Where the Birmingham Show was a little sprawling and chaotic for me, I very much felt more at home at the Studio 9294 venue for this year’s London Synth and Pedal Expo. As Media Partner for the show, the second year in a row, I was of course in for the entirety of both the day, and actually in very early in particular on the Sunday.
I thoroughly enjoyed the two days -I love having the #90 Bar & Kitchen next door - for some very decent lunches - superb burger on the first day, and Sunday...
Cornerstone reached out to its community a while back to ask what its customers wanted it to make next. And the overwhelming response was that they wanted a Cornerstone Klon + Blues Breaker Combo.
This is by no means a unique combination and there are already several pedals that fit that profile - the Keeley D&M Drive, Ceriatone Horse Breaker, Nordvang ’83 Drive, and NUX Queen of Tone to name a few.
Of course Cornerstone have a reputation for doing things slightly differently and ...
I’d like to start by saying that I’m truly proud to have been a Media Partner for this Inaugural Synth and Pedal Expo. It was a superb event - really well attended, and paves the way for an even bigger follow-up - likely taking place over two days next time.
This is the first time I’ve met Stompbox Exhibit Organiser and Delicious Audio Auteur Paolo De Gregorio face-to-face. We’ve had a long-term friendly correspondence and association and greeted each other as long-lost friends. Paolo has ...
With me being a pedal aficionado first and foremost - that’s obviously my main area of focus for this imminent show and the above pedal brand visual - while there is an equal amount of killer Synth brands present too - as listed below.
This London Synth & Pedal Expo is my good friend Paolo De Gregorio’s first UK Event - who always has a fantastic multi-brand Stompbox Exhibit Booth at the NAMM Shows - and has organised a series of events for several years now throughout the North ...
With me being a pedal aficionado first and foremost - that’s obviously my main area of focus for this imminent show and the above pedal brand visual - while there is an equal amount of killer Synth brands present too - as listed below.
This London Synth & Pedal Expo is my good friend Paolo De Gregorio’s first UK Event - who always has a fantastic multi-brand Stompbox Exhibit Booth at the NAMM Shows - and has organised a series of events for several years now throughout the North ...
Another healthy selection - Modutility covering Modulation, Pitch and Utility pedal categories - for one of the strongest selection to date. Some of the pedals here are truly stellar, and I have a little over half here already in the collection.
I’m unlikely to ever get all the pedals featured here, but there are several already earmarked for acquisition in 2023 - with the Eventide H90 at the top of that list.
The ones I don’t yet own, or may never own even - include :
We’ve known about this for a while, so the recent retirement of the much-loved Gladio Double Preamp wasn’t really a surprise. The plan has been for a while to combine the Antique Classic Drive with the Compact Single Channel variant of Gladio.
Controls - ANTIQUE (TS808) } Tone, Presence, Mids : TS808 / Cut, Comp : More / Less, Volume, Gain, Antique Footswitch, UNIVERSAL } Order : G > A / G < A, GLADIO (Dumble) } Tone, Clean, Comp : More / Less, Volume, Gain, Gladio Footswitch.
The...
So the recent launch of Origin Effects’ Halcyon enhanced TS808 type screamer prompted me to refresh my memory on what the competition to that was - and if the Halcyon was quite as appealing as it appeared to be. So I’ve trawled through all my usual resources, including my own memory banks - and come up with this list of 28 suitable candidates.
This list is specifically on enhanced / evolved Compact enclosure Tube Screamer types - so I exclude hybrids - such as Matthews Effects The Broker (...
I’ve always had a soft spot for Uni-Vibes - which category seems to be having something of a renaissance these days - with around a dozen or so new varieties having been released over the last couple of years. A pet peeve of mine is that a lot of those uni-vibes are in over-sized vintage-style enclosures - which simply aren’t practical, and they largely keep to the same specs and feature-set as the very original Shin-ei varieties.
While there are a number of more progressive uni-vibes out ...
I had been meaning to do this exercise for quite some time - and have had a number of readers chasing me up about it - since my last Dumble Style Pedal overview was way back in February of 2019, and where I listed my then 9 favourite candidates - including three that I owned. This time around I’ve thrown 18 hats into the ring or twice as many as the last roundup.
The delay occurred in part because I was waiting for my friend Brian Mena to officially launch his V2 Dumbstruck pedal - which ...