This year is off to a fantastic start! I’ve picked up 3 pedals so far this year (4 including this Clean!), and I already had a number come in during December - the January board is pretty much done already!

My most recent arrivals are the Origin Effects Deluxe 55 as already reported, and then today (Thursday as of writing) my Hamstead Redwing Analogue Stereo Modulator and Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Wave-Folding Fuzz landed - I will be reporting on both of those next week! Finally, I met...

NOTE : Competition is now over - while the -20% promotion has been extended until January 15th!

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that we’ve had DryBell Banners on this site since December 1st - to mark the Brand New DryBell.com website. The celebration is in two parts - firstly, all 5 key Pedal Variants are [20% OFF] throughout December - with FREE Shipping.

[20% OFF] is a fantastic deal for these studio-grade pedals, and a rare opportunity to acquire one at these at incredibly ...

To a large degree the Heatseeker is modelled on the Angus Young Amp sound - which was significantly enhanced by his Schaffer Vega Diversity Wireless System - which generated more verve and vibrancy.

CTC have cleverly modelled the Vega part of Angus’s Amp Stack too, which type of system was also used by Peter Frampton, Eddie Van Halen, and Gene Simmons of Kiss fame. Notably Brian May deployed a not altogether dissimilar setup - but with an inline Treble Booster added too. So there were many ...

A distinct and different departure for Rick Matthews with an entirely different brand personality. Great to see those arcade switches in place though - which I first witnessed on the Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp. The interface / topology is elegantly and clearly delineated with all the labels visible, while the secondary function labels look a touch small - so presumably difficult to spot from a standing position.

Note that there was a previous version of The Technician in and around 2019 ...

You can count on Land Devices to harness the very best studio  / audio grade components to generate superior tones and textures. And this Moonbow combines dual hi-fidelity resonant filters across a cutoff frequency range of 20Hz to 5kHz.

You can further use a CV input to control the cutoff frequency more dynamically.

And finally you have an Overdrive circuit based on the Land Devices control strip with a 33dB Gain Range, running from -13dB to +20dB.

With those 5 key controls you can...

I’m not going to dwell too much on Blackfeet tribal lore and heritage (Amskaapi Piikuni) - other than to say that the design is derived from a culturally significant 4-band blanket which has relationship with the seasons and the many stages of life.

This is quite a departure from the usual styling of the brand, and a very welcome one in my opinion. These earthy colours, and the overall aesthetic of the pedal - with those distinctive knobs and symbols for labels mostly - interestingly that ...

So I’ve been meaning to do this article for a while, but kept putting it off - in the hope that we might see more brands materialising from this country. That has not been the case though - so now seems as good a time as any to focus on the small but mighty trifecta of Croatian brands - Dawner Prince Electronics, DryBell Musical Electronic Laboratory and Polarbear Effects.

I typically have a grid of a 9 for this style of article - so here I’ve selected my favourite 3 choices from each brand...

While this pedal shares the name of its Silky Smooth Saturating Overdrive sibling and they both share the same Audio Output Transformer - everything else is quite different. In fact the Silicon Steel Boost is a totally separately originated circuit - developed to deliver ultimate high headroom clean boosting, with potent EQ and subtle harmonics.

However much you raise the level - you never quite induce Overdrive breakup - you do get a subtle degree of saturation, while this pedal is mostly ...

I’ve always admired this Studio Style Console Box / Control Strip - while I’ve questioned whether I really need it. I have the Empress ParaEQ 2 DLX for all my EQ’ing needs, and I use some very specific gain-staging pedals, where some have up to +60dB onboard and an additional +30dB indenpdent boost - for pretty much limitless versatility.

I have several pedals with Audio Output transfomrmers onboard too, so I feel that I’m mostly covered for what I need already, and how I use those gain ...