Love what Jesse is currently doing with his King Tone range - but those are pricey at over £300 a pop - just as well there arrival is staggered in the UK. So many American pedals arrive late over on these shores - including all the Dunlop Group products. Shift Line is likely a long-range prospect - especially because of what's happening in the world right now.

Walrus Eons is a must have for me, I really would like a Wren and Cuff ANNA - but it's a pricey proposition with shipping, import and customs fees - particularly since the £pound has crashed by 1/3rd in just the last few months.

Timing and various prevailing priorities and projects will get in the way - and a number of these will slip through the net - some to be scooped up later as second hadn't editions - and others never to be acquired at all!

A whopping 17 slots updated for September - and it could have been a lot more - several of the imminent arrivals got held up for a week or two in Customs and are not landing here until next week. Slots changed are : #5, #10, #15a, #16, #18, #19, #20, #21, #23, #24, #25, #26, #27, #30, #31, #32, #38,

We essentially have 2 fantastic Trifectas on the board - from Anasounds, and Ramble FX, then a brace of exceptionally versatile gain machines from Colortone Pedals (which I will be reviewing properly next month)  - the excellent All-Pedal Slamurai, the massive Fjord Fuzz Berserk II, the potent Goosoniqueworx Kult and Ampteaker Tight Metal Jr. Totally killer Kuro V2 T120. Beautifully textured  Ritual Devices Fay, the elegantly subtle Supro Stereo Flanger, and the magnificent but still mostly untouched Meris LVX - more of each of those below :

The first of the Ramble FX homage - Ramble FX Twin Bender MK I.V / II Tone Bender totally set the trend for dual voice Tone Benders and has just the right complements of controls to really do justice to those flavours. Great sounding Germanium Transistors - just a really innovative and solid Tone Bender - everyone should probably have one of these - I've had mine for a few years - while the Kismet and Marvel 3 Drive were acquired very recently. Tim Krueger was definitely a prodigious talent, while he was never particularly prolific - apart from in iterating this killer trio of effects. Each of these is top drawer - and I'm particularly impressed by the Twin Bender and Kismet - which are very easy to dial in - the Marvel 3 Drive takes a little more patience and perseverance!

So the biggest surprise for me this month was the All-Pedal Slamurai Bushido Drive - just a beautifully calibrated versatile warm and smooth overdrive with gorgeous texture - and huge range - from totally clean boost to some considerable crunchy distortion. Everything about this pedal is great - including the Tone-Stack frequency selection and the even and predictable tapers of all of those knobs - with thankfully plenty volume too - to take thinks to 11! It really is a superb overdrive - and yet under and off most people's radar - definitely a secret weapon!

And here we have the first of the Anasounds Full Story 2-Channel Modular Muff Fuzz with Modular Boost - in Collector's edition - worth it for the packaging, the beautiful design - and the full set of 7 Big Muff Tone Cards -Triangle, Ram's Head, Opamp, Civil War / Red Army, Green Russian, Black Russian, and Black & Red 2000 NYC. It's actually the least favourite of the 3 sizes - as it's bigger than I would want it - and is somewhat vintage-style hugely underpowered on the volume - which is something that doesn't affect the smaller two - which just sound better - and louder!

I expected this one to be brilliant - Colortone Pedals' Parasite JFET Overdrive - where the name is derived from the JFET's being desired as having 'Searing Parasitic Feedback' which took AD the best part of a month or two to properly tame. What you have here is an exceptional - gloriously textured overdrive - with actually really powerful EQ section courtesy of use 2-Band EQ and 2 switches. You can set it up really soft and smooth or really quite angry and searing at the different extremes - again plenty of everything onboard - and it delivers the most excellent Dumble tones in particular ! I will be doing a full review of this pedal next week - so stay tuned for that!

The Ramble FX Marvel 3 Drive Plexi-style Overdrive is actually a great sounding representative of the genre - while it's not necessarily the easiest to dial in - as it takes a while to get the balance of the Hight Treble and Normal Gain controls just right - if you show this pedal some patience it's capable of great tones. While it's not quite as texturally satisfying as my Pettyjohn Custom Gold II - but certainly close enough for most!

