And so to my roundup of the best gear of the year - apologies of course if I’ve overlooked one of your favourites - and note again that this year I’ve split out Boost & Overdrive - and Distortion separately - as there are so many new pedals that it’s tough to fit them all into a single summary overview. Some of these pedals are incredibly extended range - and if I’ve used them more on the distortion side - you will find those listed in the very next Distortion Rundown article - like say the...

At the start of the week I covered the Vemuram Shanks ODS-1 as part of Rob Chapman’s favourite pedals rundown. The Vemuram goes for a stinking $385 - it was the priciest of the Rob Chapman select - and is the priciest option here.

Obviously Nobels have just recently released a Metallic Gold 30th Anniversary edition which makes the formerly binary Bass Cut hidden in the battery compartment - a full granularity mini-knob on the front facia. So the Anniversary edition is pretty much identical ...

So right at the end of last month Rob Chapman posted up a YouTube video of a rundown of his all-time favourite guitar pedals. He initially states he’s going to name his 10 most favoured ones - but goes on to mention 20 - which I’ve fully included here.

Rob has a great ear for tone - as countless of his own and Anderton’s videos have proven time and time again. And I really love his everyman approach to guitar gear. I’ve encountered him in person 2 or 3 times now over the years - and he’s ...

This is the kind of ’fusion cuisine’ that was always pretty much destined to happen some day - the two fabled green overdrive pedals combined within a single compact enclosure, and Robert’s done it in a really slick way here. First of all - props to Robert and his gang for their really cool new wedge-shaped aluminium enclosure - and what looks like fairly custom knobs. Both get a big thumbs up from me!

But it’s the way that he’s combined the two different circuits that is the magic here - ...

This article was originally suggested by my now good friend Henry Kaiser - leading guitar and guitar effects experimentalist and prolific producer and recording artist. He’s been a long-term friend of Toshihiko Tanabe - of Tanabe.TV fame and thought I should do one of my pedal roundups on Japanese Boutique Pedal Builders.

I had long intended to do a feature on Japanese Pedal Makers - but could not decide on the context or format - as there are so many notable brands. Upon Henry’s suggestion...

The innovation with the original 1993 Nobels ODR-S was that the unique Spectrum Tone Stack of the ODR-1 was swapped out for a more granular 3-Band EQ. In that version the Bass and Treble controls were active, while the Mid control was a range sweep. For the ODR-CS the Mid band is Active now too - which means you can cut as well as boost each of the frequency bands.

The most obvious visual difference for the ODR-CS is the G.D.C. mini knob - which stands for Germanium Drive Control. The core ...

So this was truly a full-throttle month - with so much activity this month and a really busy NAMM release schedule. We also had a couple of JHS Faux Hist this month - some real and some not so much.

The month saw my most popular article ever on Instagram - the Iconic Pickup one - with currently 17.6K likes - still growing as the number of followers surpassed 8,000. It’s been a really grad graft slowly making my way up that slope - but some of the recent Guitar Elements posts have really ...

I’ve long been a fan of J Rockett / JRAD Pedals - but don’t necessarily have as many as I should in the reference collection. Historically I’ve always been very impressed with their Archer Klone type pedals in particular, and The Dude and derivative Dumble-style pedals. In fact I see J Rockett as a sort of cousin to Greer Amps pedals - where both brands are particularly adept in putting out universally great sounding dynamic overdrives.

To date I have just 4 JRAD pedals - the 3 in the ...

What a magnificent start to the year -  I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong January selection - I could almost stick a pin in it and take the rest of the year off! Several of these slots won’t see much change between now and the end of the year - and so impressive is this latest batch of additions - that I can’t really see what might be improved in order to replace most of those.

I was not expecting to add the Eventide H90 quite so quickly - while the Hologram Microcosm has always ...