2023 February Pedal-Chain Update - Episode II - Random Ripples in Time
There’s never a dull moment, and rarely a span of time without a ripple or wrinkle. I don’t get many frustrating or disastrous days - while this last Friday was particularly eventful as I wrestled with 4 challenges simultaneously. One of my new pedals was detective and simply didn’t work - but I spent half a day trying to get something out of it - different positions on the board, different cabling, power-supply solutions and every tiny attempt to correct the obvious deficiency. At the same time I was contending with a new prototype pedal - which has multiple flavours - but for which many of those are incredibly subtly different - trying to find descriptive means of describing those tiny differences is really challenging - and after a while everything starts to sound the same (It’s a little like high quality wine tasting - you’re good for the first 3 or so glasses and then flavours start to get muddled and muted!). I then also had an overly aggressive fuzz to contend with and tame - which uncharacteristically was frazzling my patience - while I think I’ve got to grips with it now. Finally some recent change has impacted on the core signal tonality of the chain - and I’m struggling to figure out which of the many new changes might be the cause - or if I’ve inadvertently nudged some control to make things sound that different - there’s an added slightly subtle frequency which is somewhat annoying me. So all 4 challenges in combination had me somewhat frazzled and defeated momentarily - and I removed and circulated a number of the pedals for a while - there were great big gaping holes in the board momentarily - and it’s only just starting to come back together again.
The thing that caused me the most consternation was the ongoing Jackson Audio curse - readers will know I had a slight falling out with Mr BJ a couple of years ago and suspended coverage of said brand thereafter. While I was suitably impressed with the recent New Wave Chorus / Vibrato to want to add that in on the board - I do love a decent Chorus - and this was my 18th Chorus pedal, 5th Stereo Chorus as far as I recall - but it just would not work for me. I spent half a day on it - trying every conceivable means to get it to work - but to no avail - there was simply no wet signal coming out of it - only the dry signal from the guitar. I would guess that the core modulation part of the circuit - the BBD chips etc. have become somewhat disconnected - some connection or joint either faulty or damaged in transit. In any case I took it back to GuitarGuitar in Camden on Saturday to exchange it for another - only to find out that GuitarGuitar had only had an allocation of 2 New Wave pedals - where I bought the first (evidently defective one), and someone else got the other one. I’ve been told that there could be as much 2 months’ wait for the re-stock / replacement! I’ve of course asked my good friends at Audio Distribution Group to expedite the restock - while it’s somewhat annoying and disappointing that when I decide to get back into Jackson Audio - a strange twist of fate intervenes - one starts to think that maybe that acquisition was never meant to happen! While I still live in hope of better times ahead!
As is often the case - a lot of pedals arrived very late in the month, while most of the available slots for February had already been spoken for very near the start of the month. So some of the recent additions into the reference collection won’t appear on the board until next month - I of course try to give everyone a fair shake.
Obviously we’ve just had the main UK / Birmingham Guitar Show - which besides the 2 soft launches - there really weren’t any genuine surprises. My main reason for being there really is more of a social outreach - and a sort of annual meeting space for a lot of my industry buddies. I feel pedal release schedules and launches have mostly moved beyond these sorts of events - where those sorts of things happen increasingly online now.
February was a decent month - with most of the frustrations coming near the end - for the most part it was pretty plain sailing. The UK seemed very late in getting its allocation of Strymon Cloudbursts as all the European Dealers had theirs in stock nearly 2 weeks before us - possibly yet another ’benefit’ of this Brexit malarkey! That said everything pretty much arrived that was supposed to - some pedals ahead of schedule even, while the only significant wrinkle really was the defective JA New Wave.
With around 1,000 pedals in the collection nowadays I’ve been somewhat blessed in avoiding such calamities generally. I’ve really only had a handful of defective / broken pedals delivered to me over these many years - it really doesn’t amount to much more than around one a year. So hopefully the New Wave is this year’s one and only anomaly - I do get somewhat annoyed though about not knowing when the replacement will be in. Hopefully it won’t be too long - as I was really looking forward to putting that pedal through its paces.
