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 - ...

So I’ve had my eye on Ghost Note Audio for a while - where the main principal seems to be of Icelandic descent - his name - Valdemar Erlingsson is very Icelandic, and I see he’s been educated at the University of Iceland. Valdemar is usually written ’Valdimar’ but both are valid.

In any case - Valdemar has been delivering some killer pedals to-date - mostly of the larger preamp pedal variety - and all those are analog of course. I love how some of those sound - but consider them to be ...

Kinotone’s Jaak Jenson is proving to be one of the finest sound engineers of his generation - with a trio now of killer unique pedals.

I wasn’t sure how I would deploy the Ribbons in my chain - so that one’s still on the ’maybe’ list - lots of my friends really love it, and use it for all kinds of things - while I’m still seeking a proper connection there.

I did get the Sparks Harmonic Processor - or Stereo Overdrive + State Variable Filter + Wavefolder. I mostly got that one because of...

Another super busy month - where the lack of a holiday is really starting to impact my wellbeing - as I’m about as shattered and burned out as is possible without going entirely into meltdown - I’m teetering on the edge!

Here follow the highlights of the month - which I normally try to limit to around 10 elements - but stand at 12 for September. No show or onside attendances this month - while plenty of other activities - and some killer releases of course!

• Jo Quail @ the Roland Store,

Over two years in the making, Boss has evolved pitch-shifting to a more pristine clear and precise glitch-free style of Polyphonic Pitch-Shifting. Most previous efforts deliver a somewhat ’effected’ signal - where unwanted artificial and additional artefacts are typically added into the mix. This new generation of XS Polyphonic Pitch-Shifters gives you the most precise pitch-shifting experience to-date.

These devices have very much been optimised for high-gain drop-tuning players - who have...

I have long admired Gamechanger Audio - they are proper pioneers of the scene, while not all their pedals have been practically usable for me for a variety reasons - but mostly to do with size. The one pedal I have to-date is the limited yellow edition of Jack White’s Plasma Coils Distortion / Fuzzstortion - which sounds amazing - and runs just a little over-sized - while by a country mile the smallest of the Gamechanger pedals so far. Most of the Gamechanger pedals are just way too big to be ...

This reminds me a little of Boss’s OC-5 - which has a similar feature where you can split off just the bottom strings for Octaver action - while the upper strings remain unaffected. The Dig Deep does a similar thing - with a few more parameters and features, and with 3 Presets onboard.

Controls - Dry [-1 Oct], Sub Mix [-2 Oct], Low Pass [High Pass], Ctrl 1 [Ctrl 2], Split (Split output across Out and Sub Out, [Ctrl III] / [Delete], Shift [Save], Wave (Wave Form) [Ctrl IV] [Scroll], Range [...

August turned out a little bit different than expected. Not so many releases - as expected - but really busy regardless - with a number of Marquee Events and Articles throughout the month. With the king of the crop being the Extended Capacitor Primer - to which I’ve just added a further section on Capacitor Lifespan. Obviously I hit 15,000 followers on Instagram - which is a significant achievement - a really killer month all-round with some big articles - meaning I’m a little bit burned out ...

So Boss delivers its first compact Multi-FX pedal - with all those early classic Boss Pedals onboard. This is obviously fairly similar to TC Electronic’s Plethora X1 from the tail end of last year - which had 14 effects at launch but has added a few more since - compared to Boss’s 8+8 at launch - where 8 Effects are onboard by default - and once you register your pedal on the dedicated Effects Loader App - you can access 8 more in that App (which requires a Roland Cloud Account) - which App can...