GPX Blog

This article was sparked by my coming across a number of demos of the Browne Amplification Protein Drive dual overdrive which seems to be somewhat doing the rounds currently. I though it a fairly recent introduction in the scale of things, but was surprised to find that it’s really been around for a while.

In fact its earliest appearance goes back to 2015, which seemingly corresponds to the same year that the King Tone Duellist and VS Audio Royal Flush first materialised. And ...

I periodically do these category round-ups, typically triggered by a pedal launch or two, as is the case in this instance. This is my own preferred Overdrive selection - intentionally as broad as possible - with actually 12 categories of overdrives, but could still be an even longer listing, and I’ve had to make some very difficult choices for the final selection even though it is relatively numerous at 28 strong. I would have liked to have included one from my so called ’Harmonic ...

I had hoped to do regular monthly updates on how the various NAMM-announced pedal releases and other newer additions were impacting my own pedal-chain choices. Yet we all know how this year has gone - obviously impacted by numerous delays brought on by the Social Distancing required to counter the spread of Coronavirus / Covid-19.

Because of parts supply and resourcing issues, most 2020 NAMM pedals have been delayed to some degree. When there is uncertainty as to when the next ...

If you’re anything like me, you can’t have failed to have noticed that there are a number of fairly similar pedals doing the rounds as such - which I keep bumping into. I will confess that I wasn’t initially particularly familiar with the Ibanez Mostortion - MOSFET Distortion, but have become increasingly more so of late. And I have really grown to love that harmonic chewy character.

The original MS10 Mostortion was part of the celebrated Ibanez 10 Series - also known...

Usually I limit these roundups to the 9 best from each brand - but I felt that the visual for that was a little gappy because of the different enclosure sizes! So in an effort to balance out the visual better I upped the limit to 11 - which allowed my to do a couple more interesting things with the listing.

These listings are based on a mix of my own personal favourites and more widely considered best pedal ambassadors for those ranges. For a lot of selections here there was an either ...

It’s only a short while since Brian released his first V1 batch of Vertical edition Menatone Fish Factory pedals - in fact I featured such in a January 21st post. I obviously was interested in acquiring one - but in the haze of NAMM - and by the time I completed my show coverage and got to thinking about which of those pedals I wanted - batch 1 was all but sold out. In fact the last one of that batch sold out just as Brian was reading my requisition note!

In any case we got to ...

Robert Keeley has of course modified more than these three Boss pedals - yet I personally feel that these are the ones really worth having. I have featured both the Keeley Freak Fuzz Modded BD-2 Blues Driver and Twilight Zone Modded MT-2 Metal Zone on this site several times before. In fact the Freak Fuzz Blues Driver is my favourite overdrive pedal of all time! It cleans up wonderfully with your guitar volume control - much in the same way as a Fuzz Face, and it has that same sort of boost ...

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 ...