What of you dear readers - did you experience any one calamitous day this month? Or was February all plain sailing for you? And did you pick up any long-term prospects?
February Acquisitions Update
There's a nice symmetry to this month's acquisitions - with Overdrives and Fuzzes in the lead with 6 apiece in each category, and then 2 each of Distortions, Modulations and Time-Based Effects. Overall 18 pedals were added to the reference collection this month - actually quite a few more than that - as several were moved into next month's allocation - as they have not been featured on the site properly yet.
Looking at the pedal-chain updates - 11 of those 18 went straight in on the board - and some will have significantly longer rotations on the board than others - which this time around are probably mostly incidentals. In fact for slots #17 and #18 those are going to be changing fairly frequently / monthly in line with upcoming features and incoming pedals.
There's as always still some incredible candidates here - and I feel that the 29 Pedals Flwr, Drunk Beaver Distortion V2.5, and DSM & Humboldt's Black Clouds will be in circulation for extended periods - as will the very recently arrived Strymon Cloudburst!
6 Overdrives
6 new overdrives this month - I had already committed to getting the 29 Pedals Flwr, the Drunk Beaver Kropyvnytskyi was of course last month's Pedal Drop (PD6) where I also picked up a few more Greer Amps pedals - I had just had the Lightspeed and The Southland for the longest time, had always intended to add the Supa Cobra as part of that overdrive trifecta - but that only happened this month, and I also picked up the older Greer Royal Velvet - to be the other side of the #17 and #18 slots overdrive pair - with the Black Mountain. Finally I always wanted a KMA Logan Desert Edition - but they all sold out initially before I got me ass in gear - and those only appear very sporadically on Reverb.com as only around 100 were made. In any case I was doing my piece on Medium-Vertical overdrives - and the Logan of course really fits the bill - and everything happened in a very synergistic fashion.
- 29 Pedas FLWR Gain-Staging Overdrive / Preamp
- Drunk Beaver Kropyvnytskyi OverDrive (Exar OD-02)
- Greer Amps Black Mountain Crunch Drive
- Greer Amps Royal Velvet Class-A British Drive and Preamp
- Greer Amps Supa Cabra Overdrive
- KMA Machines Logan Transcend Drive Ltd Desert Edition
2 Distortions
2 kills distortions this month - Vitalii Bobrov's superb DS-1 evolution, and DSM & Humboldt's potent Black Clouds High Gain Distortion. I think the Drunk Beaver Distortion may be about to be my most popular ever Instagram post - with nearly 2,000 likes already and only a few days old :
- Drunk Beaver Distortion (DStort1on) V3 Modded DS-1 Take
- DSM & Humboldt Black Clouds High Gain Distørtiøn / Preamp
6 Fuzzes
Another great month for fuzzes too - and while I really liked the Fender pair - I don't really love them - neither one totally hits the spot for me - while the Pelt does get close at time. The Fjord Fuzz Lillebjørn is also something of an imperfect device for me - which chokes out a lot - perfect if you want those kind of decayed sounds though! Really loved my tea GuitarSystems pedals - in particularly the Silver Fuzz, and finally the Sutton Instruments is a rather versatile Muff + Boost type of pedal :
- Fender Pelt Super-Versatile Silicon Fuzz
- Fender Trapper Dual Silicon Fuzz w/ Octave + Gated Fuzz
- Fjord Fuzz Lillebjørn Simplified PLL Style Harmonizing Fuzz
- GuitarSystems Guitar King 25th Anniversary Silver Fuzz (Face) w/ Hybrid Switch & Bias Control
- GuitarSystems Custom Blue Tony's BenderTool w/ Bias Control
- Sutton Instruments Del Fuego Fuzz + Boost
2 Modulations
As I mentioned earlier - the curse of Jackson Audio seems to have stuck again as I could not get any wet signal out of my New Wave - no matter what I tried - I took it back to the store to exchange - but there are non in stock anywhere in the UK. Seems like only a tiny allocation was sent to the UK and all there was has long since gone out - so there was no chance of my arranging a straightforward exchange / swap - I've been told the wait for restock might take a couple of months ore more - Ouch - how quickly the sheen of new fades. No problems with the Colortone Roundhouse though - that worked brilliantly from the start - a really gorgeous, warm and analog-sounding LFO Modulator - which covers two flavours of Tremolo plus a Uni-Vibe - and adds a Preamp and Reverb into the mix - really clever! :
- Colortone Pedals RoundHouse Multi-Mode Tremolo / Modulation / Reverb
- Jackson Audio New Wave Stereo Analog Chorus / Vibrato / Rotary / Harmonizer (awaiting replacement!)