I think the smallest / cheapest single-channel Anasounds / FX Teacher Compact Full Story Modular Muff Fuzz version is probably my favourite of the 3 with its additional 3-way Clipping and 3-way Mids switches. It offers greater tonal variety than the larger editions and to my ears has the loudest output too. For sure this is my favourite - it comes with the 2000 NYC Card onboard, but I have the superb Muff-Bender Tampco Tone Card in there now!

And finally the mid-size, middling Anasounds Standard Full Story BB-size 2-Channel Modular Muff Fuzz - this sits very much in the middle of the 3 varieties - it's louder than the Collector's edition, but funnily enough not as tonally versatile as the smaller FX Teacher edition - that one's 3-way Clipping and Mids controls really make the difference - while for the Standard edition to simply have 2-way Mids switches here I feel is not quite good enough! This comes with the Triangle and Civil War pair of Tone Cards - which are a beautifully matched set - and which I just transplanted to the Collector's edition - where this one is currently housing the special Collaborators' Battersea and Pulse Tone Cards. It really works fine - but I totally prefer the compact - which has to be my recommendation here - buy the compact says !. In fact Buy 2 to give you the same sort of thing as the 2-Channel varieties do!

Just listen to the above RJ demo to be convinced that this is one of the finest Fuzz Face style fuzzes ever created. It's the easiest Fuzz to dial in and delivers instant satisfaction - every which way. Beautifully wide-ranging and versatile with just 3 controls - nothing more - and superb dynamics and Guitar volume knob cleanup. A pure joy to deploy - and very special indeed!

Colortone Pedals' Fuzzball Black Russian style Muff Fuzz is just the most beautifully singing smooth Muff there ever was - with a really cool and unusual Tone-Stack which yields smooth tones at either end, but more edgy ones in the middle passage of hits taper. You can shape your output actually in all kinds of interesting ways - but the most fun here is that super smooth and sustaining output - I'll be doing a full review of this pedal soon too - probably in around a couple of weeks after this one's Parasite Overdrive sibling's review - which should be out next week!

Not quite as surprising as the All-Pedal Slamurai - but still something of a revelation to me - this Ramble FX Kismet 4-Preset Programmable Distortion is just supremely versatile - and goes surprisingly high gain - with just a lovely relatively smooth texture / tonality. Those 5 dials manage to wring a huge variety of tones out of this device - and you can preserve 4 of them via the presets. I didn't expect this one to be quite so good - but it really has a vast range - and that 3-band EQ is so well calibrated as to give you the widest possible range from just those 5 controls. this is another pedal that is somewhat under the radar - all of Tim Krueger's pedals are pretty great - and despite the innovations of his Twin Bender - this Kismet may very well be my favourite one of his!

I've come so close to snagging the Goosoniqueworx Kult 2-Channel High Gain Distortion on 3 previous occasions - so I was determined not to let is pass this time around. Immediate experience was not particularly positive on 9V supply - while the 18V supply makes all the difference! I would still like just a touch more volume, but at max on 18V it will be loud enough for most. Just a superb sounding truly heavyweight High Gain Distortion from 2012. It's not necessarily the easiest of pedals to dial in - but once you hit the right sweet-spots it sounds superb - with just one of the best distortion textures ever - oh what I could do with it with just 10% more volume at my finger-tips. As is it's particularly strong - while I get even more out of it by using the Boost on my JA Bloom simultaneously with my Treble Booster on the Strymon Sunset - actually which combination works really superbly for the Amptweaker Tight Metal too!

My good friend Giulio just gets better and better with age - and this is surely his finest pedal to-date. The Kuro Custom Audio T120 V2 Matamp style Preamp just has the most exceptional raw, wall-of-sound amp-like texture. It was already impressive in its large 1590DD enclosure - but shrunk down to 1590BB it is even more magnificent. Actually there is not much really between this and the Exegol Model-T style Preamp - both are just phenomenal - and so much fun to ramp up through the gears. I particularly like that the Depth and Drive controls here are notched - which hives you a really elegant way to step up your gain / impact. This is just a really glorious sounding Preamp - as amp-like as they come!

