When I acquired my acrylic-faced edition of Mattoverse Just a Phase Phaser back in October of 2021 - I told Matt at the time that I would love to have a matching acrylic faced AirTrash - as both use the same 3 - Red, Blue and Yellow Metallic primary colours knobs - and they would look amazing together. Matt though being a fiercely independent sort had various plans and projects to get through first, and we finally get the matching pair nearly 3 years later!

Even though both pedals are ...

This is such a smart idea - using Bit-Crushing, Sample Rate Reduction, Aliasing and Warble together to generate the most awesome of somewhat jagged and brittle artifacts-loaded digitally mangled fuzz textures. You really get some very interesting timbres here - not all necessarily entirely musical - but each a glorious dissonance in its own way.

I’ve always called myself principally a ’Noise Maker’ and this type of effect is exactly the kind of thing I’m constantly on the look out for. ...

An interesting fact is that this collaboration almost happened several years ago, but evidently the timing wasn’t right then for various reasons. This time around though there was an added ingredient in the mix - ’Yours Truly!’ - and I was somewhat instrumental in bringing the two sides together and finally making this happen!

It’s great news for us Brits - as these Lastgasp Art Laboratories Pedals have always been somewhat beyond our reach until now.

I obviously recently covered my 9 ...

I always get pangs of sorrow when a pedal brand retires for one reason or another. Late last year Luca Romanelli announced that he was pulling the plug on his Mastro Valvola pedal brand - which at times I have referred to as ’The Strymon of Italy’.

There are so many complications and complexities with pedal-building in general - chip sets and key components increasingly harder to source, and numerous challenges with logistics and red tape. It’s a wonder more of these don’t go to the wire. ...

As mentioned previously - I meant to feature Lastgasp Art Laboratories (LAL / Lastgasp) quite a while back, but access to pedals from the UK has been rather limited, and most of these therefore fairly hard to come by! I detailed how there were only two properly active current dealers that had most of the range in stock - my good friend Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique in Germany, and Perfect Circuit in the USA. I also was instrumental in getting Joe’s Pedals’ Joe Light to connect with Lastgasp’s ...

This article was actually inspired by the recent Fjord Fuzz SOL Fuzz-Vibe feature - where I got to thinking about extended range Fuzz Face style pedals. To my memory there is only the Carl Martin Purple Moon and Fjord Fuzz SOL in that compact Fuzz-Vibe format. I then recalled the Keeley Electronics Monterey - but realised there weren’t a whole lot of pedals in the extended format category - for Fuzz-Vibes - so I expanded the remit to cover ’Fuzz Face+’ pedals - essentially expanded feature set ...

February can often seem a rather odd month after the hustle and bustle of NAMM Show January - where a lot of new stuff always gets announced - while increasingly outside the NAMM schedule - but certainly in and around it! Projects delayed from the previous year often get released in January, but this year those kind of seem to be more spaced out - with some not feted to happen until March / April. February always seems slow compared to January, and that sometimes extends into March too before ...

This new hybrid fuzz pedal is in a similar format to Subdecay’s recent PixelWave Phase Distortion Synth. It has the same 11 Mode (0-10) Mode Selector and overall 5 knobs + 3-way Toggle Edit Mode switch. Obviously quite different parameters and output - but same in layout and similar in function.

Controls -  GAIN / Pre-Comp, TONE / Pre-HPF, OFFSET (Bias)| MIX / Pre-LPF, VOLUME, EDIT MODE : PRE / ANALOG / Shaper, FUZZ TYPE : 1-11 / Chorus & Flange, Hold Footswith to Save Preset.

This ...

In my recent review of the Kernom Moho Magmatic Fuzz - I already lauded it to the high rafters as the greatest Multi-Fuzz pedal ever created. It’s the perfect tool for proper fuzz fans - and in particular for those who have fully mastered the relatively tricky Zvex Fuzz Factory and similar - all those should get along with the Moho fabulously. Newbie fuzz fans may find the device a little tricky to dial in - as every knob impacts the texture and tonality of the output - so pretty much all 6 ...