2 Time-Based Effects
The Lo-Fi Delay review is written and up on this side - I just need to be given the all-clear before I make it live. Timing is everything - and one has to make sure suitable stock is available before we start pushing out messages. It' a really cool and slightly unusual Lo-Fi Delay with so many extra features. The Strymon Cloudburst you should all know about - that was a week late arriving / shipping from Andertons so I only had it for half a day yesterday before I wrote this article - needless to say it sounds amazing and works really elegantly. I feel really lucky I got in on the first Andertons batch - I must have been very fortunate - as I was hedging my bets to see who first got stock in. I often gamble on a release if I want to get it in quickly - as Anderson's isn't always the quickest to get things in stock - for instance the Jackson Audio New Wave - it was GuitarGuiat who got theirs up first - which is just as well - as GuitarGuitar Camden is within fairly easy reach for me - would have been trickier to return the pedal to another store - and I got the bonus of a Yorkshire Burrito for lunch - and the best Ice Cream in London - at the Soho Creamery down by the west side of Hawley Wharf!
- Colortone Pedals 2023 Lo-Fi Delay
- Strymon Cloudburst Stereo Ambient Reverb
February Infinite Wishlist Additions!
As always - there is a mix of different priorities here - and if I wanted some of these sooner I would have ordered them before! Top of the pile for me is the Ranger FX Flanger X - which I hope to pick up at the 18th of March London Synth and Pedal Expo. The Subdecay Prometheus 3 and Tubesteader Eggnog are also high on the list while most of the rest will likely be opportunistic acquisitions :
- EHX Slap-Back Echo Pico Mini
- GFI System Duophony Advanced Stereo Parallel Blender with Modulation
- Rainger FX Flanger X Rocket Flanger
- Subdecay Prometheus 3 Dual Super Filter
- Tubesteader Eggnog Tube-Powered Tweed voiced Overdrive / Preamp
- Zvex Fuzz Factory 7 Vexter
February Pedal-Chain Status
February sees 12 slot changes / updates - #5, #12, #13, #17, #18, #19, #21, #26, #31, #32, #33, #38.
I would imagine #13, #19, #26, #38 will be in circulation for a while, most of the others are more incidental and side-ways changes rather than genuine advances. Shame that the New Wave wasn't working - as that would have made a great addition to slot #33 and would definitely have been another step forward for the Chorus slot.
So last month we had 17 changes meaning that the 29 changes in total sees nearly 2/3rds pf the board switched out as such - for sure a really fast start to the year - I would imagine things would slow down over the next few months. More and more people are sending me pedals these days and since I have around 1,000 in the collection now - space is becoming more and more of a precious commodity - I really need to slow down and very carefully choose what gets added!
