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 - ...

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 ...

The VibroVerb is essentially a massively extended range reboot of the Colortone Roundhouse pedal - but with some very significant changes.

As its heart - this is a Stereo LFO Multi-Modulator with markedly expanded control parameters - across 2 layers of operation. The 3 core waveforms remain - Square, Triangle, Sine - where we also have further shaping of the Sine Wave (’Q’) via secondary setting on the Speed knob.

We have 3 exquisite Modes here - Optical Tremolo, Harmonic Tremolo, and ...

My Strymon journey started in December of 2016 - of course with the ’Stryfecta’ of BigSky, Mobius, and TimeLine. That was my first foray into Strymon, as well as the first of my Workstation pedal types - where I’ve favoured Stereo BIG-BOX solutions for Modulation, Delay and Reverb ever since. You can see the Stryfecta was a very significant part of my first official pedal-chain arrangement - first shared in April of 2017 - as below!

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 ...

July was a tough month for me! Plenty going on for sure - and I had a particularly traumatic Sunday a couple of weeks back - when I was unable to get any sound out of my pedal-chain for the best part of that day. At the end of that I retired incredibly frustrated and kind of distraught - which zapped whatever remaining energy I had - and left me entirely shattered.

After a night’s sleep - I turned up  a little sharper on the following day - and was able to fairly quickly and systematically ...

The third in the Bloom Infinity Series - the Sprout 9-Mode Modulation - delivers all the essential modulations (+ Ring Mod!), featuring most of the usual suspects - 2 styles of Chorus, Vibe (Uni-), Flanger, Envelope Filter, Phaser, Rotary and Tremolo - with the somewhat acquired-taste Ring Mod appropriately at the end.

2 of my favourite Modulation types are the Roland / Boss Dimension, and the Harmonic Tremolo (esp. JAM Pedals Harmonious Monk) - neither of which appears here. You do have a ...

Boss’s larger and now long since discontinued dual-foot-pad RT-20 was a well-loved bona fide classic - with that incredibly visual circulating LED display. That larger pedal was many players’ favourite Leslie / Rotary Speaker Effect. And Boss has now brought that effect back - and better and more practical than ever - and with all the essentials in tow - including a brilliant versions of the circulating LED display!

Readers will know that I’ve long been seeking the perfect Leslie / Rotary ...

If you’re getting something of a déjà-vu here - it’s because the Klowra Team at one stage worked for Alabs Audio - which launched the Adam Adventures Series a couple of years ago - as covered extensively on this site.

There was a parting of ways inside Alabs, something of a clash of conscience, where my main contacts - including my good friend Jinbo Hui split away to form their own company - now registered in China. The Alabs management had a different direction in mind - so the core active...