I’ve long been a huge Skreddy fan - picking up one from here and there as I’ve gone along! A couple here came from the old Wunjo store - back when they used to stock Skreddy, the Mayonnaise came from an Italian collector via Reverb.com - while most everything else came from my good friend Joe Light’s Joe’s Pedals Boutique!

I got a little carried away with the latest Skreddy restock / drop into Joe’s Pedals - where Marc Ahlfs made a number of long discontinued varieties for Joe - some of ...

Jamie Stillman’s Green Russian inspired Hoof Hybrid Fuzz is one of the great Big Muff adjacent circuits - which fields 2 Germanium Transistors alongside 2 Silicon ones - for the most exquisite and unique Big Muff textures - with elevated levels of sustain too.

Controls - Tone, Fuzz, Level.

For this 20th Anniversary Edition Jamie returns to the original specs and uses the supposedly NOS Transistors of the original - which look like 2N1304 Transistors courtesy of the below photo. This ...

So Chase Bliss obviously laid down a seasonal marker with its magnificent take on the Mystery Box. And now it’s Blammo’s turn to impress - where all its pedals for the remainder of the year come with a free Snowman Ornament Transparent Lexan Pedal Bonus for the festive season - where said Ornament / Pedal can also hit your pedalboard if you so desire! Or else just hang from your tree!

The following Instagram post carries those details that currently exist : www.instagram.com/p/DDA46iXSWyD/...

So in the wake of my ’9 Notable Brazilian Guitar Pedal Brands’ article I had a lot of people contacting me (as intended!) to tell me I’d overlooked this and that brand. The first mentioned was obviously Cachalote Audio which I liked so much that I did a separate article on that.

While altogether we had another 9 notable brands suggested - to include in this separate feature. In fact there are even more - including StarDust Electronic Art - where I’m waiting until I get enough suggestions to...

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 ...

Brazil is a fascinating guitar pedal marketplace - mostly inward looking, and mostly closed off from the rest of the world. I was the first European I believe to get Aura Amps and Tone Ink pedals shipped out of Brazil. Some of those brands have some experience of shipping up the landmass and into Central and North America, but little or nothing ventures across the waters in either direction.

Andy Timmons has long favoured the GNI/ NIG Music OctaFuzz (as pictured left of centre) - where I’ve...

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 ...

Tru-Fi’s Teddy Rasch has really pushed the boat out with this one - finding the perfect combination of Germanium Transistors to create the ultimate Germanium Zonk. The literature talks of 2G381 (TI) and Mullard OC75 black glass transistors. While in my unit I have the superb combination of AC125 + NTK278 + OC75 - for a weapons-grade searing harmonic output.

Here Fuzz is Gain, and Swell is Level essentially - there’s so much of both onboard that I don’t really take the Fuzz above Noon, or ...

I obviously have and love the original - with its external Bias control and super handy LED Bias Screen. The new one is simply an improvement of that already great circuit - with additional controls - and of course retaining that fantastic richly detailed harmonic germanium sound.

Silktone have also graciously maintained the price point - so you’re getting quite a bit more bang for you buck here. As before - I would of course have preferred this in a vertically oriented format, but since it...