Some time late last year I identified that the Tremolo section of my Reference Collection was probably the weakest of the major modulation categories - and I determined to do something about it in 2024 to bring that fully up to scratch. I made 2024 my ’Year of Tremolo’ and set to the task of bolstering my own capsule collection. Seems like I slightly overdid it in the end - as I’ve so far added 17 to the collection thoughout this year, with a likely couple more still to come.
So as with all...
The original Spaceman I first came out in 2013, with the much larger Sputnik II materialising in 2017, and then the mid-size Sputnik III arriving a few years later in 2020. I missed out on the Spaceman I upon its original release, but picked up a pristine Red Cyrillic version of that in 2018 - which eagle eyed reader will note is my favourite American fuzz (vis-a-vis The Fuzz Pedal Olympics!).
I had the opportunity to get the Sputnik II at the time of release, but always felt that its ...
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 ...
So following on from its Rumblefuzz II revival / reissue, we get a similar exercise for the actual follow-up pedal to that one originally - the Spacercoket Intermodulation Fuzz, which I already have in its ’Green’ edition. As for the Rumblefuzz II this is a handmade and limited affair - with 100 variants in White enclosure, 50 in Black, and 20 in Blue.
Spaceman describes the Spacetrocket II as "an otherworldly fuzz. A wide variety of unique and inspiring tones live within its minimalist ...
Readers of this site will know that I’ve long admired the extraordinary sound-design talents of Cohen Hartman - who’s best known through his SpiralCaster Plays Pedals YouTube Channel. In my opinion he is one of the very finest pedal demo artists there ever was. He has a way of teasing out some truly unique tones and textures from most pedals - and taking them places where others just don’t or can’t seem to venture.
He did a slew of particularly brilliant demos in the lead up to my February ...
Ryan (Clarke) of Dr Scientist is actually responsible for this article for the most part. He mis-identified my previous ’World Odyssey’ article as a Fuzz roundup - and referred to it as the ’Fuzz Pedal Olympics’ - which it really wasn’t although Fuzz as probably the biggest overall category / genre in that roundup - or 7/25. In any case I decided that for Ryan’s sake - we had better have that ’Fuzz Pedal Olympics’ proper - which this finally is! And obviously the 7 Fuzzes from the previous ...
Apologies that his is a little late - it took and age to research, compile and complete - and is filled with myriad wonderful fun facts - I sincerely hope you enjoy this one - as a whole heap of work has gone into bringing it to you!
So I spent the whole weekend working on updating my pedal inventory records to figure out exactly where I was at with the Reference Collection, the last time I did that exercise was a couple of years ago. I had kind of mentally estimated that I had around 1.300...
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 ...
The Rumblefuzz I was the very first Spaceman Effects pedal created back in 2009. I did not return to the pedal fold until 2016 - where these were obviously long since gone - while I still lived in hope of snagging one eventually - but second hand prices of over $2000, and at times near $3000 made it look somewhat unlikely. My good friend Henry Kaiser kind of rubbed my nose in this regard - as he own serial number #001 of that first Rumblefuzz.
So I was delighted with this reissue - and once...
This is the one Spaceman Effects pedal that had eluded me for so long - the very first Spaceman release from 2009 - a good 15 years ago now. I always wanted one of those, but by the time I joined the hunt - they were trading at ridiculous prices - including one sold on Reverb.com relatively recently for $2,700! I believe my good friend Henry Kaiser owns the very first Rumblefuzz - serial number #001. I had kind of consoled myself that the Rumblefuzz would always be out of reach for me - so I’m ...