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 ...

So I’ve been waiting for my much delayed Keeley Manis to land (#17 overall) - to complete the series - and that happened on the day I’m writing this piece - which will be ’yesterday’ by the time it goes live. I ordered mine from Andertons on the 25th June - but it was delayed coming into stock at least twice, and then delayed on the shipping - so it’s been a series of scheduling issues supposedly.

I’m not sure what the root cause is - but the formerly pretty solid Andertons ’coming into ...

So the original editions of these have a black enclosure with a colour accent graphic, and matching colour knobs. Where here those accent colours saturate the entire enclosure and the accent colours and knobs are black - a sort of inversion really.

I’m not sure I would feel the need to buy the whole set again in this new livery - albeit I really like these new editions. Which of course include the : 

• Noble Screamer
• Blues Disorder
• Super Rodent
• Angry Orange
• MK3 Driver

I’ve covered ...

In the wake of the recent Wampler one I did - it made sense to do a roundup of my Keeley pedals too - which funnily enough numbers a very similar amount of pedals.

I obviously juggle a lot of different priorities across something like 400 brands - so unless I was a millionaire - which I most certainly am not - I have to share the love across all those different brands - with a ’sample’ in effect from each range.

Seemingly only Josh Scott appears to be in a position to have one of each ...

It’s that time of year when I pick out my personal favourite pedals in each category - starting with the Boost and Overdrive ones. I weigh up each candidate on the basis of my own experiences, preferences and sensibilities - and include pedals also that I intended to get but did not quite yet around to acquiring during the year of release!

For this selection I personally own all but these 8 :

• Aleks K Production Honey Moon Sweet Overdrive V3
• Bleak District Slate Discrete Gemanium

I’ve just recently covered the phenomenal Tavysh HARM Multi-Gain pedal, and thought I should look at which similarly potent multi-gain pedals I had in the reference collection. In fact while doing the preliminary for this I realised I hadn’t yet acquired the All-Pedal Devil’s Triad Essentials - which landed around a fortnight ago. I had to go to Thomann, as there were none available in the UK at the time. I actually really like using Thomann - it takes a little longer to get packages from there...

So Fractal Audio Systems has thrown its hat in the ring with its first non-modelling device / unit - the VP4 Virtual Pedalboard Multi-FX Processor - which is quite a departure for the brand.

It’s obviously gunning for Line 6 and Eventide in particular, but also looking to knock out Boss and Strymon Workstation pedals. It has several of its own advantages, but with a number of caveats too. Overall it’s well priced for what it delivers - but for my own preferences it’s still somewhat over-...

When I first glimpsed the HARM pedal - it very much appeared to me to be the full-fat embodiment of my ’12 Degrees  of Saturation’ Methodology. Now that I’ve been road-testing it for 3 weeks, I can absolutely vouch for its potency, versatility, and prowess - its range of coverage is extraordinary!

This is the one compact pedal that can pretty much cover all your gain needs. That’s not to say it wholly accurately 100% replicates every gain pedal, while it most definitely gets well beyond the...

So I’ve obviously covered each of these pedals individually and in real depth - so please refer to the earlier articles if you need more details. The purpose of this exercise is to pick out my favourite/s from the series - which is really about comparing those 4 pedals head-to head across my 2 favourite settings for each - pitting one against the other - back and forth - until we have a preferences.

Note - that if you want to skip all the preamble - you can just scroll down to the bottom ...