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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

I own a fairly significant number of Reverb Pedals - where I’m mostly focused on Workstation style Pedals with multiple algorithms. I normally have at least 2 Reverbs on the board - a Primary Multi-Verb, and a Secondary more Specialist Verb. Occasionally I have a 3rd Reverb - which can be another Stereo Secondary, or more likely a Mono Tertiary. In fact I can have as many as 4 Reverbs on the board - as the Eventide H90 is always there too!

You can see from my various Pedal-Chain posts that ...

The Oceans Abyss takes over from the Oceans 12 as EHX’s flagship Reverb Workstation. The Oceans 12 has 12 Core Reverb Voicings - including Echo and Mod - which are replaced on this more potent model by numerous additional Delay and Modulation Effects options - where you can create your own signal path using all those effects.

So this pedal is more like the Meris Mercury X and Strymon NightSky - in being a Sound Design device focused on Reverb - but with a number of additional extras in the ...

So January 2025 sees a momentous milestone - where we have the peak possible number of pedals in the chain - which now numbers no less than 52 Pedals. It’s an incredibly tight squeeze - and all the available space is now fully used up.

I’ve re-flowed the main visual - where I used to try to have a fixed format arrangement - but now have re-numbered the slots entirely corresponding to the number and order of those pedals. Last January I noted that I was going to switch out my 2 Friedman ...

When I first clocked this - it immediately brought to mind my recently acquired AC Noises Ricorda Granualar Reverb, amd while there is some degree of overlap between the two - each device is also very distinctive in its own way. Where the QI Etherealizer adds Chorus, and Parallel as well as Series Routing.

It’s a device that perfectly covers Yvette’s key tones in the one device.

Controls - MIX } Mix / Dry (Series / Parallel), Grain, Delay, Chorus; MAIN } Mix / Dry (Series / Parallel), ...

I do like my Reverbs, and have always been intrigued by the more sci-fi sounding variants. The Ricorda was originally down on my ’nice-to-have’ list, until I lucked out with my Chase Bliss Mystery Box - and got one as a bonus pedal!

Essentially you have a huge spatial ambient reverb with a smart granular delay, and then Freeze and Loop functions via the left Footswitch.

I had not fully appreciated the scope of capabilities when I did my original write-up. While this is every way a ...

I obviously just recently won me an AC Noises Ricorda Retro Series Reverb as a Chase Bliss Mystery Box Bonus Pedal - so the first iteration I had to make on this article was to update the standard Blue Ricorda image to the limited colourway edition that I was gifted by my Mystery Box. This selection is typically the one where I own the least proportion of pedals featured, in fact in this case it’s easier to list the few that I own here :

• AC Noices Ricorda Stereo Granular Reverb + Freeze /