I’ve been a huge fan of Roadie Automatic Guitar Tuners since I got back into guitar in 2016 - following the deaths of my idols Bowie and Prince. The Roadie 1 quickly became my tuner of choice early days - and just a year later for me there was the even better Roadie 2. I really like the pistol grip of the first two Roadie editions - kind of reminiscent of mini drills in a way. The ergonomics of the Roadie 2 is pretty spot on - while it could of course do with a better, bigger, and more detailed...

I kept coming across 2 micro tuners - the similar looking Swiff Audio C20 and RockStock Nano Tuner. In fact I recently picked up the C20 from Thomann - which looks a little more refined than the Nano Tuner - with an additional aluminium collar surrounding the footswitch mechanism.

I felt that I should do a rundown of the smallest tuner pedals out there - which are arranged by height in the visual. I’ve included the dimensions for each pedal [in parenthesis] so you can fully compare and ...

Solar reveals an elegant brushed-finish Chug EQ Boost - featuring 11 controls - 5 of which are dual-concentric.

The Low and Mid Frequency Bands are fully Parametric - with Highs being Semi-Parametric, and featuring additional Output Level, Input Level and High Pass Filter / Shelving controls.

Controls : Q Bandwidth [Low Frequency], Q Bandwidth [Mid Frequency], High Level [High Frequency], Low Level [Output Level], Mid Level, High Pass Shelving [Input Level].

Had I not the Empress ...

So this has been on the cards for a while, in fact I needed to get an update of both boards featured here, as the first version I had was almost a year ago now. The idea was always to feature reader’s pedalboards - which had been somewhat noticeably / significantly inspired by this very site.

And I’m delighted that Long-term GPX friend and pedal fan Cyril Demaegd, board game designer / developer (founder of Ystari Games) and touring musician, has been somewhat ’Inspired by GPX’ since December of...

This is truly quite a feat of engineering, and it’s all so beautifully executed too. That said Boss’s Katana : Go had a useful tiny screen, and Bluetooth connectivity to its app - which this devices could really have benefitted from. I’ve long grown tired of having to USB-cable-connect my pedals to a laptop app for updates - it should all really just be bluetooth to an iOS or Android mobile phone app by now.

In any case, the operation of this device could not be easier - you first of course...

So scanning through this month it seems to have been mostly about Guitar / Pedal Shows, Japanese Pedals, and Pedals Delayed and Missing in the Post!

The Guitar Shows have been pretty fast and furious for March - with two of the most significant ones of the year, along with a fledgling grassroots one : The Guitar Show (Cranmore Park - Birmingham / Shirley), London Synth & Pedal Expo (Studio 9294, Hackney Wick, London), The Alternative Guitar Show (The Fighting Cocks, Kingston).

I of ...

The Modutility roundup combines Modulation, Utility and Pitch type pedals - it also includes Multi-FX and Multi-Modulation pedals of course. Some years this selection is relatively sparse - while this year it’s totally chock-a-block! In fact it was a struggle to whittle the Longlist down - and inevitably some pedals I wanted to feature did not make the cut - including the Endorphin.es Ghost Pedal Multi-FX and Subdecay Prometheus 3 Dual Super Filter.

I still feel that this selection of 26 is...

The big news is of course the the Lithium-Ion Rechargeable battery which uses the now universal USB-C cable format. We can now change the screen to 8 different HUES of LED (as pictured), there are also 65 Sweetened tunings aboard vs the 50 of the previous HD model, and we have a slightly different transposition range (-6 to +5 whereas the StroboClip HD has -4 to + 7 and C,F,Bb, Eb Keys). These changes were brought in to bring the StroboClip into line with the other StroboStomp pedals - all now ...

This exercise has totally underlined just how much of a tone genius Andy Timmons is. His pedals are selected incredibly carefully and deliberately - and don’t just have that certain glorious sound about them - but beautiful dynamics, harmonics, smart guitar volume gain clean-up and an abundance of musicality. 

Andy wrings magic out of each and everyone of these pedals - and his Halo Dual Echo algorithm / preset is amazing - and can sit under anything and make it sound at least 50% percent ...