The new Encounter Delay + Reverb which was teased all the way back at NAMM at the start of the year - features the exact same enclosure configuration as the Collder. It can largely be considered in terms of a Collider reboot - but with a more adventurous mix of algorithms.

In some ways this is ’old tech’ as the pedal somewhat inexplicably is still using Mini USB, and not the long-standing international standard of USB-C!

The control topology is nigh identical - with the only key ...

My Strymon journey started in December of 2016 - of course with the ’Stryfecta’ of BigSky, Mobius, and TimeLine. That was my first foray into Strymon, as well as the first of my Workstation pedal types - where I’ve favoured Stereo BIG-BOX solutions for Modulation, Delay and Reverb ever since. You can see the Stryfecta was a very significant part of my first official pedal-chain arrangement - first shared in April of 2017 - as below!

So, in a similar fashion to the Limbo I just recently reviewed - I have a default flavour that I fall back to most of the time - which is of course Tape - and handily the first on the dial. And then at the other end you have the more unusual and otherworldly flavours - including Granule, Crystal, Sweeper and Mod. It also has the great sounding Reverse and Swell Algorithms - a really well rounded set of algorithms for sure - with all the obvious ones in the mix really.

I’ve had to update ...

June was influenced by a few key events. Obviously the Leeds Pedal Show had a massive impact on me - and I picked up 9 pedals at that show - all excellent, and later picked up a Hudson Electronics AP-II Broadcast. So the reach of the Leeds Show has been massive - particularly the brace from Emmergy FX and SoundLad Liverpool. Then also my visit to good friends Hello Sailor Joe and Glyn - which resulted in a further brace of superior pedals, all featured on the blog this month.

If you’re getting something of a déjà-vu here - it’s because the Klowra Team at one stage worked for Alabs Audio - which launched the Adam Adventures Series a couple of years ago - as covered extensively on this site.

There was a parting of ways inside Alabs, something of a clash of conscience, where my main contacts - including my good friend Jinbo Hui split away to form their own company - now registered in China. The Alabs management had a different direction in mind - so the core active...

I’m a huge fan of the power and prowess of the Polyend Step Drum Machine - which I’ve owned for a few months now. Polyend is obviously on something of a roll at the moment - with its newest product coming out so hot on the heels of the Step release.

There’s only an ’Effects List’ so far - which I’ve transcribed into the visual and below - and without the Manual I can’t fully gauge exactly what we have here.

In essence we seem to have a library of 125 stereo effects which can be assigned...

So this is the big one - all the top performers from the year in one selection.

We’ve already covered :

• 35 Boost & Overdrive Pedal Finalists
• 34 Distortion Pedal Finalists
• 32 Fuzz Pedal Finalists
• 38 Modutility Pedal Finalists
• 25 Delay and Reverb Pedal Finalists

Total Overall Finalist Selection of 164 Pedals!

Distilled down to the final favourites selection, where I own 27 of them, and will try to secure the final missing ones next year :

• Coffee Shop Pedals London Fog Tape Delay -

I obviously just recently won me an AC Noises Ricorda Retro Series Reverb as a Chase Bliss Mystery Box Bonus Pedal - so the first iteration I had to make on this article was to update the standard Blue Ricorda image to the limited colourway edition that I was gifted by my Mystery Box. This selection is typically the one where I own the least proportion of pedals featured, in fact in this case it’s easier to list the few that I own here :

• AC Noices Ricorda Stereo Granular Reverb + Freeze /

I was one of the early movers on the Zoia - all the way back in 2019, it’s incredible really that 10,000 units of this pedal have been sold to-date. Right from the start I called it out as more of a tabletop device - and one more at home with modular synth types really.

For the average guitarist - the control interface is ever somewhat clunky, and doesn’t really allow fluid tweaking on the fly like we’re used to - as you only have a singular rotary encoder. And moreover no Bluetooth ...