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 ...
In many ways this is better than the full-sized StroboStomp HD - which I’ve pictured above in 75th Anniversary Gold LE Edition. Alas no Gold StroboStomp Mini is on the cards - so if you want a Gold edition then it needs to be the above pictured LE.
The StroboStomp Mini has pretty much exactly the same feature set as its larger sibling actually with a few extra features - with the added benefit of the smaller form-factor and top-mounted jacks. From what I’ve been told - the only significant ...
I will start this off by saying that this is mostly an excuse to feature the gorgeous Gold 75th Anniversary Limited Edition of the Peterson StroboStomp Tuner - a pedal which I am never likely to use, but which I would still really quite like to own! I’m not about to sacrifice a whole pedal-chain slot for a tuner! - and where I mostly prefer to use my Roadie 2 Automated Tuning Peg Tuner (more of that later), and my two Headstock Clip-On Tuners - the Peterson StroboClip, and TC Electronic ...
As a long-term user and fan of Eventide’s H9 Max, the H90 Harmonizer has been something we have all been clamouring for - for a very long time. There is much to recommend the H9 - but its on-pedal interface has always been somewhat feeble, and without the superb Bluetooth connected App the pedal wouldn’t really have been particularly usable.
Multitudes of us have been asking for a better and more intuitive interface - with more meaningful screen display. And Eventide have really pulled out ...
Meris may very well have a new champion on the block with its new LVX Modular Delay System. If features an attractive full-colour screen with ’Fractal Bubbles’ interface for building up your own favourite personal delays from an incredibly wide array of parameters and secondary effects, modulations and modifiers!
I would imagine there is something of a learning curve here, and some things at least superficially seem a little clunky - but I imagine that once you get used to this then you ...
NOTE - this article is too large (108 videos) to work properly on Mobile devices - make sure you view on Desktop or Laptop!
This is my largest ever article - and it will unlikely be repeated in this fashion - as this takes so long to compile - and the 108 Pedals / Videos included just take a little too long to load up on the screen. In any case it’s a pretty exhaustive run-down in rough order of preference of my favourite Compact Enclosure Pedals of Each Type.
For a few here there are ...
It was about time I did my roundup of favourite and preferred Mid-Size enclosure pedals. This means we’re covering Medium-Slim, Medium-Tall and Medium-Square enclosures - depending on my prevailing mindset - the Horizontal / Medium-Stout types I often group with ’Large’. For my Pedal-Chain in particular - space is very tight - and I really cannot accommodate anything beyond Medium-Square on those slots.
The thought process is deciding between Compact and Medium box solutions involves your ...