Another strong month for sure! A little dominated by Keeley Electronics, but some solid releases over the month - with a crazy flurry towards the end - to coincide with Europe’s largest Guitar Gear Show - Mannheim’s Guitar Summit. It seems evident now that Guitar Summit is an event I should really be at - and I will make a concerted effort to be their next year.

As it was I attended just one guitar gear event this month - EarthQuaker Devices Showcase at GuitarGuitar in Camden - where I got ...

First launched in 2014 - the BitQuest Multi-FX / Multi-FX-Fuzz / Fuzz-Modulator - quickly became Dr Scientist’s most popular and best-selling pedal - and has held the line ever since - despite fierce competition from my other Frazz Dazzler Fuzz favourite! According to Ryan- there are only 2 core models of this pedal - the one which originated in 2014 - which holds all the way through to 2020 - while there are some circuitboard variations along the way too. Before 2020 you first move the Fuzz/...

The Octa-Psi has been over 3 years in the making - and I can see why! A pretty potent richly textured Fuzz voicing - particularly on the PSI (Max Undertones) Mode. On the other side we have the most fantastic polyhonic octaver and pitch-shifter with multiple Interval choices, and smart blending functionality - to accentuate, elevate, or ameliorate the key constituents. Also with killer Momentary Pitch Ramping - which climbs up to the selected interval and drops back down to the root - kinda ...

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 ...

Electro-Harmonix often does superb introductory demos for its new pedals, and I must admit I was totally blown away by the vast Multi-FX territory covered by this launch. This POG III takes the Polyphonic Octave Generator circuit into entirely new territory - and has you covered for all kinds of other advanced effects.

Watching the demo, the following key territories are touched on :

• Slow Polyphonic Attack - backwards octave blend, somewhat Attack Decay -like
• 12 String sound with Chorus

So I’m on a hat-trick of onsite visits to Rainger FX’s Willesden Junction HQ. I was supposed to be there ahead of the MiniDrone launch, but a mix up in communications meant that I ended up there a few days after, and what an instructive visit it was. Just 2 of the team were present besides David - Baptiste, and Matt - who are featured in the above concept cover picture too. Of the two other regulars - Prav was away on vacation, and I believe Martin only comes in on one day of the week or so - ...

So in my usual twisted fashion I’ve somewhat fallen down a rabbit hole of Mini Pedals these days. This project was sparked off by the recent Andertons Ultimate Doom Pedal Shoot-out. That has some very oddly selected pedals within its shoot-out considerations, but where the Tone City Matcha Cream Green Russian did extremely well - in fact winning the most rounds - 8 in total of all the pedals trialled.

The eventual winner was kind of immaterial to me, I was all of a sudden intrigued as to ...

The MiniDrone essentially strips out the Drone section from the the Drone Rainger - so no delay or additional chorusing. The MiniDrone is all-analog, and as a sort of Analog Bass Synth has some natural chorusing present in those low-pitched triangle wave oscillators - where 2 of them generate the always on unison Pitch Drone 1. Pitch 1, and the third oscillator generate Drone 2 / Pitch.

The frequency range of those oscillators is approximately from 70Hz down to 30Hz - with pretty accreting ...

I’ve followed tkog / The King of Gear for many years now - and have had the Mini Glitch in the reference collection for quite a while - a really cool and relatively simple but impactful Micro-Sampler. I believe that first materialised properly in 2018 - where I’m aware there were a few earlier sort of prototype versions before then - while I think the final design occurred some time in and around 2018.

Around a year later, tkog then introduced its Oxford Drive - which I understand is an ...