I’ve long been a fan of the Boss FZ-3 Fuzz - whose output straddles both classic Tone Bender and Fuzz Face tones and can get pretty full-on. I’ve had my pristine copy  of that since 2018, and I’ve always loved the vibrancy of this fuzz.

And Drunk Beaver’s Vitalli has exactingly recreated the FZ-3 circuit using expertly matched Toshiba SMT Transistors with the exact same values as the Toshiba THT originals.

The profile of the two pedals is incredibly close - with that same excellent ...

So as I predicted - I was likely to get a Chase Bliss pedal that I already owned, and indeed, for my Mystery Box I received a second Onward - which is of course surplus to requirements. I was hoping to get a Clean - where the probabilities on that were likely around 50/50 - as the Clean and Onward are the most recent of mainstream Chase Bliss Pedals - and most likely to to have significant stock at the time of the Mystery Box project.

So I have a second one of these :

I thought it best to start off 2025 really strong.

I could sort of have squeezed this into the tail end of last year, but it made more sense to celebrate this with the incoming new year!

This article marks 3 milestones!

Firstly - I now have the ultimate JHS Pedals Gain Trifecta - where all of these were acquired in 2024. I had long been intending to get the Morning Glory, but always wanted a more special version of that! So this marks the point of entry onto the pedalboard and into the ...

Even though this wasn’t quite the record year for pedal acquisitions - 206 all told - it was still mighty impressive, where the record is still 216 and happened in 2021. Biggest ever haul in one month is 31 Pedals - which happened back in March of 2022!

I did nonetheless achieve a major record for 2024 - in doing the most articles ever in a year - or 457! - including this one - which is a lot! - and I’ve certainly felt it at times - burning the candle at both ends and all that.

On this ...

33 slots updated this year - #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9a, #9b, #10, #11, #12, #15a, #15b, #15c, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #22a, #22b, #23, #24, #25, #26, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #36, #38, and #41.

There’s been a fair amount of re-routing and re-organising this year - which you should be able to pick via the pattern of changes. The introduction of the stereo Poly Amplitude introduced the biggest change to the board order - to get th most out of that format!

I try to limit acquisitions /...

So this is the big one - all the top performers from the year in one selection.

We’ve already covered :

• 35 Boost & Overdrive Pedal Finalists
• 34 Distortion Pedal Finalists
• 32 Fuzz Pedal Finalists
• 38 Modutility Pedal Finalists
• 25 Delay and Reverb Pedal Finalists

Total Overall Finalist Selection of 164 Pedals!

Distilled down to the final favourites selection, where I own 27 of them, and will try to secure the final missing ones next year :

• Coffee Shop Pedals London Fog Tape Delay -

I obviously just recently won me an AC Noises Ricorda Retro Series Reverb as a Chase Bliss Mystery Box Bonus Pedal - so the first iteration I had to make on this article was to update the standard Blue Ricorda image to the limited colourway edition that I was gifted by my Mystery Box. This selection is typically the one where I own the least proportion of pedals featured, in fact in this case it’s easier to list the few that I own here :

• AC Noices Ricorda Stereo Granular Reverb + Freeze /

There’s an incredibly rich mix here of no less than 38 killer Modulations, Utilities and Pitch-Shifters - no one does rundowns quite like me! I always dive in at the deep end of things - and give you maximum expansive scope!

There are several here that I don’t have yet, in fact some hat I’m somewhat unlikely to ever have - for reasons of rig compatibility, size and overall sensibilities, practicalities, and preferences!

These 19 are still to be acquired or eventually overlooked :

There are 32 Finalists in the Fuzz Category, where I own all but 3 :

• 29 Pedals Toki Overdrive / Fuzz
• Cachalote 214 Fuzz
• Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Waveshaper Fuzz

The Finalists

• 29 Pedals Toki Fuzz Driver - $269
• Beetronics FX Tuna Fuzz - $99
• Beetronics FX Whoctahell V2 Low Octave Beeast Babee Edition - $149
• Cachalote Audio 214 Fuzz - R$1418 / $235
• Cornerstone Nero Dumble-Fuzz - €299 | $299
• Danelectro Nichols 1966 Liverpool Fuzz Tone - $199
• Decibelics Reverend V2 Mini