GPX Blog

Readers of this blog will already know how much a fan I am of BYOC’s Crown Jewel Multidrive pedal - with its multitude of dials and switches - 4 gain stages in effect and clean blend circuit. I’ve said that this is not only likely the most versatile drive pedal out there currently, but also an essential educational tool for understating how different degrees of voltage, clipping, tone-shaping and Q-control impact on the output signal.

I wasn’t really that much ...

Australia and New Zealand together have a fair few brands of international repute, and I for one certainly have a number of pedals of Australian origin in my collection. Foremost amongst those is Michael Ibrahim’s eponymous MI Audio / MI Effects - from which range past and present - I have 7 to date - with a couple more on the ’nice-to-have’ wishlist. Of the ones I have 2 are permanent features in my pedal-chain - the Super Crunch Box V2 (my Brown Sound pedal of choice) and ...

I’ve been hooked on REVV Pedals since the very start - pre-ordering both the G3 and then G4 direct from Canada. And they both went straight into my pedal-chain and have mostly stayed there since bar some fairly minor short-term rotations. Having settled on the Menatone The King for my main Crunch / Plexi tones I thought I wouldn’t likely need the very recently announced G2 Crunchy Drive.

Yet as is often the case - and after experiencing the That Pedal Show TGU19 episode on ...

In line with its ongoing enclosure format innovations and taking significant influence from the recent 500 series - Boss replaces the dual latching-plate format of its 20 Series Twin Pedal line with a much more compact and sleeker medium vertical enclosure 200 Series Design - with 4 pedals due to launch in September, and all priced at £219 as of the moment:

• DD-200 12 Mode Digital Delay Stereo Workstation - £219
• EQ-200 10 Band Dual Channel Stereo Graphic Equalizer - £219

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 covered on a number of posts on this site - I’ve been a long time fan of the Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal - which alas has been out of production since 1992. In the meantime a whole host of pedal-builders have stepped up to fill the gap as the number of pristine HM-2 pedals becomes ever more scarce. In fact I’ve not seen a properly ’Mint’ version on Reverb.com for a long while - too many sellers misuse that term in any case as Mint means pedal is actually and literally...

When I did my Stackable Overdrive + Distortion Pedals feature at the start of the year my intentions were always to do a follow-up with Distortion + Distortion Pedals, and the recent release of the KSR Ceres makes it opportune to do this now. For my former article I could have included a few others in the overview - I just selected the 4 most similar, while for this new one I actually struggled to find even the 4 included within the same category. And of those 4 the Suhr Eclipse is kind of ...

This feature was inspired by a couple of recent events, and partly as a counter to my highlighting of the really rather complex Empress Zoia Modular Synthesizer / Multi-Effects unit in my last feature. For the last week or so I’ve been working on updating my rather extensive Guitar Pedal Directory page which features all of the above, and around 2,000 more from across 160 or so pedal builders around the world.

I periodically review each of the sites referenced - to keep tabs on ...

It’s long been a mystery why the enduringly popular Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal pedal has been out of production for quite so long - being as it at the root of the key Swedish Death Metal genre/movement, and still the weapon of choice for many of the best practitioners of that art. A pristine HM-2 on Reverb.com is becoming increasingly rare, and when it does appear its pricing is often quite frankly ridiculous.

Super Tone Shaper Guillem Vilademunt of Decibelics / Golden Horse fame has been hard ...