Slot #05 : Germanium / Sensitive Fuzz
So Fjord Fuzz's latest Pearl of the Month is something of an acquired taste. Of course great if you like your pedals wild and unruly - which although this one is capable of some really great tones - it still can be a little tricky to dial in all the octaves in balance - and the output can be very 'choppy'. I have several PLL style Fuzz Harmonisers now - and each provides a slightly different challenge. On pare this one should be the easiest - while I generally find it easier to get preferred tones out of the Acorn Amps ADHD. The Lillebjørn CMOS PLL Style 3-Parallel Octave Fuzz Harmonizer can sound really great at times - but it can be pretty mush equally frustrating to deploy - which is in stark contrast to last month's Pedal of the Month - the ReslyTone style Njord Leslie Rotary Simulator!
Slot #12 : Mid Gain / Dumble / Expandora / Fuzzy-Drive / Mostortion / OCD / TrainWreck
Drunk Beaver Kropyvnytskyi OverDrive (Exar OD-02) is immediately appealing, but doesn't necessarily hold a lot of range / variety. And where I tend to run it mostly in the Diode Lift Clipping Mode, occasionally LED, while I alternate my use of the Fat switch. At Stock settings the output is too low for me really and doesn't have the same character that you have in Diode Lift and LED Modes. So this is more likely to be an occasional incidental pedal as such - I'm sure that for some this could be their perfect overdrive tone - while for me it's largely just one of many! I still really like it - but I have so many killer overdrives in the collection already that give me more! As a Pedal Drop release - there is of course no demo of this alas!
Slot #13 : Multi-Drive 1 / Boost
This is quite the upheaval as it's the first time in years that the Strymon Riverside is taking a hiatus - the 29 Pedals Flwr Gain-Staging Overdrive is totally up to the task - but not quite as wide-ranging as the Riverside - which has a second 'Favourite' voicing and is attached to a further Boost. I really like the timbre of the Flwr though and it sounds particularly good at lower gain. It will likely stay in place for a few more months - before I bring the Riverside back into place. The Flwr definitely offers something different - and I really like it - in fact I suffer from having too many great sounding pedals - so a different sort of option paralysis!
Slot #17 : Top Boosted Distortion / Vox
Slots #17 and #18 are going to see quite a lot of changes in the next few months - these are my Brian and Eddie slots essentially to a large degree and I've always had a killer pair of distortions to replicate those guitar heroes' tones. This month it's the turn of Greer Amps - Royal Velvet Class-A British Drive & Pre and Black Mountain Crunch Drive. Next month it will be Bispell Audio, and the month after it will likely be the Victory V1 The Copper and The Sheriff Preamps - following on from which I may extend the rotation of one of the two new pairing or bring back a previous favourite pairing - it's another area where I'm quite spoilt for choices - and of course there's an article coming up soon on that exact subject! For certain pairings I also need to rely on the tone components in the chain - usually a boost or EQ!
Slot #18 : Marshall in a Box / Plexi
The second half of the #17 and #18 Slot pairing this month is of course the Greer Amps Black Mountain Crunch Drive - for those chewy / crunchy Marshall Plexi tones. It only just landed in time for the February cut-off - but that all set off this current phase - where I'm checking out various different pairing on these Brian and Eddie slots!
Slot #19 : Multi-Fuzz / Fuzzy-Drive
The Drunk Beaver Distortion V2.5 (Heavily Modded DS-1 / DStort1on) caused quite an Impact on Instagram with over 1,900 likes so far. This is the perfect example of an advanced modded pedal which delivers something way way above the original inspiration - where I acutely run this mostly on Muff Mode - for a really cool Fuzz sound. Of course it does all that Nirvana stuff too - but so much more besides - one of Vitalii Bobrov's best for sure - right up there with the latest version of the Bloom and Inglorious Bastard.
Slot #21 : High Gain Fuzz 1 / Fuzzstortion
Sutton Instruments Del Fuego Fuzz with Boost is really impressive for a first try - delivering way beyond the original source of Ram's Head Muff - with the Boost allowing you to produce really interesting tones at either end of the gain scale. This pedal has so many different sounds in it - I do wonder if it wouldn't do better with a Tilt EQ and Mids control - versus the Presence and Tone combination. A really cool Fuzz + Boost - with both sides fully independent of course.
