The Heavy Water serves beautifully as a superb always-on Tone-Enhancer which delivers exceptional added harmonics and texture

And so to the Bloom then - which remains my favourite Compressor by utility, but not necessarily by fidelity. In fact that slot is now currently occupied by the quite superb King / Queen of Compressors Becos FX CompIQ Stella MK2 - which is surely the most potent hi-fidelity studio style pedal compressor currently out there. It does not though have an easily and instantly foot-switchable EQ and Blooming Boost that you can apply in tandem.

The beauty of the Bloom is its 3 concurrent / adjacent modes - which can be switches in and out via just 2 footswitches, press the left one for Compression, right for Boost / Hold for Blooming Boost / Fade, and press both footswitches together to activate the EQ. I use the EQ and Boost for every single session I've had with this rig. Some pedals have a naturally boomy frequency profile - so the EQ is set to cut excessive low end, and add just a hair of brightness at the same time. You have 6 automated compressions modes onboard (as illustrated) - which you select via the holding down the left footswitch - those vary the Attack / Release times and other finer parameters, while the pedal has 3 manual controls for Compression Volume, Blend, and Degree of Compression.

I tend to operate mostly on Magenta Medium Attack Mode, with occatasionl Green Fast, and White Ultra-Fast Mode - not so much the Slow Mode or the last 2 dual compression slide rig modes. The Bloom compressor is a very decent optical compressor with some considerably smarts onboard and which produces exactly those most transparent of compressions that I tend to favour.

The compressor obviously quantises the peaks and troughs of amplitudes, but here also operates as a subtle boost and a tone-enhancer which adds definition and sparkle too - delivering a more articulate and better-defined output.

And finally in that sequence we have the Heavy Water - with both sets of Boost and Lows controls set to between 8 o'c and 9 o'c. The Left / Germanium side is almost always on, but as mentioned previously,  it doesn't suit every single pedal necessarily, so for about 5% of instances I have the Smooth Dane Boost (right-side) set instead.

With the dials set so low both sides work really well together too - which would be more problematic for higher values. As is my system works for pretty much all eventualities!

The end result of all 3 of those pedals being deployed together is twofold really - firstly a much superior sounding core signal, and secondly, some really clever added saturation - which allows you to achieve superior distortion sounds much lower down the output scale.

As I operate a neutral stereo pedal platform rig - the pedals do all the heavy-lifting for me - while the 2 amps are set very flat. A lot of people ask me why I tend to have output volumes on certain of my pedals set so high - and again the reasons are twofold. I'm all about texture and harmonics, and often to achieve the very best sound - you need to crank the volume - it just often sounds better that way! The other thing - is that this is a neutral pedal platform - which means that the amps are set very flat - and the pedals are being relied on to generate the full range of output tones - including the main gain saturation.

So many pedal builders just test one guitar into one pedal into one amp - and are not fully aware of unity output levels across a whole chain of effects. You also get interesting input impedance and further challenges with everything wired up in series - something which most demos don't really tackle! I always talk about the importance of context! And the truth is that very few pedals are tested within a fully operational pedal-chain rig. This is why I have a signature set up with set core always-on pedals, so I can be fully aware of the impact of any new pedal I bring into that ecosystem. I'm so familiar with the baseline sound - that I can immediately discern even the finest degree of impact that a particular new pedal has!

The Boost on the Bloom has many many times been used to elevate an underpowered pedal to unity levels, as well as add further textures to those pedals that are appropriately configured by default!

This system of 3 pedals evolved naturally over time - if you go back through the Pedal Chain archives you can see each pedal's arrival on the board. The JA Prism has been on the board since November 2017, it was joined by its Bloom sibling in January of 2018, and the Heavy Water in August of 2019 - added at the same time as its 'Turbo-Dane' Peacekeeper partner.

Actually before the Heavy Water, it was the Spaceman Mercury IV Germanium Harmonic Boost which first formed the Trifecta back in August of 2018. So for a whole year it was Prism + Bloom + Mercury IV, before becoming the final format of Prism + Bloom + Heavy Water - which has reigned for near 5 years now!

There's obviously a handful of always-on pedals in the chain, while I could never be without my core essential trifecta of Prism + Bloom + Heavy Water!

The Heavy Water is of course available from the the ThorpyFX Webstore, and at numerous international dealers - where it goes for £209.99 ($279). It's obviously essential for my rig, I could not be without it! And I would heartily recommend you get one, even if you're not fortunate enough to win the Heavy Water in the current give-way.

We're now into the last week of the give-away, and there's still a trickle of new entrants - again overwhelmingly from the USA! Not sure why there isn't as much interest elsewhere, but regardless of origin - this give-away will have a very respectable number of entrants.

The [ENTRY FORM] is active until the end of this month - up to Midnight of April the 30th! (actually 23:59 specifically!)

Make sure you enter before then, and remember only ONE ENTRY per person, otherwise you will be ineligible for the prizes!