This has turned out to be the largest category for 2025 with 38 pedals in this selection. As I favour those pedals that I own first, and then the more pedalboard-friendly editions - inevitably there would be some casualties for the year. With the most significant of those being the larger format Meris Enzo X, and the Polyend MESS Multi-Effect Step Sequencer. I know there are some who favour each of those - but they just aren’t targets for me personally.

 I always talk about having a lane - ...

I’m a little late with my in-depth review of the Dobbo for a variety of reasons. In part because of the heatwave we had in the UK - which limited playing time severely, in part because I was a little burnt out at the time, and in part because I was figuring out how to get the most use and utility out of this pedal.

"Dobbo takes small bits of sound and rearranges them. It can stretch, pitch and blur these bits, or transform them into rhythmic textures."

Most would likely file this under ...

June was influenced by a few key events. Obviously the Leeds Pedal Show had a massive impact on me - and I picked up 9 pedals at that show - all excellent, and later picked up a Hudson Electronics AP-II Broadcast. So the reach of the Leeds Show has been massive - particularly the brace from Emmergy FX and SoundLad Liverpool. Then also my visit to good friends Hello Sailor Joe and Glyn - which resulted in a further brace of superior pedals, all featured on the blog this month.

So these 14 are some of the pedals that continue to evade capture for me. Most of these are discontinued and were only made in  very limited numbers. Some of these are small batch productions - like the GNI Octa Fuzz and Iron Ether FrantaBit. And some are also impossible to get outside their country of manufacture. Some of these I’ve been chasing for nearly a decade so far.

Many of you will be familiar with my quest for the Blakemore Effects Deus Ex Machina OpAmp Muff - where I tracked down...

I’m a huge fan of the power and prowess of the Polyend Step Drum Machine - which I’ve owned for a few months now. Polyend is obviously on something of a roll at the moment - with its newest product coming out so hot on the heels of the Step release.

There’s only an ’Effects List’ so far - which I’ve transcribed into the visual and below - and without the Manual I can’t fully gauge exactly what we have here.

In essence we seem to have a library of 125 stereo effects which can be assigned...

When I initially saw this device, Chase Bliss was the first brand that immediately sprung to mind - as superficially, minus the bottom Randomizer ’Dice’ section - the topology kind of mostly resembles the typical and classic Chase Bliss control topology - of 6 knobs, 3 x toggle-switches, and dual, multi-function Footswitches!

Whenever I consider the acquisition of a particular pedal, I need to be able to foresee what slot it should be deployed from on the pedalboard. And the Dobbo is a ...

There’s an incredibly rich mix here of no less than 38 killer Modulations, Utilities and Pitch-Shifters - no one does rundowns quite like me! I always dive in at the deep end of things - and give you maximum expansive scope!

There are several here that I don’t have yet, in fact some hat I’m somewhat unlikely to ever have - for reasons of rig compatibility, size and overall sensibilities, practicalities, and preferences!

These 19 are still to be acquired or eventually overlooked :

I was one of the early movers on the Zoia - all the way back in 2019, it’s incredible really that 10,000 units of this pedal have been sold to-date. Right from the start I called it out as more of a tabletop device - and one more at home with modular synth types really.

For the average guitarist - the control interface is ever somewhat clunky, and doesn’t really allow fluid tweaking on the fly like we’re used to - as you only have a singular rotary encoder. And moreover no Bluetooth ...

So we had the usual cryptic clues that something was about to happen - with various glimpses of the Dirt Bird pedal, as well as an older version of the Ayahuasca Trem-Fuzz. So even more cryptic than usual - while it increasingly looked like we would be getting a new variant of the Condor pedal.

When the reveal happened it all got a bit more complicated as this smart Mystery Box festive promotion was world-wide - where everyone pays the same $299 and equivalent for their mystery box (free ...