Slot #26 : Modern Metal 3 / High Gain Metal 2
I so love the DSM & Humboldt Silver Linings Multidirive that I leapt on this as soon as I spotted it on Andertons - in fact I thing I was one of the very first to get an article out on the Black Clouds High Gain Distortion - it doesn't have quite as much range, scope and nuance as its lower gain sibling - but it does that modern tight and percussive type of High Gain Distortion Really well. I would have preferred the X-Gate 3-way switch to be Off / Gate / Sag - so you could get closer to some of those vintage flavours. It's not quite as searing as Ola's Chug pedal, and while each sounds distinct - they're both that really modern dense chuggy / djenty sound - really percussive and hard hitting. I really like it - but it's not quite a versatile as I expected it to be!
Slot #31 : Analog Phaser / Rotary (Typically)
So I've written the review for the Colortone Lo-Fi Delay already - while I'm still awaiting final input and say-so from Colton Maestro AD Hauser. Readers will know I'm not typically a fan of Mono delay units - while this one is really unique in how it functions - which makes it pretty special, It's also running off a custom Electrosmith chip - whose output is extraordinary warm and analog-like. I won't spoil the review by posting to many details here - the review should be fairly imminent - and it delivers a rather impressive account of what this pedal is capable of.
Slot #32 : Analog Tremolo / Harmonic Tremolo / Uni-Vibe
Most of you should have read the reivew of the Colortone Roundhouse Multi-Mode Tremolo and Uni-Vibe with Preamp and Reverb. Basically you get regular Amplitude Tremolo, Harmonic Tremolo and Uni-Vibe voicings - which are all enhanced by the addition of Reverb and Preamp controls - which greatly extend the soundstage. This is a glorious sounding LFO Modulator - again powered by a custom Electrosmith chip - which sounds really warm and analog! AD Hauser is incredibly adept at making really musical pedals - and this one is no exception - it sounds glorious.
Slot #33 : Analog Chorus / Vibrato
This slot featured the new Jackson Audio New Wave for about a day - which I unfortunately failed to get to work. It just wasn't emitting any Wet Signal - was effectively acting as a very expensive dry-through pedal - where you could fade our the dry signal by dialling in more Wet - so a kind of mute. Spent a very frustrating day trying to get it to work every which way possible - in the end it went back to be exchanged for a working unit (alas currently out of stock). So one of my favourite Chorus pedals - PastFX's Chorus Ensemble Mini takes over the slot again for a while. Will be interesting to see when the JA New Wave replacements comes though - I've been warned it could be a while!
Slot #38 : Stereo Rotary / Multi-FX 3 / Modulation Workstation 2 / Harmonizer / Delay Workstation 2 / Reverb Workstation 2
I was a touch concerned that this would not hit the deadline for February - as it was originally supposed to ship out on the 20th. But a week's delay in the grand scale of thing is no big deal - and it arrived a whole day before the cut-off. I loved all the demos of this - just the mos versatile single (or dual let's say) algorithm Reverb - properly in Stereo with extended controls. Taking the BigSky Cloud algorithm into entirely new territory - more subtle and more exaggerated, and with a unique shimmery Ensemble Synth String Pad additional voicing too. All the knobs and switches give the pedal proper extended range - it's the perfect Reverb add-on for me - considering I always have the Empress Reverb and Eventide H90 in the chain!
Final Thoughts
So there are so many killer pedals on the board already that I really don't need any further 'improvements' -everything it pretty much upper echelon already. The bottom row will probably stay solid for most to the remainder of the year. The Strymon Cloudburst really is a perfect addition - giving me so many different Reverb options now in addition to the Empress Reverb and Eventide H90 - in fact the Meris LVX too!
