Brian Menatone Refines his new Vertical Fish Factory Dual Overdrive with Improved Ergonomics

It’s only a short while since Brian released his first V1 batch of Vertical edition Menatone Fish Factory pedals - in fact I featured such in a January 21st post. I obviously was interested in acquiring one - but in the haze of NAMM - and by the time I completed my show coverage and got to thinking about which of those pedals I wanted - batch 1 was all but sold out. In fact the last one of that batch sold out just as Brian was reading my requisition note!

In any case we got to discussing the ’Verticalization’ of his flagship pedals and it emerged that he was working on dual-footswitch vertical enclosure types for his other two flagships - The King of Britains (Plexi/JCM800) and Top Boost In a Can (Boosted AC30). In reviewing the V1 Fish Factory I queried whether the use of coloured knobs would better differentiate between the two sides of the pedal - as with all the knobs being black it wasn’t immediately obvious which knobs pertained to which side.

I suggested that with the V1 artwork and since the top half was blue - possibly it would be aesthetically compatible and make ergonomic sense to have the Blue Collar control knobs in Blue. Brian said he had already been thinking about making ergonomic improvements to the pedal - and his V2 edition is even more elegant than my suggestion - with a different vertical artwork delineating the two side - just single coloured knobs identifying the appropriate control topology and some further refinements to legends and positioning to make the V2 an even better proposition than the first.

I am in the process of acquiring all 3 dual-footswitch Vertical Flagship pedals and will do an extended feature on those when they land. I’ve been hinting for a while that Brian should be doing a Zvex-style exercise on his most loved pedals and I am delighted that this is all coming to fruition now.

All three are of course highly recommended. We’re still waiting for the new demo videos to land and the pictures of the evolved King and TBIAC - I will append them when they materialise. And of course do full in-depth review feature when I receive them all.

Note that I’ve included older demo videos just for the sake of some sort of sound sample references :