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...

DigiTech’s latter sister brand DOD has delivered a number of pedal greats over the years, and since its foundation in 1973 by David Oreste Di Francesco. A lot of people focus on the early editions / 200 Series - while I’ve taken a slightly broader overview here - with the one concession really being the original 250 Overdrive/Preamp. Elsewhere I’ve gone for pretty much the latest viable editions - including the Blue reissue of the 201 Phasor - which also had Grey and Yellow ...

Hot on the heels of the Darkglass ADAM comes another wonderful modern confection of disparate parts - from those creative Japanese fellows at Banana Effects. I’ve still to get in a few of their minis - but his may be even more enticing still.

Actually a fantastic 8-Step Sequencer / Arpeggiator with all kinds of clever tricks up its sleeve - including numerous onboard presets and handy DSP subroutines.

I will give you a general features overview first - as below - which ...

Pigtronix has gained quite a reputation and track record for Mini pedals of late - particularly the trio of Disnortion Micro Fuzzstortion, Octava Analog Octave Fuzz, and Philosopher’s Tone Germanium Gold Compressor. The Class A Clean Boost, regular Philosopher’s Tone Compressor, and Gatekeeper Noise Gate are decent too - but not quite as appealing as the principal Mini Flagship Trio.

The 3 new Mini Pedals are all killer - and would be equally impressive at full-size - while...

And so here is the culmination of everything that happened to the pedal-chain in 2020.

There were quite a few more displacements than I had expected - all told 22 slots changed over this year - including 19 Brand New Pedals for 2020, then 3 slightly older pedals, and some incidentals.

The most significant shift, and the one that caused the most disruption was the arrival of Boss GT-1000 CORE in October. This is often the case when you bring in a big new pedal - and you need to...

So I’ve now completed 5 preliminary shortlists type articles featuring between 9 and 30 or so of the best pedals released in 2020 - in each of the following categories :

• Best New Reverb Workstation Pedals (9)
• Best New Overdrive and Distortion Pedals (29)
• Best New Fuzz Pedals (31)
• Best New Delay and Reverb Pedals (20)
• Best New Modulation, Pitch, and Utility Pedals (28)

I sincerely apologise if I’ve overlooked any here, while I’m not sure they would have necessarily ...

This is the fourth of the preliminary roundups - before I reveal the 25 or so ’Best of the Best of 2020’ - it covers most other pedal genres not yet feature - including in particularly modulation and utility types. Note though that there will be a couple more surprises in the final reckoning!

Unlike the Delay and Reverb category I actually own a few of these, while other outstanding ones are very high on the priority list for next year.

I own 7 of these all-told - ...

This article pulls together Jack White’s 4 key pedal collaborations from the very first Union Tube & Transistor Bumble Buzz Fuzz through to the recent Coppersound Triplegraph. I myself have been intrigued about these along the way - and am still pondering if I still need to add one or two more of these to my own collection / rig.

I already have a limited edition Yellow Plasma Coil, and am in line to get a standard Triplegraph in the new year. I was sort of waiting for the ...

So far there are 8 Themed Modular Cards for the Cooper FX Arcades to date - and each one is really a separate Multi-FX pedal in its own right - within that specific category. As I explore each of the cards in detail, I thought it would be opportune to share my experiences and whatever tips and preferences I picked up along the way.

I was initially in a quandary as to which order to approach these cards in - older series first or more recent ones first? So in the end I decided it would ...