End of October Pedal-Chain Update - Episode IX - Imminent Acquiescence

I thought I may as well feature the Fulltone Wahfull once more before the inevitable return of favourite Dr Scientist Dusk. The new Spaceman Artemis stirred things up slightly - in particular SpiralCaster Cohen Hartman's superb demo. The Artemis certainly provides some new and interesting possibilities - while it doesn't have the immediacy and usability of the Dusk and Flower Pedals Hosta - which I will probably likely acquire in advance of the Artemis - which sits currently as a nice-to-have rather than essential - but that may well change as we transition into 2021.

This slot probably sees the most movement of any - and rarely a week goes by without a new entrant. This month was largely Vick Audio month - and the slot was mostly occupied by the Vick Audio Black Russian BMP Fuzz, and this featured Lucky 13 One Knob Wonder. Likely towards year end I will go back to one of the slightly more multi-tasker variants. The Lucky 13 certainly deserves some time in the spotlight.

This was probably the big surprise for October as I had not been aware of the Nordland brand until one of my readers alerted me to it. Nordland is Nobels ODR pioneer Kai Tachibana - the creator of all those original ODR circuits - including the most recent ODR-Mini variant. His own ODR-C is the most evolved and feature-rich version of that circuit - with the same classic original components, but with 3 smart additional controls. I will be sharing a full review of said pedal likely next week. Very much a unique and distinctive circuit that's definitely worth your consideration - all those Nashville session players can't all be wrong!

The Buffalo FX Evolution has sat on this slot quite a bit recently - so it's only fair that its cousin - the Vick Audio V-2 gets is due innings too. Both are based on the Pete Cornish G-2 - and while the Buffalo Evolution leans rather more into the Plexi/Rat kind of side of that pedal, the Vick Audio V-2 leans slightly more towards its Big Muff roots. Wonderful sustaining distortion textures in any case - with both providing suitably pleasing output. Will be interesting to see what my year-end selection on this slot will be as there are certainly a lot of fantastic candidates for that honour.

I've already noted a couple of times that I should be securing a Toneczar Openhaus EQ Distortion in the next few weeks. I've already connected with Ed Rembold so he should in theory have a unit available for me. As mentioned, I was initially keen to acquire the original more compact sized 3-Band EQ edition of the pedal but Ed convinced me of the superiority of the larger format - now with 6-Band EQ and massively improved noise floor. Experienced high-gain pedal users will know how important the noise-floor factor of a pedal is. Where some alternatives have ridiculous amounts of unwanted noise as well as an overwhelming propensity to squeal and feed back. Ed prides himself in particular on the sophistication of his high gain pedal noise-floors which are as low-key as you could expect.

Talking about noise-floors - this recent addition of mine does have a somewhat particular noise-floor component which makes it predisposed towards feedback and squealing if you're not extremely careful. The StL Tones Andy James Signature Revenant Distortion has a very sort of super-charged almost overloaded distortion soundstage - which gets increasingly untameable when the Gain knob moves above the mid-way position. I note that Andy James himself tends to use the pedal largely with gain around 9 o'c - while I prefer just a touch more saturation. It's quite a distinctive tone of distortion - tight and dense - and sounds somewhat like a super high voltage charge electron beam. It doesn't have that chewy mids character that I quite like in most of my distortions - this is rather a more modern confection as such. It for sure sounds suitably impressive but I've had to adapt my playing somewhat. It's certainly its own specific flavour - and I've yet to decide where it fits in with my absolute favourite styles of distortion tones. I've had the Pushking Irongfinger on this slot too quite a bit recently - so currently I'm really deciding between those two for the next duration. You will know next month if it's a case of stick or twist!

The arrival of the Boss GT-1000 CORE has been the biggest significant change of recent times for me - as its arrival caused something of a disruption to my signal flow. Of course my rig is a little more specialist than most - but it still took me a few days to get to grips with the GT-1000 CORE, and it seems my intended way of using it wasn't really fully accommodate in its design. I'm grateful for the help and assistance of Boss's Matt Knight and Mark Harley who together got me over the line and into a more successful phase for the CORE. I will be doing an in-depth review of the CORE during November - and will be sharing a number of essential hints and tips I learned along the way. The CORE is supremely capable with almost infinite variations - but I definitely needed a hand to get a handle on how best to use the pedal for my scenario - much more of that soon!

I obviously love my Volante, but it has some inherent clunkiness - particularly with how its presets work - and I was expecting much more of the same from the superbly capable Strymon NightSky. I need not have been concerned though as everything here - and the presets in particular are a huge improvement over the Volante. In fact despite its greater scope of complixity I was really surprised with just how easy the NightSky was to deploy. I confess I've not yet got into the stage of setting advanced tail-sequencing presets - but I've covered pretty much everything else with real ease. This building-block approach to Reverb is simply ingenious - and I would be surprised if we saw a more clever take on Reverb any time soon. Definitely The Reverb for me in a year of fantastic Reverbs!