I have long been a fan of the highly convivial Paul Gilbert - with his Racer X Scarified fretboard workout being a particular favourite of mine. Paul is one of the most naturally gifted players out there and can pretty much play anything in any style. He’s a big fan of the Beatles and can play near enough their whole back catalog off the cuff.

There’s certainly plenty to admire about Paul - a lifetime Ibanez Artist with a few signature guitars and pedals to his name. What I...

It was about time I turned my attentions towards Boss’s excellent individual Modulations, and which of those I deem perennial classics which appeal to me the most.

Boss’s parent company Roland famously created the Chorus Effect back in 1975 for its then revolutionary solid state JC-120 Jazz Chorus Combo Amp. That same effect was then evolved to become a stand-alone stompbox - first in 1976’s Boss CE-1 Chorus (Chorus Ensemble). Later derivations included the Roland SDD...

May turned out to be another pretty busy month as far as new releases and the overall collection is concerned. I personally acquired around 20 or so new pedals - with some further acquisitions not having landed yet.

Obviously a fair amount of new Overdrives and Phasers in particular - while May covered most of the key pedal categories in one way or another. And most of the pedal-chain additions for the month have been reviewed or touched on in some way previously - with the exception ...

I knew the ’These Go To 11’ website long before I was introduced to owner / founder Sebastian Nylund. It was the core reference for me for brands like BJFe and DanDrive and several more rarer boutique brands - and I have always admired Sebastian’s smart curation and selection process - and often used that in my own pedal discovery process.

These Go To 11 is an incredibly eclectic, but selective mix too of both mainstream and boutique pedal brands. It’s not ...

April has been another pretty formidable month - and at last I have the CopperSound Triplegraph in my hands - which presented some challenges in being accommodated within the rig. I’ve had to significantly adjust and rejig various elements and areas - including of course the format of the above reference visual.

This indicates the physical position of the Triplegraph at position #14 in terms of physical pedal placement - where it sits just before the CBA Automatone Preamp, while ...

Vitalli Bobrow has been incredibly prolific over this year with a near dozen new varieties of pedals of all genres. I have acquired 4 of his in fairly rapid succession - starting with his evolved DS-1, then the much celebrated dual-opamp Bat Cold War Rat, then Bloom Expandora Clone, and currently his new Analog Chorus - all excellent. I am in line to get his Taras Bulba MKII Fuzz next, and then further evolved DS-1 circuit - which builds on the version I already have - in short plenty happening...

I’ve been onboard the Tom Majeski train only properly since the Chase Bliss Audio Generation Loss Edition from October 2019. I had been aware of Tom for a while including in particular the Generation Loss, Outward and Moment Machine - in fact I came very close to acquiring the Moment Machine at one stage, before deciding that the Meris Hedra was probably better for my needs - and quite specifically in terms of form factor and pedal-chain fit!

The CBA Generation Loss was a real ...

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...

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...