This new King Tone format has turned out to be something of a Marmite project for the brand - with consumers having mixed feelings on this new shape - which I feel owes a lot to the Danelectro Billionaire Series, which in turn surely took its form-factor in part from a computer mouse shape.

King Tone is beset with so many grey and black market fakes of its signature pedals, that these new designs are designed to both enhance the specific pedal performance and experience, but also make it ...

The new format of Blues Power has elicited mixed feeling from the pedal community. A little ’Marmite’ I guess - with some loving the new rounded enclosure style with inset knobs - while others are being far from complementary. It’s kind of reminiscent of some former Danelectro enclosure shapes - while very much its own thing. And those flush inset knobs actually look really cool.

It’s a touch unusual to have the In/Out TS Patch Cable socket stacked on top of each other - but I feel this ...

This episode is a little more esoteric and preferential than most - and involves identifying the most notable and easily recognisable ’Pedal Shapes and Formats’ essentially. Of course there is some subjective preference here - while I will try to explain objectively how I came to this exact 25 pedal selection - some of these are very obvious - others are slightly more idiosyncratic choices - while there are obviously some brands that are particularly good at coming up with memorable enclosure ...

So for the end of year Fuzz selection the only pedal of note that came a little too late to be included in this roundup was the very recent Reeves Electro BlackHatSound Deluxe Wedge - of which only 15 units have been made so far. Markus has promised me I can get copper insides when the next batch comes around - so I can complete my set!

Other than that everything of note that I’m aware of is included here in this selection. Again I own most of these - while there are still some down on the ...

So it’s that time of year again when I trawl through the releases over these past 12 months or so and endeavour to extract the pedal highlights of the year. This exercise is all about drawing a line in the sand and figuring out which pedals deserve to be on the notable side of the line.

Of course everything I publish on Guitar Pedal X is highly curated - those are my own particular preferences and choices, and those are the pedals that I like the look of. So everything that appears on ...

Pedal acquisition is so much about timing - and alas I’m often the victim of my own success as I typically have around 20 to 30 projects and collaborations on the go at any given time - so inevitably while you’re vested and invested in other priorities - various pedals slip through the net or don’t always get added to the collection in the mos expedient of ways.

Case in point is the 2 King Tone miniFUZZES - where I’ve owned the Ge version for quite a few years - but only picked up the Si ...

The King Tone Octaland Upper Octave Fuzz is one that has been on my wishlist for quite some time - it’s a fairly pricey proposition at $299 - which is somewhat more justified by its recent additions - where the price has held the same level.

The 4 controls and 3-way Mode switch are the same as before - the circuit has been very marginally refined, while the two new additions make it a really appealing proposition.

First is the colour-changeable LED - where you hold down the footswitch ...

Back in March of 2020 I did a piece on leading Blues Breaker derived Dual-Channel Overdrives - where I only owned one of the ones featured - namely the JHS 4-Star Mod Edition of Analog.Man King of Tone. In the interim period I have managed to collect 5 more in a fairly happenstance sort of manner - so that the only one in the above visual that I’ve still to land is the Browne Amplification Protein Dual Overdrive.

Of all the ones I have - all are special and / or limited editions apart from ...

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 (...