Gear In-depth & Longer Blogs — Guitar Pedal

NEW ARTICLE FOR PREMIER GUITAR MAGAZINE: Modulation Nation: Explore the History & Mystery of Chorus, Phasing & Flanging Effects Tony's latest article for America's finest guitar magazine, Premier Guitar, is out now. Attempting to condense the history, use, and notable examples of chorus, flanger and phaser effects, into a single magazine article is far from easy for someone who could fill a book writing solely about phaser pedals. However, this turned out to be a labour of love - in the process of researching the article, I remembered and learned a great deal, and put a few misremembered 'facts' to bed. ...

The EMS Synthi HiFli by Tony Miln If you’re a guitar pedal nerd, then the EMS Synthi HiFli is the pinnacle of desirability: it is the stuff of legend; a rare and much-mythologised beast that is seldom-sighted - sporting many sliders with alluring names. In his book, ‘Analog Man’s Guide To Vintage Effects’, Tom Hughes officially anointed the HiFli king of kings - rarest of the rare - big chief amongst the hen’s teeth. In short, the EMS Synthi HiFli is the ultimate vintage guitar ‘pedal’; good examples are very few and far between. I set out many years ago now...

The second of my articles for Premier Guitar has now been published. It's a slightly sideways look at the world of 70s guitar synths and goes in-depth into: the mighty Synthi HiFli (that's our own in the orange case in the image below), the Ludwig Phase II, Soundgas favourite the Maestro USS-1 (a multi-effects unit with Tom Oberheim designed circuitry), the Frogg Compu-Sound, and the unique-sounding Soviet Esko-100. And of course all manner of other peculiar and super-are units get a mention as well. It goes a little something like this: "As I started researching and writing this story, it slowly dawned on...

Why buy an original Binson Echorec? Original Binson Echorecs are the classic Ferrari of electro-mechanical delays. They’re rare, expensive, require specialist restoration and servicing, parts are scarce, and they need to be cared for and run regularly to remain in top condition. Once the preserve of the lucky few - in 1962 a Baby Binson cost around £140 (£20 less than a Fender Stratocaster, £20 more than a Vox AC-30) and most of those British guitarists wishing to replicate the sound of Hank Marvin and the Shadows, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd (and latterly David Gilmour) had to make do...

Tony Miln takes first look at the new Gurus Echosex 2º T7E. Yes, the brand new Gurus Echosex 2 T7Eº pedal is finally here - first stock to land with anyone in the world. It's Gurus recreation of the full functionality of the mighty Binson Echorec 2 T7Eº, complete with four "heads" available in 12 different combinations, plus the Age of Damage control to dial in the sound of a gradually ageing machine. Our first allocation was all sold on pre-order but we and other dealers will have more stock soon. We'll add more detail to this post soon, but for...

This is the story of how we sold Space Echoes to Roland, our trip to London to bring the vintage gear noise to the Boss exhibition launch and came to meet Miki-san, CEO of the mighty Roland Corporation. Pictures are of the venue, the epic exhibition of Boss & Roland gear, and our workshop set up; you can see a full album of shots from the weekend here.   Following the initial request from Roland/Boss asking us to supply serviced Space Echoes for their Cause And Effects show (celebrating 40 years of Boss guitar effects), our involvement grew, leading to us being...

We are incredibly-excited to announce our partnership with Clouds Hill: we have the worldwide exclusive dealership for their incredible Floppy Disc Delay (FDD). Read on for a detailed review from Tony's first revelations and explorations of this effect. We had the last two of the intial run of ten completely hand-tooled Clouds Hill Echoes [now sold!], and are now taking orders for the main production run of the next 20 Floppy Disc Delay units which are in stock now. You can see our ECHO in action the youtube demo below, as well as on several demos on our Instagram feed. Another Analogue Echo? The Floppy Disc...

Or a journey from "Yet another overdrive pedal" to "This pedal has inspired me to play guitar more than any other I've bought in recent years"...   When Gurus’ headman Chicco informed me that their next pedal after the Echosex 2º was to be a twin overdrive pedal based on a classic Marshall valve amp, I wasn’t exactly overawed. “Yet another overdrive pedal,” I thought to myself as I tacked a couple onto our re-order for yet more stock of the fabulous Echosex 2º LTD. Named the 1959 after the legendary Marshall, and Double Decker because it sports dual channels. The...

We found all sorts of things we'd forgotten about, and fell in love with some new things that we'd never used before. Pete from Teleman and Ben from Elephant Disco came down to help us get organised and so huge thanks have to go to them for kicking us into action. It's a facebook post so hopefully most of you can see it, but if you can't and you want to see pictures of a lot of vintage gear then give us a shout. We also made a load of video demos (thanks again to Pete for the great guitar...