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 ...

Another super busy month for me - particularly towards the end - with numerous large scale articles out this week. That also coincided with my busiest week of the year for my other day job. Meaning that I was up until 4-5 in the morning every day - just to keep up with my commitments.

I was already somewhat shattered and burned out before I even got to this super busy period - and it’s a relief that all that work has now been completed on schedule.

I’m especially proud of my work on the Bucket ...

So what we have here is another innovative fluttery style of dual delay - making exceptional use of the PT2399 chip and adding serial tremolo points into the mix.

We have a somewhat unique control topology - with 4 push-buttons on the right-hand-side - the first 3 of those select one of 5 modes for each of those 3 tremolo points : Off | On | Blinking | Fading | Mix of Blinking + Fading. And then the final 4th button Randomises the interaction of those Tremolo Points.

Otherwise the ...

All the new dealers - including Joe’s Pedals and Effekt Boutique will feature the two most recent Colortone Pedals - the Vibroverb (£219 / €289), and ZeroSum (£219 / €289), while some - like Joe’s Pedals will also have the Lo-Fi Delay (£239) and Spring Reverb II (€179).

All 4 of those pedals sound every bit as good as they look!

Northern Stomps’ new website is due to go live on this coming Friday (31st) - with those Colortone Pedals featured for launch.

There’s a few more dealers ...

A number of Analog and Analog style Delays have recently crossed my path - so there’s evidently a trend happening! I featured the HSE SeaWolf back in March, the Colortone ZeroSum in August, and then the Black Mountain Roto Echo, Anasounds Utopia MK2, Tru-Fi Aqua Echo, PastFX Echo 600, and now this Beetronics Bee Bee Dee all in September!

Beetronics’ Filipe always does things slightly differently, and his Bee Bee Dee Delay is very distinct - with a little bit of Chase Bliss style magic ...

For a simple looking format there’s actually quite a lot to get to grips with here - as we get 2 layers of controls - default Red Layer 1, and when you hold down the Bypass footswitch you get Layer 2 Green - which is mostly optional for me, while it does trigger the 3-Presets Mode too - via the A/B/C controls. With the Red 1, and Green 2 Layers you have a total of 10 controls at your disposal, and the A/B/C option selection controls the 3 presets - but more of that later!

As a bare minimum ...

Every couple of years AD Hauser massively evolves and levels up his pedal creations - now in their 5th or 6th iteration overall from when the brand started. Where the symbol on the ZeroSum is slight reminiscent of that on the former Preacher 58 Mic Link pedal, while the artwork here is much further evolved, and a step away from the geometric patterns of its forebears.

I can imagine these in Brass - looking slightly Steam-Punk-ish in this new format! There is a degree of retro-futurism here ...

I’ve seen these Empty Head pedals doing the rounds quite bit of late - and it was these pedals’ style of knobs - in particular on the ’Big Talker’ - which first drew my attention. Empty Head Effects’ Nik would seem to be a Brit abroad, being based in Mainz, Germany - he certainly sounds like a Brit!

He’s carved out a very unique slightly quirky brand identity which would seem to occupy a philosophically adjacent plane to David Rainger’s Rainger FX. Mixing up a unique aesthetic with very ...

Caroline has significantly ramped up its Kilobyte Lo-Fi Delay with a much more expansive and granular 8 controls topology.

At its core this has a PT2399 chip with an official maximum factory delay time of 300ms. While that has been ’stretched’ and filtered to deliver the 500ms+ Lo-Fi delay variation. Caroline deliberately doesn’t provide max delay time - as it can vary enormously from just over 500ms to more than 800ms.

Controls - Level, Sharpness (Most Lo-Fi CCW), Preamp / Saturation, ...