So hitherto I’ve used my full size and also pico format Attack Decay pedals - for delivering cello-like swells - albeit I believe the AD is monophonic - while this new sweller Swello - is fully polyphonic - and uses the Envelope Effect from the POG 2.

Generally you have a Slow Gear style note bloom / swell device - with some additional controls - and including a 3-position Low Pass Filter push-button.

Controls - 3-way Filter Button : GREEN is Disabled / AMBER is Low Resonance, RED is ...

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...

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 ...

Electro-Harmonix is the only one of the big 3 for which I haven’t done a capsule collection rundown yet - so here it is! Obviously heavily dominated by Big Muffs and fuzzes - mostly JHS Modified, with the Violet Ram’s Head modified by Alchemy Audio - after JHS exited from that arena.

As for all of these reference projects - acquisitions are based on a mix of opportunity, timing, price and condition. And I periodically do sweeps to see if any of my targets can be acquired on beneficial terms...

This year is off to a fantastic start! I’ve picked up 3 pedals so far this year (4 including this Clean!), and I already had a number come in during December - the January board is pretty much done already!

My most recent arrivals are the Origin Effects Deluxe 55 as already reported, and then today (Thursday as of writing) my Hamstead Redwing Analogue Stereo Modulator and Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Wave-Folding Fuzz landed - I will be reporting on both of those next week! Finally, I met...

So this is the big one - all the top performers from the year in one selection.

We’ve already covered :

• 35 Boost & Overdrive Pedal Finalists
• 34 Distortion Pedal Finalists
• 32 Fuzz Pedal Finalists
• 38 Modutility Pedal Finalists
• 25 Delay and Reverb Pedal Finalists

Total Overall Finalist Selection of 164 Pedals!

Distilled down to the final favourites selection, where I own 27 of them, and will try to secure the final missing ones next year :

• Coffee Shop Pedals London Fog Tape Delay -

There’s an incredibly rich mix here of no less than 38 killer Modulations, Utilities and Pitch-Shifters - no one does rundowns quite like me! I always dive in at the deep end of things - and give you maximum expansive scope!

There are several here that I don’t have yet, in fact some hat I’m somewhat unlikely to ever have - for reasons of rig compatibility, size and overall sensibilities, practicalities, and preferences!

These 19 are still to be acquired or eventually overlooked :

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-...