So my first time with the Tight Metal - which has a very distinctive timbre that I can't entirely place - it's certainly a pretty great sounding high gain disruption and fairly grindy in its output. For me to get the very best out of it I need to apply my Strymon Sunset Treble Booster and JA Bloom Boost - with an accentuation on the Low-frequency EQ - that's what really pushes this where it needs to be. It's not quite a punchy and percussive as I expected and it doesn't quite go to 11 neither on the Volume Dial or on the Gain - you can still get some very cool tones out of it - but  for me it's a touch flawed with those auxiliary pedals. Also - even though it only has 6 controls - it was still a touch fiddly to get into its most potent sweet-spot - which I thought I'd best record for posterity - as some fine-tuning is needed. Basically with Volume and Gain on max you kind of overload the circuit with compression and it starts to choke out a little - so you need to go to max on both those dials and dial back until the tone is fully searing. In terms of the switches - those are actually 3-way switches which is not really stated anywhere - I have the Plexi / Smooth switch in the middle - Gate kind of middling, and Fat / Tight on Fat - that delivers the ultimate tones and textures - but it seems to be a touch more fiddly than it needs to be!

I totally love the Ritual Devices Fay Phase Filter Saturator Modulation - which just has the most glorious and richly textured phasey output - definitely into Uni-Vibe territory - it just sounds wonderful, huge and really animated  - where it's very easy to dial in and all those switches really cleverly allow you to quickly ramp things up and down. I suggested that the Space switch should be rendered as a second Footswitch - that would be brilliant. My only niggle is with the Gainier Grit Clipping Mode which drops too much volume - while with all the other switches you can flip them without needing to recalibrate the whole pedal. Still pretty much perfectly formed every which way - and highly recommended - one of my favourite all-time modulations. Another pedal that is almost instantly satisfying!

The PastFX Chorus Ensemble is back on the board for another spin - just one of the most beautifully textured Chorus ever - PastFX's Verlie is most definitely turning out to be a wiz with Modulations in particular - the Queen of Modulations as I will now dub her officially! Every pedal of hers I own is extraordinarily nuanced and textured - with really smart additional feature to get even more out of those vintage components and vintage-inspired circuits. Her Choruses and Flangers in particular are among the best in the world. I'm due to get one of her Deluxe Foot Phasers too - and will report back on that - I'm of course expecting big things of that. I have an updated Hot for Flanger on the way - along with one of Verlie's recent DOD-inspired Stereo Chorus PX65. I've still to negotiate the Foot Phaser - and an updated Elastic Mattress - which now rather wonderfully has an additional external level control!

I found out this month that not all Flangers are created equal - and that some are incredibly subtle, particularly on clean inputs - like the Supro 1309 Stereo Flanger - which delivers hardly anything on clean - but sounds suitably textured and interesting if you stick some gain through it. I've recently been spoilt rotten by Verlie's PastFX Flanger Creations - which are largely in a league of their own - and which additional granular controls allow you to deliver the full range of Flanging - from barely their subtle to full-on jet-flanger wooshy, fat and greasy textures. I found both the Supro and Walrus Audio Polychrome flangers a touch disappointing - and particular on clean inputs - while the both work well enough with gain - they don't really hold a candle to my favourites of the genre - which include Thorpy's extraordinary Camoflange, PastFX beautifully texture Trifecta, the Spaceman Aurora, A/DA PBF Flanger, Boss BF-2, and Chase Bliss Spectre. In fact the DigiTech Nautili Chorus Flanger is pretty decent too. And the minis are component but don't compete with the compacts really. I found the TC Electronics SCF, Supro Flanger, and Walrus Audi Polychrome all a little subtle for my tastes - they're just not as flexible as the PastFX ones in particular!!

And so the moment is upon us - and the Meris LVX True Stereo Modular Delay System has finally landed - at the 11th hour on the last day of the month - I wasn't sure when it would reach Europe! I've unboxed it and put it on the board - but not really put it properly to the test yet - just a quick cursory run-through - favourable early impressions for sure but have not really touched on the full range of what this pedal is capable of. I will be putting it though it paces over the next few weeks and months and will of course be doing a full in-depth review after about a month or so.