In many ways this is the most straightforward category with singular award nominees - GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE.

It’s the second smallest category after Distortions - and the one where I own the least number of pedals in proportion to the whole - just 10 out of these 26.

The order pretty much set itself - with the Cornerstone Nucleo being the clear winner from the start. I’m so impressed with every aspect of that pedal - it’s a perfect Trifecta of Design, Feaures and Playability - pretty ...

The new Encounter Delay + Reverb which was teased all the way back at NAMM at the start of the year - features the exact same enclosure configuration as the Collder. It can largely be considered in terms of a Collider reboot - but with a more adventurous mix of algorithms.

In some ways this is ’old tech’ as the pedal somewhat inexplicably is still using Mini USB, and not the long-standing international standard of USB-C!

The control topology is nigh identical - with the only key ...

It’s about time I did a rundown on my MXR Pedals - where this episode was mostly triggered by the arrival of the Bass Synth - where I landed one of the first examples of those to land in the UK, landed with me on July 4th. I was doing some brand research on Reverb.com and I serendipitously came across the one pedal that had made it to Coda Music. It was already in someone’s cart - but evidently I completed the transaction quicker and it was mine.

I’ve adde 6 MXR’s to the collection this ...

The original Yellow Fall Mini Delay was a secret weapon for many - as the best sounding most affordable ’analog’ delay pedal. Jack White loved it so much - that it’s included on his Donner Triple Threat Multi-FX Collaboration. Even though by the most common classifications - this is not really an ’Analog’ pedal at all - but actually a PT2399 variant!

I was very excited when I first spotted the more expansive Yellow Fall 2 - which has some significant pros, and a slight con in that it’s all ...

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 -

I obviously just recently won me an AC Noises Ricorda Retro Series Reverb as a Chase Bliss Mystery Box Bonus Pedal - so the first iteration I had to make on this article was to update the standard Blue Ricorda image to the limited colourway edition that I was gifted by my Mystery Box. This selection is typically the one where I own the least proportion of pedals featured, in fact in this case it’s easier to list the few that I own here :

• AC Noices Ricorda Stereo Granular Reverb + Freeze /

It’s 4 years ago now since I did my mockup of a possible new version of Specular Tempus - based on the Synesthesia format. While GFI has gone even more expansive here and delivered a fully workstation format pedal.

It’s in the same territory as the Source Audio Collider and Wampler Catacombs - but with much more onboard - and in a significantly larger enclosure. Which will suit some, but not all. It’s actually probably more likely completing with the Mooer Ocean Machine and Line 6 DL4 (...

So it made sense that the 3rd in Brian’s workstation pedal series would be a Reverb type - having already had a Multi-Modulator and Multi-Delay units in the respective Terraform and Metaverse pedals - which are both excellent of course. While this is Brian’s sort of competitor to the Source Audio Collider - both those units have inherent similarities in being a combination of Delays and Reverbs - an ’EchoVerb pedal’ of sorts therefor.

The emphasis is markedly different though, with the ...

Misha Mannsoor’s Horizon Devices has quietly made its way to 4 superior modern tone enhancers. It kind of set the mould with its specialist Metal tone enhancing Precision Drive, then came its Apex High Gain Preamp, then the Flux Echo/Reverb - and here we have a very unique take on a Compressor.

Horizon Devices’ slogan is "Sound great, and be easy to use" and that theme is very clearly carried through all 4 pedals which are about as straightforward a pedals as you might expect to encounter -...