I’ve long since loved the somewhat vibrant fuzzy-esque sounds of the 5E3 Tweed Amp circuit - where I already have a number of pedal gems for that genre - including the fabulous sounding Tubesteader actual 12AX7 Tube-powered Eggnog.

Yet Origin Effects has seemingly one-upped everyone here with its truly superb sounding Deluxe 55 Tweed Recreation. This one sounds just a bit more lively, vibrant and visceral than all the others. Of course Origin Effects have pedigree and form in the solid ...

When I did my recent ’9 Notable Brazilian Guitar Pedal Brands’ overview - a reader noted that I should have included Cachalote Audio also (Sperm Whale in Portuguese!) - which at the time was wholly unknown to me. They do have worldwide ambitions though - having an English language Website also, and a presence on Reverb.com - which I noted previously is fairly rare for Brazilian brands - who mostly seem to keep themselves to their native MercadoLivre Marketplace.

In any case - having been ...

So I’ve been meaning to do this article for a while, but kept putting it off - in the hope that we might see more brands materialising from this country. That has not been the case though - so now seems as good a time as any to focus on the small but mighty trifecta of Croatian brands - Dawner Prince Electronics, DryBell Musical Electronic Laboratory and Polarbear Effects.

I typically have a grid of a 9 for this style of article - so here I’ve selected my favourite 3 choices from each brand...

As part of ThorpyFX’s 10 Year Anniversary Celebrations (born on 2nd November 2014) - they’re encouraging everyone to get a ’caked’ version of any of the current pedal models. Thorpy is obviously making the most use of his new super-duper Roland 4-Colour UV Printer!

And I had a lot of fun creating this visual on a background of 100’s & 1000’s / Sprinkles!

Single pedal editions will be base-coat painted yellow - with the cake design on both outward facing sides. I personally think there ...

So this incredibly busy month was supposed to be all about Tremolos, culminating with the Rounder Sounds Zebra-Trem Review and 30 Tremolo Pedal Overview. But we hit some snags along the way - the Zebra-Trem was mysteriously held up in customs for a week, and then got slightly lost in the local postal network. And when it did finally arrive - evidently it had been dropped a few times, as the screen was no longer working. After trying various obvious remedies with Bill over a few days - with no ...

I’ve always admired this Studio Style Console Box / Control Strip - while I’ve questioned whether I really need it. I have the Empress ParaEQ 2 DLX for all my EQ’ing needs, and I use some very specific gain-staging pedals, where some have up to +60dB onboard and an additional +30dB indenpdent boost - for pretty much limitless versatility.

I have several pedals with Audio Output transfomrmers onboard too, so I feel that I’m mostly covered for what I need already, and how I use those gain ...

I was quietly impressed by the original Pod Express, which I dubbed the ’My First Fisher-Price’ of Multi-FX - a really neat combination and topology of essential effects - with a supreme ease of use. It was indeed a really handsome device.

The new Black Edition looks very similar to the original but there are actually some very significant differences.

The only segment that is exactly the same is the Modulation segment (Chorus / Flanger / Phaser / Tremolo) - but in a different place, we ...

Universal Audio have definitely been busy these days, and following their ANTI 5150 take - they’ve completed an almost identical exercise for the MESA/Boogie Dual Rectifier Revision F.

The controls are pretty much identical bar the Channel Selection and Cab assignments - and including the 3-Band EQ + Presence, and the 3-controls secondary Overdrive (TS808).

This is essentially the second of its High Gain Preamp pedals - I presume there will a third variant some day too - as most of ...

In my usual way I’ve poured over the Ample manual several times, and distilled the essentials down into a graphical visual format. This is my most detailed Poly Effects visual to-date with a lot of fine details - including all the Cab variants in the margins.

Same as with the ’Verbs’ - this is an IR-infused approach (specifically Neural Amp Modelling) - where those Classic Amps have been expertly captured and profiled - and rendered in simple but richly textured stereo format. You don’t get...