GPX Blog

I’ve actually been meaning to do this post for a while now - I’ve had several requests over the years to do a ’best of’ feature for Catalinbread - with some even wanting one specifically on delays - which actually only number 6 and therefore don’t quite merit a solo outing - although we’ll see. So this at last is that post - taking in the best of new and established, innovative and unique - across the 4 sub-categories - Foundation Overdrives | Delays and ...

It has to be said that Carl Martin - a long-standing Danish pedal-builder of high pro-gear repute - was starting to look somewhat fusty and old-fashioned there for a while. And while some brands would look to simply refresh their graphics and update things in a largely superficial manner - Carl Martin set to designing an entirely new compact enclosure for its Vintage Series of pedals.

The incumbent pedals were in rather uninteresting medium enclosures while the degree of innovation and...

Readers of this blog will already know how much a fan I am of BYOC’s Crown Jewel Multidrive pedal - with its multitude of dials and switches - 4 gain stages in effect and clean blend circuit. I’ve said that this is not only likely the most versatile drive pedal out there currently, but also an essential educational tool for understating how different degrees of voltage, clipping, tone-shaping and Q-control impact on the output signal.

I wasn’t really that much ...

So today Maxon announced its own contribution to the 808 Overdrive 40th Anniversary celebrations - most will know that Maxon OEM’d Ibanez’s original TS808 Tube Screamers and continued making the same after the partnership dissolved - as the OD808. Maxon has delivered a pretty bog-standard looking OD808 bar for an option/mode toggle above the Balance knob, and Robert Keeley’s familiar signature in sharpie fashion across the main facia. In fact only 40 of this exact signed model...

Australia and New Zealand together have a fair few brands of international repute, and I for one certainly have a number of pedals of Australian origin in my collection. Foremost amongst those is Michael Ibrahim’s eponymous MI Audio / MI Effects - from which range past and present - I have 7 to date - with a couple more on the ’nice-to-have’ wishlist. Of the ones I have 2 are permanent features in my pedal-chain - the Super Crunch Box V2 (my Brown Sound pedal of choice) and ...

In the wake of my articles on the Sunn Model T and Harmonic Percolator style pedals - I felt I should round up that series with coverage of another amp-based pedal from within that general ball park and around about that general era. The subject of our focus this time is the slightly less-well known Matamp, which is often associated with Orange Amplifiers and there was certainly crossover at one stage in their history.

Matamp’s story goes back to the post-war years of the late 40...

OK so let’s set the record straight right away - these are not vintage pedals - but rather vintage circuit replicas housed in modern compact enclosures which have in turn been deliberately aged and relicked! So these are really mixed media concoctions of sorts but very successful executions all round actually.

The Breakdown is based on the much larger 1968 wah/rocker style Univox UD50 Uni-Drive pedal which had two knobs - Pedal Range and Input Level to go with the variable gain ...

As part of its Custom Shop offering Fulltone will be producing limited quantities of a custom OCD pedal in a sort of duotone Teal Metallic enclosure. The core OCD makes use of 2 Mosfets as hard clippers alongside a single Germanium Diode. While the limited edition Ge / Germanium version adds a second Germanium Diode for more tube-like feel and dynamics. The OCD famously routes its hardclippers to Vref rather than ground - as is common to most overdrives - this give the OCD those fantastic ...

I’ve been hooked on REVV Pedals since the very start - pre-ordering both the G3 and then G4 direct from Canada. And they both went straight into my pedal-chain and have mostly stayed there since bar some fairly minor short-term rotations. Having settled on the Menatone The King for my main Crunch / Plexi tones I thought I wouldn’t likely need the very recently announced G2 Crunchy Drive.

Yet as is often the case - and after experiencing the That Pedal Show TGU19 episode on ...

In line with its ongoing enclosure format innovations and taking significant influence from the recent 500 series - Boss replaces the dual latching-plate format of its 20 Series Twin Pedal line with a much more compact and sleeker medium vertical enclosure 200 Series Design - with 4 pedals due to launch in September, and all priced at £219 as of the moment:

• DD-200 12 Mode Digital Delay Stereo Workstation - £219
• EQ-200 10 Band Dual Channel Stereo Graphic Equalizer - £219