News

So it’s that usual post NAMM-haze time where I figure out the longer-term impact of NAMM, and how those new products will affect the layout, order and composition of my now sort of 40-slot pedal-chain. As noted several times - this was indeed a bumper year for really innovative and highly appealing new pedals - and I will look to accommodate a number of those as they materialise in the forthcoming months.

As I hinted in my last pedal-chain overview - while 2018 was very evidently...

2018 has been a really surprising year for pedals - there have been quite a few unexpected innovations along the way with also some of the usual production delays and holdups. As I write this I am still waiting for my long-overdue Jackson Audio Bloom to arrive - but I expect it will be worth the delay. I would have liked to have seen the Empress Zoia despatched this year too, as sort of predicted though - I feel that it will be pushed into next year - to coincide with Winter NAMM possibly - in ...

UPDATE 1 - It’s often the case that just after you publish, something big happens which forces a change of stance. On this occasion it was the release of the truly amazing Wampler Pantheon Overdrive which has immediately found its way into Slot #10 of the chain. In fact I have sort of swapped slots #10 and #12 around - relegating the Spaceman Aphelion to a supporting role for now.

UPDATE 2 - Still no word from Jackson Audio on the delayed Bloom Compressor etc. - which means the ...

This follows on from my earlier article on British Pedal Builders - I had no immediate plans to do a series of these, but there are definitely certain nations that excel in pedal-making which I quite enjoy featuring. I need not really include the most prodigious - the USA as most pedals still come from there, but will focus on some of the smaller nations and do fairly compact roundups of each. As I said I had no plans originally beyond British, but will likely do French, German, Italian, ...

As stated elsewhere, I got back into guitar again in September 2016, and initially had decided to keep it simple with a great guitar and a cool modern modelling amp. Yet I soon found out that this was not delivering the goods for me and decided in November 2016 that I should pursue the pedal / stompbox route also known as ’pedal platform route’.

A very great number of YouTube videos I watched in those early days, as well as pedalboard pictures on Pinterest featured Strymon ...

As I will endeavour to describe in a separate blog post, several pedal-makers have duo offerings of multi-function delay and reverb pedals - most notably Boss and TC Electronic. And now Electro-Harmonix has joined the fray as it were. A little over one year after the release of the Canyon we now get the same sort of format for a Reverb pedal. The central alt function button is now a Mode selector rather than a Tap Divide selector - but the layout and topology of the two pedals is identical with...

Most of these were included in my Comparative Compact Pedal Acquisition overview - I’ve just added the OBNE Mondegreen and brand new EHX Oceans 11 into the mix. I had expected there to be more pairs here - and while for instance we have the excellent Mad Professor Kosmos, MXR M300, Neunaber Immerse and Shift Line A+ Astronaut Reverbs, those companies don’t have an equivalent Multi-Function Delay. The same can be said of the Chase Bliss Thermae and Tonal Recall, Montreal Assembly ...

As always there’s a rhyme and reason for this particular feature. My end-of-chain time-based effects are currently the Empress EchoSystem Dual Delay and Boss RV-500 Dual Reverb - both pedals in fact preceded by an Eventide H9 Max which also gives me a full range of options for both Delay and Reverb.

All these three pedals are preceded by a Boss MD-500 Modulation Workstation, but before this arrangement I used to roll with the Strymon Stryfecta of Mobius, TimeLine and BigSky. I ...

When I started down the pedal trail - and this will fix a fairly obvious time-stamp on it, there were 2 much used pedal trifectas in evidence on every other or third pedalboard. Namely the Strymon ’Stryfecta’ of Mobius, TimeLine and BigSky, and the mini-pedal powerhouse that was the Xotic Effects trifecta - EP Booster, SL Drive and SP Compressor - all excellent too. The Strymons owe a lot to the Eventide Quadfecta which preceded them - ModFactor, PitchFactor, Space, and TimeFactor -...

It’s always amusing to set your pedal goals and targets right at the start of the year, and then have to amend them right after the various Winter NAMM announcements. In fact I did a status update at the end of last year, and at the start of this one - which is not a whole lot of days really, but so much as happened in the interim!

I kind of got inspired by heavier tones over Christmas - which prompted me to acquire another heavy distortion pedal - in the shape of the MI Audio ...