It's interesting that the last week has seen the nostalgic reissue of Marshall's 1988 and 1991/2 quartet of pedals, and then the 3 mostly faux nostalgic JHS Legends of Fuzz pedals - which latter 3 of course mostly look nothing like their particular originals - besides the Berkeley / Seamoon Fresh Fuzz. All 7 of those pedals are unergonomic non-pedalboard friendly clunkers as far as I'm concerned - old-fashioned, impractical and often flawed - the low output and gain of the Blues Breaker in particular.
I have a near dozen killer Blues Breakers which I would all happily put up up against the stunted output Blues Breaker reissue - including the Analog.Man King of Tone, Snouse BlackBox, Bondi Del Mar II, JA Golden Boy, Tsakalis Six Maís, VFE Blues King, and Wampler Pantheon just to mention a few - all more capable pedals in my opinion. And I still have a few more to get - including JHS's Morning Glory - which was based on the regular output pre-prdoduction prototype of the Blues Breaker - while the final release candidate was an essentially flawed edition as far as I'm concerned
And for the remaining 3 Marshalls - my Sinvertek N5 MGAT-1 can take them all on and pulverise them. At least you're getting proper historically accurate replicas from Marshall - down to individual parts. While the JHS Legends of Fuzz thing is just odd really. And I don't understand why any genuine fuzz fans would buy one of those clunkers from JHS rather than a neater more practical and versatile compact edition with more controls - from John Lyons' Basic Audio - the power of marketing I suppose!
I'm all about the actual quality of the circuits, and the verve and dynamics of their output - and however good those Marshall pedals are - we've had 40 years of development and evolution in between - there are far more capable and practical versions for every single one of those pedals - and yet they will still sell bucketloads.
For me Boss and MXR changed the face of pedals in the late 70's with their compact enclosure editions - going back to earlier, more flawed and impractical clunkers makes no sense to me - they're not even that pretty. I will be doing indepth articles on each set of 'reissues'. Plenty of my friends seem excited to get at least one if not the complete set - but I can't imagine many keeping them on their boards a few years from now.
A big pet peeve of mine - in fact the most signifiant one is insuffiecent output - when you have up to 43 pedals in your chain - you can't have one which fails to reach unity output - it just won't fly - you will either need to re-calibrate your whole rig downwards - or get a more practical, more versatile version of that pedal.
Guitar Pedal X is all about giving you the best options to spend your money on - and I feel there are quite a few better options than getting a genuine Marshall reissue, or a faux JHS one!
I must have 50 or more Marshall-style pedals in my collection and of the JHS new Legends of Fuzz varieties - I already have several Jordan BossTone types, Basic Audio's Kay Fuzz and EWS's Little Fuzzy Drive - which is in part inspired by the Seamoon Fresh Fuzz. In fact I still aim to get Basic Audio's Textsur - which is the Jordan Boss Tone type. And there's also the Black Cat OD-1 Freddy Fuzz and Custom Audio Electronics Freddy Fuzz - which are both inspired bt the Seamoon Fresh Fuzz, and I've found a compact French clone too which is actually the most likely for me - I would much rather pick up one of those than the JHS Berkeley.
I know many players like the larger enclousures - I will never understand why, but you can't argue that they are in any way practical - and with those really unergonomic knobs mounted to the top edge of the pedal and away from you - so you can't really see what levels they are set at - which has always been one of the key advantages of analog pedals!
I've never been nostalgic when it comes to music tech - it's all about the circuit really - and while I love Germanium fuzzes - in fact a good half of my several hundred fuzzes are Germanium - while most of those pedals have external biases and sensible enclosure where none of the vintage issues do. In fact a lot of those vintage editions have output issues, uneven knob tapers, and odd power requirements - all pretty much no-nos for me.
None of those bigger pedals are for me it's like running one of those massive 70's American gas guzzlers - they're just way too impractical nowadays - too expensive to run, noisy and environmentally hostile - and impossible to park up - much like many of those oversized clunky pedals that so many of you like!
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