This was a very late release last year - the announcement email arrived on Christmas Day - just before Christmas Day Lunch - which of course is  sacrosanct for many! I was of course involved in Christmas Dinner prep at the time - and quite missed the arrival of said missive. When I finally clocked that email later during the evening of that - those 10 pedals made were of course long since claimed.

Controls - Sustain, Timbre, Balance.

I’m something of a Thorpy collector and chronicler, ...

I’ve long been a fan of the Boss FZ-3 Fuzz - whose output straddles both classic Tone Bender and Fuzz Face tones and can get pretty full-on. I’ve had my pristine copy  of that since 2018, and I’ve always loved the vibrancy of this fuzz.

And Drunk Beaver’s Vitalli has exactingly recreated the FZ-3 circuit using expertly matched Toshiba SMT Transistors with the exact same values as the Toshiba THT originals.

The profile of the two pedals is incredibly close - with that same excellent ...

33 slots updated this year - #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9a, #9b, #10, #11, #12, #15a, #15b, #15c, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #22a, #22b, #23, #24, #25, #26, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #36, #38, and #41.

There’s been a fair amount of re-routing and re-organising this year - which you should be able to pick via the pattern of changes. The introduction of the stereo Poly Amplitude introduced the biggest change to the board order - to get th most out of that format!

I try to limit acquisitions /...

So this is the big one - all the top performers from the year in one selection.

We’ve already covered :

• 35 Boost & Overdrive Pedal Finalists
• 34 Distortion Pedal Finalists
• 32 Fuzz Pedal Finalists
• 38 Modutility Pedal Finalists
• 25 Delay and Reverb Pedal Finalists

Total Overall Finalist Selection of 164 Pedals!

Distilled down to the final favourites selection, where I own 27 of them, and will try to secure the final missing ones next year :

• Coffee Shop Pedals London Fog Tape Delay -

There are 32 Finalists in the Fuzz Category, where I own all but 3 :

• 29 Pedals Toki Overdrive / Fuzz
• Cachalote 214 Fuzz
• Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Waveshaper Fuzz

The Finalists

• 29 Pedals Toki Fuzz Driver - $269
• Beetronics FX Tuna Fuzz - $99
• Beetronics FX Whoctahell V2 Low Octave Beeast Babee Edition - $149
• Cachalote Audio 214 Fuzz - R$1418 / $235
• Cornerstone Nero Dumble-Fuzz - €299 | $299
• Danelectro Nichols 1966 Liverpool Fuzz Tone - $199
• Decibelics Reverend V2 Mini

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/...

Readers will know that I’m a huge Marc Ahlfs / Skreddy Pedals fan, and a range re-stock is always a big event for me - even though I own a large number of these masterpieces by now.

The top row of the visual is particularly exciting as we get a rare reissue of some long discontinued pedals - all improved version of those classics - Ernie, ? Lady, and Mayo. Marc is one of the kings of Big Muff - which represents all of the top row and the Zero in the bottom row.

We also have the brand ...

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 ...