GPX Blog

Most are aware that Boss picked up on Roland’s Guitar Synthesizer expertise and leadership - and that the previous SY-300 model was the best in class for ultra-low-to-zero latency synthesis from direct guitar input. The new SY-1000 model fully lives up to ’Bigger and Better’ with much improved processing capacity and speed, more tones, textures and effects. It expands considerably on the range of its former sibling with 3 different synthesiser engines onboard - Dynamic Synth, ...

I had meant to do this article a lot sooner as Banana Effects have been on my radar for a while - back to a time when they were much more difficult to get a hold of. Nowadays though they’ve struck up a distribution deal with Amazon.com and they are available via Amazon in most countries - all priced at the equivalent of $199 / £189. So price-wise these are definitely smack bang in the middle of boutique territory - yet their diminutive form factor belies a true richness of features....

This is my 3rd re-write from scratch of this article - I keep coming across new details! This was initially inspired by the arrival of Mooer’s E7 series - first represented by the Tone Capture GTR, and now by the very recent 7-Mode/7-Presets E7 Synth pedal which continues that distinctive new enclosure format - which is in someways an evolution from Mooer’s Micro-PreAmps - with the same 5 mini knobs and push-button topology, but here accompanied by 7 Mode/Preset LEDs positioned down...

Subdecay’s latest pedal underlines the wealth of new synth pedals we have had this year - including examples from Boss, EHX, Empress Effects, Keeley Electronics, Parasit Studio, Pigtronix, Red Witch and Source Audio to name a few - as well as a slew of new releases last year. As much as this is the era of glitch effects and granular synthesis and micro loopers, it also has to be said that there are a very significant amount of new guitar synth pedals out there too.

I have had ...

I have covered off a number of my favourite Summer NAMM pedals already - including the Boss 200 range, RC-10R and SY-1, the Fulltone OCD Ge, the REVV G2, the Spaceman Effects Gemini IV, and Walrus Audio Kangra for instance. And there’s a couple more surprise ones I will be posting as dedicated features very soon - so stay alert for those! In the wake of one of the best ever Winter NAMM’s it was clear that the Summer NAMM could never match that degree of innovation - in fact most of ...

So even this close to Summer NAMM - Boss still somehow feels it needs to unveil its further innovations in advance of that key product launch event. And following on from the superb recent debut of the 200 series - we see another 200-style enclosure - albeit for some reason numerically not associate with said series. The RC-10R is the looper I’ve been waiting for. You may recall in my ’Early Summer Pedal-Chain’ overview I mentioned that I was not particularly enamoured with or...

Just over a year ago I did a piece on ’9 Cool Phase Locked Loop Synth Harmonizing Oscillating Fuzz Pedals’ where I focused on the original Schumann PLL and the larger format full-feature/full-range replicas of said pedal. This included the EarthQuaker Devices Data Corrupter - which was on my wishlist for quite a while but I never ended up getting - for reasons which I will explain. There were a couple of pedals I overlooked in that overview - one which had relatively recently been ...

This is the 11th in the Pedal Builders Country Series as such, although I’ve had to cast the net slightly wider as I currently don’t consider there to be enough top-tier / International-level builders in a single country here to satisfy the usual criteria. Brazil and Argentina come fairly close - with Brazil having significantly the most concentrated volume of builders of any Country in that part of the world. Generally Brazil, Argentina and Chile are particularly well represented. ...

This is one of those moments that I feel that my celebrated Pedal-Chain has reached another milestone of ’peak performance’. There are a number of new releases here - and probably all the big ones I was expecting this year - bar the Chase Bliss Audio / Benson Amps Automatone MKII PreAmp - which is due in the Autumn now - and still pending final pricing, but will probably take up the top spot on Slot #14 eventually. Also - my long-awaited Beetronics Swarm Harmonizing PLL Style Fuzz ...

As mentioned in my Danish/Denmark pedals feature I had initially intended to do the Best of Scandinavia, but Denmark has so many internationally known brands I had to separate them out. For the remaining Scandinavian countries Sweden is obviously the strongest here with 6 featured in the Top 9 listing, then 2 Finnish and only 1 Norwegian brand of significant note.

Probably the most significant persona in Scandinavian pedal design / building is Swede Björn Juhl - who has pretty ...