I would like to start by apologising to those builders who didn’t get a pedal featured in Wednesday’s final 32 Key Guitar Effects Pedal Types article. Know that I hold you all in the highest of esteem - and that said overview is/was simply a somewhat temporary and fleeting snapshot of my current preferences on that day - with a particular emphasis towards versatility and variety delivered by a single pedal. So some pedals are typically more narrowly focused and specialist, while ...

It was only natural that the Compact Format Preferred Versions feature should follow the Mini examples. Again largely inspired by the recent ’12 Degrees’ projects.

Once more I’ve had a change of mind on some of the candidates and the preferred examples are slightly different to those previous references. Obviously new pedals have arisen, and priorities and preferences can shift fairly regularly based on prevailing mood.

That said, most of these are long-term...

So Reverb.com has just announced which limited edition pedal collaborations go on sale today - Tuesday 23rd February - to further celebrate the imminent release of ’The Pedal Movie’. The first two pedals went on sale last November and sold out pretty instantaneously. 1000 of Chase Bliss Audio + Zvex collaboration Bliss Factory Fuzz, and 1000 of Death By Audio + EarthQuaker Devices collaboration Time Shadows Subharmonic Multi-Delay Resonator.

Both pedals were rather original...

This article is in part inspired by my features on ’Mini Pedals State of the Art’, and those various ’12 Degrees’ posts I did at the tail-end of last year. Moreover I have had quite a few readers recently asking me for my preferred recommended mini pedals on various pedal-chain slots.

I last did this sort of exercise 4 years ago - where TC Electronic was kind of the dominant player - covering 8 of those 20 recommendations, with Mooer fairly close with 6 entries...

DigiTech’s latter sister brand DOD has delivered a number of pedal greats over the years, and since its foundation in 1973 by David Oreste Di Francesco. A lot of people focus on the early editions / 200 Series - while I’ve taken a slightly broader overview here - with the one concession really being the original 250 Overdrive/Preamp. Elsewhere I’ve gone for pretty much the latest viable editions - including the Blue reissue of the 201 Phasor - which also had Grey and Yellow ...

Before I get into the meat of the review, I thought it best to put everyone fully in the picture as regards my evolving appreciation for Pettyjohn Electronics. I freely admit I am largely somewhat late to the party as such, in part due to my earlier confusion about parts of the brand’s modus operandi. While I have now of course acquired each of the brand’s most recent ’Core’ series - RAIL Fuzz, ROUS Distortion and ODI Overdrive.

I’ve been aware of the ...

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while - and have long since decided I at least need the Virus Micro Silicon Fuzz Face Pedal hopefully in default Blood Red colourway as pictured. While those pedals go out of stock so quickly that I keep missing my opportunity - but no doubt this will happen before too much longer.

AWOL Pedals has been official since around Mid 2017 - where over the years Aaron has made a variety of different pedals, but has very much settled on specialising ...

I’ve been meaning to do this roundup for a while - where I touch on the most recent Plexi pedal additions. I could have done a larger exercise and included the Borgner La Grange and Seymour Duncan Diamondhead among others - but chose rather to keep things simple with just the latest 6 in consideration.

Those that read my blog regularly will likely know that I already pretty much have a favourite in mind here, but it’s important to do the due diligence and analysis - in ...

And so it begins again! This time punctuated by Virtual NAMM / Believe in Music Week and some certain JA incident.

I will include a mini NAMM roundup here of what some of my favourites were. In the past I’ve done a separate highlights article on the subject - but there really weren’t that many releases this time around to warrant such - in fact I would estimate only around 10% of the volume released in 2020 and 2019.

I will also indicate where I think I’m ...

The new version of the Plimsoul has been housed in the same new type of enclosure as the recent Queen Bee Fuzz which I have and love - including of course top mounted jacks and easier access to the insides. It also seems to have borrowed the 3-way Bass Boost from the Queen Bee - set in its centre.

While the main knobs are exactly the same - they are just differently sized and labelled. We used to have Level, Sustain, Hi-Cut and Stage 2 - but those exact controls correlate with Volume, ...