So my good friend Adrian Thorpe had a tough time of it towards the end of last year - where he was forced to retire several models at the time - owing to the evolving RoHS hard ban on Vactrols - or LDR’s (Light Dependent Resistors) as they contained tiny trace amount of a carcinogenic compound - cadmium sulphide. This applies to Europe and much of the rest of the world, but currently not the Americas. It does mean that pretty much every authentic lightbulb Uni-Vibe is impacted - which is why ...

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 a follower on instagram challenged me to shrink my elaborate pedal-chain down to just 10 pedals. My original plan was just to fill a Pedaltrain Nano Max board with 10 compact pedals. But I then decided I should do a Mid-Size variation too, using the Pedaltrain Classic 2 board or thereabouts. I may do further Mini and Large Format editions as a follow-up - depending on how well this article is received!

This was a trickier exercise than you would imagine - as I needed to shuffle through ...

I noted last year how as a last minute brainstorm Thorpy only had time to make just a couple of Pumpkin Cloud Halloween Special Editions which were snapped up in seconds. I suggested he repeat the exercise this year but with a somewhat more significant offering.

And so Thorpy has further refined the Pumpkin Cloud artwork where the web now covers the side panels too. It’s also joined by 2 ’Skeleton’ versions of the Heavy Water 3-in-1 Boost - in Metallic Blue and Petrol Blue colorway variants...

As promised - this turned out to be quite a big month - we had 5 substantial pedal rundowns - where I hope you appreciate the time and effort put into those - they take a very long time to compile and write up! :

• Reference Collection World Odyssey [25]
• 32 Favourite Compact MIAB Distortions
• Fuzz Pedal Olympics [25]
• 32 Favourite Compact Rat Style Distortions
• Drunk Beaver 15 Favourites

I attended just one show this month - but it was a great one - the #2 Alternative Guitar Show @ Hackney...

I last did this exercise around 4 years ago now, and in that time have advanced my Rat style pedal collection to 44 units, where 29 compact editions of those are featured in this listing of 32.

From the listing I don’t yet have the NRG Effects 2024 Edition Gnawer, Oneder Red Ryder Distortion, or Walrus Audio Iron Horse. The last mentioned of those is the easiest to acquire, but I’ve not 100% made my mind up on that yet - there may be other more extended range Rats out there that I’ve yet to...

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 ...

Initially when I saw the enclosure I thought to myself - great concept, but I would have preferred a compact enclosure - while Lee and the team at Andertons wanted to lean into the vintage side of this pedal - and therefore go with the larger of the Thorpy enclosure sizes.

The colour and the contour-line artwork is pretty striking - and it didn’t take me long to process and decide that I really wanted this pedal - especially after I heard the Pete Honoré demo. This is a very unique ThorpyFX...

Thorpy revisits his custom Fallout Cloud + Silicon RangeMaster circuit - originally made for Oli Brown (Oli Brown and the Dead Collective, formerly of Raveneye). Where a few years back said ThorpyFX artist and friend requested that Thorpy combine the RangeMaster circuit from the Silicon Veteran, with his Fallout Cloud take on the Triangle type Big Muff. That was already a really potent combination, while Thorpy latterly decided that he could and should make the fuzz side of the circuit even ...