GPX Blog

I’m occasionally chastised by readers for not featuring enough lower cost pedals on this site - which is a somewhat unfair criticism really as I try to be as value-minded as possible - and do genuinely love pedals at all levels - and am ever on the look out for a bargain or two for myself.

Most will already know Tone City as an even more affordable Mooer-style mostly mini pedal operation, while most are not aware that lead engineer / circuit-designer J. Wong used to be at Movall ...

Near the start of this week we saw several leading pedal builder brands go all mysterious on us posting an encircled (B) logo ident accompanied by the hashtag #BLACKEDXOUT on various social media. Many thought this to mean some sort of limited or black edition pedals for the Black Friday ’sales’, while I wrongly guessed it implied a Black Friday Sales boycott.

This afternoon all was revealed when 17 Brands together released all-black stealth-like enclosures for one or a few...

By all accounts a rather fabulous and timely pedal, in a great form factor, yet a couple of things have me a touch peeved from the outset. One fairly minor, while the other is likely a lot more significant. On the minor side - I always get somewhat annoyed when builders are overly opaque about the mechanics of their pedals. Seymour Duncan does not mention what manner of technology generates the tone, while one would guesstimate OpAmp as the likeliest source - I am one of those who likes to know...

So I thought I would combine the Mini Pedal selection with the final overall category roundup featuring my current favourites and forthcoming/future acquisition targets. The above visual may be somewhat convoluted, but it well illustrates the trade off in footprint and practicality/utility you get across the different enclosure form factors.

I’ve stated before that I’ve largely moved away from the larger styles of enclosures in favour of more pedals of a more compact nature...

This is probably the penultimate article in this series for the year - actually I might do another with my own personal favourites from all of these selections. Next up will of course be compact enclosure variants, but here we are at the other end of the scale with the Big Boxes of Metal! A reader asked me why I had not included the Friedman BE-OD Deluxe in the previous category - Horizontal Medium Enclosure - and the fact is that it’s just a touch too large. I have my own system of pedal...

This article follows on from the recent Vertical aspect medium enclosure roundup where I indicated a number of potential acquisition targets. Here we have the same enclosure size but width-ways in orientation - with a key differentiator being the number of pedals here with dual footswitches - where all but two either have a second Channel or additional Boost option.

There are two permanent fixtures of my pedal-chain here - the Empress Heavy and MI Effects Megalith Delta which have ...

In advance of the arrival of the OD-200 I thought it would be good to do an overview of Boss’s own various Drive and Distortion pedals. In my recent ’Yellow Means OverDrive’ feature I covered off all of those particular Boss pedals, so this article is at the other end of the scale of gain - the High Gain and Metal Distortions. I will then follow up with a 3rd article covering those drives and distortions that sit between these and the 9 OverDrive pedals covered already.

 ...

We all knew that the OD-200 was going to be a killer Boost/OverDrive/Distortion pedal - but Boss has managed to surprise those of us who thought we had it figured out. We weren’t initially totally sure how the Parameters and Boost options were going to work - I already really love the versatility and adaptability of my Jackson Audio Broken Arrow - which encompasses 4 Drive Types alongside 4 Boost Types. Yet Boss ups the ante on that somewhat exponentially.

I thought the core of ...

This is a direct follow-up to my Pedal Primary Colour Wheel article where I noted the direct correlation between the colour Red and Marshall-style Drive and Distortion pedals. I named 6 that fitted the bill then, and I’ve found a few more to complete an elegant colour-matched grouping. The post was triggered by the original article, but also my recent acquisition of the Sitek Wuffy Distortion.

Note that these pedals vary between Plexi and JCM-800 styles of drive - some cover more...

This post was sparked off by the recent launch of the Magnetic Effects Zig Zag Dual Stage Overdrive, my relatively recent acquisition of the Aleks K Production Maple Leaf Royal Drive and ThorpyFX Heavy Water Dual Boost pedals, and the hopefully fairly imminent arrival of my on-order Loophole Pedals Grey Matter Overdrive. They got me thinking about other pedals of this type which allow you to blend 2 separate circuits together essentially for more versatility and more complex and richer tones. ...