GPX Blog

Of all the pedal brands I collect - I seem to have ended up with significantly more Boss than anything else - with currently 27 Boss Pedals all told. And while it’s not always the case that Boss has the most pedals represented in my active pedal-chain - it just so happens that right now my active Boss pedals number 7 - as follows per pedal-chain order:

• SY-1 Synthesizer
• BD-2 Blues Driver Keeley Freak Fuzz + Phat Mod
• OD-200 Hybrid Overdrive
• NS-2 Noise Suppressor Alchemy Audio Modded

This is one of the more clandestine pedals from the recent NAMM Show where Hamstead weirdly kept this secret for an extended duration - I could sort of pick out the name from a couple of NAMM footage videos, and there was a teaser image which revealed all but the first knob. Several people guessed it would be a compressor, and they were partially right.

In fact it’s functionally really more of an advanced 3-Band EQ with sort of Parametric Mids via 3-way frequency-selector toggle ...

I’ve already largely decided what new pedals I will be targeting this year (that I know of!) - following on from the various reveals and announcements made over the last week, and other projects I’m aware of and various themes I will be pursuing in 2020.

First of all to explain the above visual - this features and extrapolation of my current pedal-chain - with the NAMM legend in front of various new / newish pedals - Green means already acquired - or at least already ...

So despite the perilous state of the world, the first NAMM of the new decade actually turned out to be pretty stellar. I had thought that last year’s exceptional show might end up as the all-time high water mark - but this one turned out just as many pleasant surprises.

Slightly different to last year there were a more significant number of pedals announced and launched in advance of the show - while a lot of pedals at the show had very little by way of collateral and some are ...

I’ve been a huge fan of the Sinvertek ’5’ series distortion pedals - owning all three in succession - the No.5 Distortion, the N5 Drive and now the N5 Drive Plus - in all its 7-knobs and 5-toggle-switches glory. This was actually my last pedal to arrive last year - in that it arrived just before Christmas. I had been chasing it since its June Summer NAMM announcement - but it wasn’t released until December of last year.

I’ve been patiently waiting for some...

I’m delighted that Brian Mena has finally seen fit to release a Vertical edition of his flagship Fish Factory Combination pedal - which brings together his two legendary overdrive - the Red Snapper and Blue Collar.

New in this version also is the series direction toggle-switch so you place each of the overdrives first in the sequence. I personally have never been a fan of the horizontal compact enclosure pedals - so beloved by Zvex Effects in particular - so I was always going to...

I have long been a fan of Alexander’s slightly quirky NEO Series of pedals - with 4 onboard presets, up to 6 modes and secondary / alt functions on every knob - all in handy dual-footswitch compact enclosures. To-date I have only acquired overdrives and the La Calavera Phaser - but there are many more Alexander Pedals on my wishlist and likely at least a couple more candidates here.

The big release is the Superball Kinetic Modulator - a sort of modulated delay - which for one of ...

Catalinbread’s new pedals for NAMM are a highly versatile / tweakable fuzz and sort of mini version of the Belle Epoch Pre. The Giygas Fuzz benefits from Tilt EQ, Mids, Dry Blend, Loud (Volume) and Fuzz Settings - where the EQ and Mids dials are both centre-detented on 900Hz for suitable strident and cutting / aggressive fuzz. The Blend control helps temper the Fuzz and bring in some of the Dry signal for ambience or damping impact - all in all a great-sounding extended-range fuzz. The ...

Mythos’s two new pedals are pretty distinctive and are very much rooted in close collaboration with the artists they were made for. The first pictured (upper) is RJ’s ’Susmaryosep!’ Which is essentially an Herculean V2 Overdrive (808) variety in the centre flanked by single-slider controlled Echo and Boost - each of which has its own footswitch - so you can use simple Boost, Drive and Slap Echo in any combination - the pedal colourway also sort of matches RJ’s new ...

I caught some early preview snaps of these on Instagram - and have been waiting for a while for better resources to appear yet to no avail. In the end I had to make my own composites from the best reference I could find online as it does not appear Jackson Audio will be releasing proper details during the show. I was able to do decent facsimiles of the Modular Fuzz and Golden Boy - and will do the El Guapo Distortion image/overview separately / additionally later - as and when better references...