This post is in honour of the arrival of my two latest Walrus Audio Overdrives - and I thought I should probably compare and contrast them for your erudition and reading pleasure! 

There is a degree of overlap between the two - particularly when the Mids are not engaged on the Voyager - while generally the 385 is thicker and denser sounding, and with significantly more gain on tap - even on the Lower Gain ’385’ setting (vs 385+). Once you apply the Mids on the Voyager - that totally ...

So I spotted both of these at the same time - where both kind of share an army green colourway - while the Pique is a slightly lighter hue, and the Utility is slightly darker. In any case - because of their similarity of hue - I decided to tackle them together! Think of it as simply a colour-themed association - while both somewhat overlap in certain aspects!

Both of these have a large Boost / Volume knob, and then some extra switches / controls for smartly ramping up / re-shaping or re-...

So my Chug Lite or Little Chug as I prefer to call it - has landed - and of course I thought I should run it up against its original Big Chug sibling! Someone commented on Instagram that they much preferred the larger original variant - when they seemingly hadn’t even tried the new one!

I only make proclamations if and when I have the evidence to back them up. I can say something doesn’t exactly fit my preferences and sensibilities - while I can’t say I prefer one pedal over another without...

It’s fairly well documented by now that I mostly favour Single Compact Enclosures - especially when there’s only a single footswitch present. I do go larger for the occasional pedal - like my various Stereo Workstation Pedals for instance, and my Drum Machine - while by and large I always try to get something in a fully practical and easily slottable form factor.

My rig / board is highly congested, and has been for a while, now with 52 pedals in the signal chain - so in many circumstances I...

In my recent 16 Iconic Amps and Pedal Equivalents article - I chose the Eggnog as my favourite Tweed take to date - while there were always question marks as to whether I would prefer the Deluxe 55 when that landed - just a few days ago.

I’ve compared those two quite extensively over the last few days, and I find it very difficult to pick an out-and-out winner. These are obviously both Extended Range varieties - and they render slightly differently - the Deluxe 55 is slightly denser with ...

So I’ve obviously covered each of these pedals individually and in real depth - so please refer to the earlier articles if you need more details. The purpose of this exercise is to pick out my favourite/s from the series - which is really about comparing those 4 pedals head-to head across my 2 favourite settings for each - pitting one against the other - back and forth - until we have a preferences.

Note - that if you want to skip all the preamble - you can just scroll down to the bottom ...

When I first saw a teaser for the Neural DSP Nano Cortex I thought it was an interesting idea - but one that I wouldn’t necessarily get along with. For instance - because the Source Audio compacts offload a lot of the pedal control to the Neuro App - that has entirely managed to put me off those devices - I love the larger One Series pedals - Ventris, Nemesis, Collider and recent Artifakt - which you can entirely run off the surface controls - but I’ve never really gotten on with any of the ...

Here we have 3 variations on the same theme - each with a slightly different timbre and character. Similar to when you talk about fragrances - where you have ’Flankers’ that are variations on a classic signature scent. And that’s exactly what we have here - the Silver Bee and Blue Bee are ’Flankers’ to the core main Honey Bee. Where the Silver Bee is more Modern, Punchy and Super Tight - it has a slightly harder edged and denser texture, while the Blue Bee is kind of softer around the edges, ...

So in my usual twisted fashion I’ve somewhat fallen down a rabbit hole of Mini Pedals these days. This project was sparked off by the recent Andertons Ultimate Doom Pedal Shoot-out. That has some very oddly selected pedals within its shoot-out considerations, but where the Tone City Matcha Cream Green Russian did extremely well - in fact winning the most rounds - 8 in total of all the pedals trialled.

The eventual winner was kind of immaterial to me, I was all of a sudden intrigued as to ...