Old Blood Noise Endeavors seeks to repeat the fabulous success of its Dark Star Stereo with a similar evolution of its Black Fountain Oil Can Delay
First thing I have to say is how dinky this format is - which is shared by the new Dark Star and Pardner Fuzz pedals - it’s around he same size as a square Strymon type which is really cool - as these pedals are relatively easy to accommodate within the Tetris environment of your pedalboard.
So as before this is much more than just a stereo-fying exercise as it massively evolves the original compact pedal format with a load more features. And similar to the Dark Star being a distinctly ...
Mooer's Prime Minimax M2 Intelligent Pedal is a cool Bluetooth App-controlled Multi-FX with 194 Effects Onboard
Mooer was due to be at the recent London Synth and Pedal Expo that I attended over the weekend, but ended up being a casualty of the Heathrow Substation Fire - the only pedal that got there in time was its GS1000 Intelligent Amp Profiling Processor and there was some kind of power supply issue with that - so it needed to be retired on the very first day!
I was hoping to see the GL100 Looper and this Prime M2 at the show - while alas neither of those pedals made it in the end!
The Prime...
Vertical vs Horizontal Enclosure Format - Pedalboard-friendly vs Aesthetic Choice!
It’s fairly well documented by now that I mostly favour Single Compact Enclosures - especially when there’s only a single footswitch present. I do go larger for the occasional pedal - like my various Stereo Workstation Pedals for instance, and my Drum Machine - while by and large I always try to get something in a fully practical and easily slottable form factor.
My rig / board is highly congested, and has been for a while, now with 52 pedals in the signal chain - so in many circumstances I...
Inaugural Woking Boutique Guitar Show Highlights from Fiery Bird
Maybury Guitars - Jason
So here are the highlights from the very first Woking Boutique Guitar Show - which took place this past Saturday at the Fiery Bird venue - just 5 minutes walk from the train station / town centre.
The show was organised by my good friend Jason Snelling of Maybury Guitars, alongside John Smith of JAS Guitars. The venue was perfectly centrally located, and was spacious - with a lot of natural light - which did make some of the photography somewhat...
Benson Amps collaborates with Jessica Dobson on signature Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo
Chris Benson makes incredibly musical devices - and that is very much the case once more with his Jessica Dobson signature Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo pedal. I don’t always gel with the horizontal medium enclosure format with is inoptimal dimensions - I don’t understand why this cannot be a vertical format - as it’s the pedal’s width which is mostly the limiting factor for pedalboard compatibility. All that needs to happen is that the enclosure layout is rotated 90 degress clockwise - so the ...
Hello Sailor Effects' Compact SeaWolf PT2399 Delay is a super lush hand-wired take on the Deep Blue
I now totally understand the allure of Mad Professor’s Deep Blue Delay which is so well-loved, and which my good friend Joe has managed to further refine and improve - using the very best in primo vintage and NOS components - all hand-wired in the most exquisite fashion.
This is truly a lush delay - leaning somewhat towards dampened and softened - slightly spongy in some ways - for the most beautiful decaying repeats. The nature of the decay is exceptional here - and I like riding the ...
Strymon releases EC-1 Single Head dTape Echo distillation of the El Capistan
I’m a huge fan of Tape Delays, but typically Multi-Head varieties - like say the Roland / Boss Space Echo. In some ways this completes the Volante / El Capistan / EC-1 arc - as each of those devices offers up fewer overall features. I’ve said that this is really a distillation of the El Capistan - where that one had 3 key modes of operation - Fixed / Multi / Single - and this EC-1 is just the Single mode from the El Capistan really - with some variations.
Controls - Time (50ms-1000ms) [Tap ...
Rotosound Reissues its full range of Vintage Pedals, including the Excellent MKIII Germanium Fuzz
You often hear me talking of 90’s style enclosure pedals (1590BB), and here we have late 60’s style enclosure pedals a la Sola Sound MKIII type. The selection comes across as very ’Macaris’ in those enclosures - which are along very similar lines. Actually that Germanium Fuzz was originally OEM’d by Sola Sound for Rotosound back in the day (1967). The Rotosound Fuzz was supposedly a MKIII prototype - which emerged the year before the official Tone Bender MKIII release.
"After years of ...
9 x Hot Pink Colour Sync
This post was inspired by the recent Great Eastern FX Co OC201 Preamp and latest James Dean Bradfield TPS Episode - which featured the MXR Fat Sugar. Those 2 Hot Pink Pedals kind of set the scene / tone for this - and I thought I would do a tribute to my Guitar Nerds Podcast Friends - Joe and Matt - who favour this particular hue of pedals. Would be interesting to know how many of these they have to date!
For me personally - I have the Alexander Hot Pink Drive and Life Is Unfair Violet ...
JHS Pedals further expands its 3 Series by 3 - Rotary Chorus, Tape Delay, and Oil Can Delay
Interestingly EQD was the first to issue a $99 Budget Boutique pedal - with its Plumes Overdrive, while Josh Scott and friends were the first to deliver a whole line of Budget Boutique Pedals. Overall I think JHS probably did it best, and their range now has the most variety of all those - with 16 pedals to its roster.
I only have one of these to date - the Harmonic Trem - where ironically the Standard Trem mode / option is the more impressive. My favourite Harmonic Trem to date is the JAM ...
