And here we have the GRAND FINAL- with all 36 Award Winners from the Group Stages - across all 5 categories!

The first two places have kind of been obvious for a while, where the 3rd / BRONZE position was actually the hardest to decide on - it was between the eventual recipient - the Tubesteader Gainlord, Boss’s XS-100 Poly Shifter, Blue FX Devices Fuzz Fields and Gamechanger’s Motor Synth - all of whom would have been worthy runners-up - while in the end I went for the one that overall ...

In many ways this is the most straightforward category with singular award nominees - GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE.

It’s the second smallest category after Distortions - and the one where I own the least number of pedals in proportion to the whole - just 10 out of these 26.

The order pretty much set itself - with the Cornerstone Nucleo being the clear winner from the start. I’m so impressed with every aspect of that pedal - it’s a perfect Trifecta of Design, Feaures and Playability - pretty ...

August turned out a little bit different than expected. Not so many releases - as expected - but really busy regardless - with a number of Marquee Events and Articles throughout the month. With the king of the crop being the Extended Capacitor Primer - to which I’ve just added a further section on Capacitor Lifespan. Obviously I hit 15,000 followers on Instagram - which is a significant achievement - a really killer month all-round with some big articles - meaning I’m a little bit burned out ...

3 elements inform this particular curated selection of pedals. Firstly these are all distinctive and striking designs of pedals - and some of these are absolutely at the top of that form. Also these all have unique proprietary designs of knobs exclusive to those brands, and finally all 9 of these are from my own Pedals Reference Collection!

Ever since I published my ’101 Pedal Knobs’ article back in 2019 (pictured below) I have been championing the creation of unique knobs for each brand - ...

I own a fairly significant number of Reverb Pedals - where I’m mostly focused on Workstation style Pedals with multiple algorithms. I normally have at least 2 Reverbs on the board - a Primary Multi-Verb, and a Secondary more Specialist Verb. Occasionally I have a 3rd Reverb - which can be another Stereo Secondary, or more likely a Mono Tertiary. In fact I can have as many as 4 Reverbs on the board - as the Eventide H90 is always there too!

You can see from my various Pedal-Chain posts that ...

As with all Phase 3 Evolutions - this Imperivm is a significantly more attractive pedal - while it does drop the Mids switch we had on the previous version which came out at the end of 2022. The new Imperivm is perfectly aesthetically balanced - and Emilio further underlines his position as creator of the most consistently eye-candy pedals. Of his previous editions I always felt that the Imperivm was the most striking - but this new version goes way beyond that.

I wonder if we get an ...

33 slots updated this year - #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9a, #9b, #10, #11, #12, #15a, #15b, #15c, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #22a, #22b, #23, #24, #25, #26, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #36, #38, and #41.

There’s been a fair amount of re-routing and re-organising this year - which you should be able to pick via the pattern of changes. The introduction of the stereo Poly Amplitude introduced the biggest change to the board order - to get th most out of that format!

I try to limit acquisitions /...

There are 32 Finalists in the Fuzz Category, where I own all but 3 :

• 29 Pedals Toki Overdrive / Fuzz
• Cachalote 214 Fuzz
• Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Waveshaper Fuzz

The Finalists

• 29 Pedals Toki Fuzz Driver - $269
• Beetronics FX Tuna Fuzz - $99
• Beetronics FX Whoctahell V2 Low Octave Beeast Babee Edition - $149
• Cachalote Audio 214 Fuzz - R$1418 / $235
• Cornerstone Nero Dumble-Fuzz - €299 | $299
• Danelectro Nichols 1966 Liverpool Fuzz Tone - $199
• Decibelics Reverend V2 Mini

It’s that time of year when I pick out my personal favourite pedals in each category - starting with the Boost and Overdrive ones. I weigh up each candidate on the basis of my own experiences, preferences and sensibilities - and include pedals also that I intended to get but did not quite yet around to acquiring during the year of release!

For this selection I personally own all but these 8 :

• Aleks K Production Honey Moon Sweet Overdrive V3
• Bleak District Slate Discrete Gemanium