I’m going to start this month’s roundup with a couple of conundrums that I’m still kind of wrestling with.
Firstly about my old friends at Sinvertek, whom I can’t but think that they might have jumped the shark with their latest release. It’s another spin off of the Scream Honey line - the 4th or 5th in that series. Mr Wu seems to introduce tiny improvements each year, and every other year we get a price rise too. On this occasion the offering is two pedals - supposedly both slightly different ...
I’m so glad the Ritual Devices project is pack on track and I get to experience these wonderful pedals first-hand! This time around it’s the time of the magnificent Grimalkin Hybrid Octave Fuzz - a suitably cat-themed affair as Grimalkin is the archaic term for felines!
What we have here is an extraordinary potent all-rounder Fuzz - which at it’s core consists of 2 dual gain stages with 3 overall Gain Controls - a Master Gain, a Pre-Gain, and Post-Gain. Those knobs between them will give ...
Showrunner extraordinaire Phil Steere above (at the show entrance), AKA PedalPatch Head Honcho.
What a wonderful show!
Just as good as the inaugural one, in fact by several measures even better!
These shows are really like family reunions for me nowadays - I know most everybody on the pedal scene now and seemed to be mostly warmly welcomed into their company. I was up really early on the Saturday - in fact when I walked in at 08:15 only Boss and NRG Effects were close to having set ...
Wow, The Guitar Show was certainly a rollercoaster of an event with the busiest crowd I’ve witnessed to-date. At times it was quite a struggle to make your way through the packed waves of attendees, which did though start to peter out just a little after 3 o’c. For me it was fast and furious from the start - and I found it a little awkward navigating around the hall - as the stand layout seemed to have all kinds of little nooks and crannies - which made some booths incredibly easy to overlook ...
I’ve really taken to the Kempton Park Reacourse venue for this show - with its superb viewing platform of a Panorama restaurant at the top of the building - in fact there are a few places you can seek refreshments. The whole things had / has an easy family vibe to it - where several exhibitors brought part of their family with them for the day - some the whole shebang, while others had their Dad or Brother in tow - just a really nice easy breezy atmosphere - and so easy to get to for those of ...
This year has seen a number of additions to my Uni-Vibe roster - where 9 of the 14 featured here are proper bulb / photocell varieties - indicated by the bulb icon. Some of these have Uni-Vibe as secondary voices, and some are very slightly adjacent or produce Uni-Vibe tones via other means.
New additions this year have been the Colortone Roundhouse, EQD The Depths, Fjord Fuzz Njord, Formula B Vintage-Vibe, ThorpyFX ER-2, and and Tru-Fi Ghost Vibe. For the longest time I just had 2 Uni-...
WARNING! This post is massive, and will probably crash your mobile device! Best accessed via Desktop or Laptop!
Last time I did this exercise I featured just 9 companies in my cover shot, and covered 57 overall - with just videos for the top 9.
While this time around I’ve doubled down - where there are 27 companies in the cover shot and 105 overall! And circa half of those are accompanied by a video - which is a lot! I first cover the 27 Leading Lights group, and then the 78 brands in ...
Like most I believe - I had a wonderful time at the recent Brighton Guitar Show and Pedal Expo - where I spent 97% of my time in the Pedal Room, with just brief excursions out to the Hamstead Soundworks and Timber Tones stands in the main Guitars Room.
I pretty much managed to get to the vast majority of stands I intended to - but there are always some casualties as time is a finite commodity! And I was there actually from just after eight until gone 17:30 - one of the very last to leave - ...
So we’re just one day away from the Brighton Guitar Show and FX Expo - where Mr PedalPatch - Phil Steere takes up the reins alongside show partners and sponsors Zander Circuitry (Alex Millar), RotoSound (Jack Dunwoody), Strings & Things (Marc Snelling), and WaterBear College of Music (Adam Bushell and Bruce John Dickinson). All those brands are listed in the middle of the above visual! With further details below.
The show is in a handy location at the Brighton Racecourse - just a 10 ...
The Top visual (above) this time is my favourite stand from the show - the super elegant and lifestyle-oriented Kernom stand - with really smart use of furniture - but with a somewhat eyesore tangle of cables! - overall it looked really striking and elegant compared to everything else at the show!
So another show is over - where I attended all day Saturday. Entrance was the same as before @ £15, while travel was slightly more expensive. I had an open-return train ticket @ £61, plus 2 tube ...