I’ve always loved granular delays - those disjointed skittery delay taps - since my very first encounter with the Montreal Assembly Count to Five. However I’ve oft times struggled to dial in the right balance of texture and effect to ensure that it fully delivers its character - without unduly interrupting or overly colouring the flow of music.

It can be quite tricky at times to dial such effects in fully musically - and some patience is definitely required for the process ...

It was only natural that the Compact Format Preferred Versions feature should follow the Mini examples. Again largely inspired by the recent ’12 Degrees’ projects.

Once more I’ve had a change of mind on some of the candidates and the preferred examples are slightly different to those previous references. Obviously new pedals have arisen, and priorities and preferences can shift fairly regularly based on prevailing mood.

That said, most of these are long-term...

So Reverb.com has just announced which limited edition pedal collaborations go on sale today - Tuesday 23rd February - to further celebrate the imminent release of ’The Pedal Movie’. The first two pedals went on sale last November and sold out pretty instantaneously. 1000 of Chase Bliss Audio + Zvex collaboration Bliss Factory Fuzz, and 1000 of Death By Audio + EarthQuaker Devices collaboration Time Shadows Subharmonic Multi-Delay Resonator.

Both pedals were rather original...

This article is in part inspired by my features on ’Mini Pedals State of the Art’, and those various ’12 Degrees’ posts I did at the tail-end of last year. Moreover I have had quite a few readers recently asking me for my preferred recommended mini pedals on various pedal-chain slots.

I last did this sort of exercise 4 years ago - where TC Electronic was kind of the dominant player - covering 8 of those 20 recommendations, with Mooer fairly close with 6 entries...

Carsten Pinkle’s Klirrton Manufaktur is thus far best known for its Killer Grindstein HM-2 style Death Metal Buzzsaw Pedal - which also incidentally remains high on my wishlist and has featured several times already on this site. That pedal contains 2 blendable circuits / voicings - the core HM-2 Grind, and a bass-heavy ’BottomShaker’ preamp.

So many players in fact loved the ’BottomShaker’ preamp element, that Carsten, after much consideration and some ...

DigiTech’s latter sister brand DOD has delivered a number of pedal greats over the years, and since its foundation in 1973 by David Oreste Di Francesco. A lot of people focus on the early editions / 200 Series - while I’ve taken a slightly broader overview here - with the one concession really being the original 250 Overdrive/Preamp. Elsewhere I’ve gone for pretty much the latest viable editions - including the Blue reissue of the 201 Phasor - which also had Grey and Yellow ...

Ben truly has a wonderful way with words in describing his brand new super-modulated analog delay. Admittedly with very clever and beautifully nuanced modulation.

The layout / format isn’t exactly my favourite arrangement - something I very much associate with Zvex, where I personally would much rather have this pedal in a more pedalboard-friendly vertical style of enclosure.

The inventive naming continues with the various controls - Universe, Replicate, Mix, Velocity, ...

I’ve been peripherally aware of Alessandro Barretta’s pedals for a while now, known as ’Ale’ to his friends! He builds these fantastic proper boutique pedals - one at a time - at his studio in Pisa, Italy. This is a passion project first and foremost, and as it’s all made-to-order, he typically does not ship more than a couple or so pedals each month.

He currently has 2 pedals in production - both are high gain really - and the ’Drive and Boost&rsquo...

Before I get into the meat of the review, I thought it best to put everyone fully in the picture as regards my evolving appreciation for Pettyjohn Electronics. I freely admit I am largely somewhat late to the party as such, in part due to my earlier confusion about parts of the brand’s modus operandi. While I have now of course acquired each of the brand’s most recent ’Core’ series - RAIL Fuzz, ROUS Distortion and ODI Overdrive.

I’ve been aware of the ...

After a couple of complex pedal reviews - it’s nice to get back to basics with another new fuzz confection. Like most of my favourite fuzzes - this EHX Ripped Speaker Fuzz features an external Bias knob - which controls the timbre and texture of those ripping fuzz sounds.

This goes everywhere from a sort of farty / brassy sounding fuzz, to a smooth gating voicing, and onto more jagged cut-up stuttery/sputtery sounds. It does the voltage starve / dying battery thing really well, ...