And here we have the GRAND FINAL- with all 36 Award Winners from the Group Stages - across all 5 categories!

The first two places have kind of been obvious for a while, where the 3rd / BRONZE position was actually the hardest to decide on - it was between the eventual recipient - the Tubesteader Gainlord, Boss’s XS-100 Poly Shifter, Blue FX Devices Fuzz Fields and Gamechanger’s Motor Synth - all of whom would have been worthy runners-up - while in the end I went for the one that overall ...

What we have here is a killer Trifecta of potent shoegazer-enhanced compact editions - where two of them are fully Stereo capable.

Conventional wisdom would decree the order of : Treble Overload > Moonbeam Phaser > Dream Station.

While for shoegazer optimisation you need to reverse the order and put the reverb at the front of the chain - as several demoers have done below. I quite like Ian Pritchard’s setup too - with the Dream Station in the middle, and Thee Treble Overlaod in front! ...

This has turned out to be the largest category for 2025 with 38 pedals in this selection. As I favour those pedals that I own first, and then the more pedalboard-friendly editions - inevitably there would be some casualties for the year. With the most significant of those being the larger format Meris Enzo X, and the Polyend MESS Multi-Effect Step Sequencer. I know there are some who favour each of those - but they just aren’t targets for me personally.

 I always talk about having a lane - ...

Another super busy month for me - particularly towards the end - with numerous large scale articles out this week. That also coincided with my busiest week of the year for my other day job. Meaning that I was up until 4-5 in the morning every day - just to keep up with my commitments.

I was already somewhat shattered and burned out before I even got to this super busy period - and it’s a relief that all that work has now been completed on schedule.

I’m especially proud of my work on the Bucket ...

My close association with Thorpy started back in late September of 2018 - at the now defunct Olympia UK Guitar Show. He was the first pedal maker I reached out to, and the first I connected with.

Since then ThorpyFX Pedals have become my 3rd most populous selection after Boss and Drunk Beaver. Those 3 brands alone contribute over 200 pedals to my reference collection!

The fact that I’m now at 31 ThorpyFX Pedals is a major milestone - and features every mainline MKII pedal Thorpy has made. ...

This pedal reminds me a little of the recent EHX Pico Atomic Cluster Sonic De-Rezzer and Atomic Frequencies Oscillator. Both are a little Lo-Fi and essentially drop the Resolution of the output in slightly different ways.

This SMPLoFi features 2 Core Modes - Mode 1 is a Bitchrusher - and if you hit the Red Button - you get Mode 2 Reverb and Band Pass Filter. Both Modes have the Blue Knob Dry > Wet Mix as a common element.

This pedal is very much 80’s / Nintendo inspired - sort of chip-...

The Mood is Chase Bliss’s most perennially popular and celebrated bestseller - by far and away the most sold Chase Bliss pedal to date.

It also happens to have had the most different special and limited edition artworks - and I’ve selected 4 each of those for the Mood I and Mood II - I’m sure I’ve probably overlooked 1 or 2 variants - while hopefully I’ve covered all he best looking ones!

Up until now the Light Bright edition was my favourite - while I feel that may have been pipped by the new ...

So Mr. Black’s new Tremolo is a fairly simple proposition - just 3 controls, and 4 waveforms.

Where the 4th ’Robot’ waveform is a kind of Forman robot-talk type - making those kind of sounds - but in Tremolo modulation format!

Controls - Intense (Depth), Output, Rate, Waveform : Triangle / Square / Sine / Robot (formant).

There’s a real elegance about this device and it definitely imparts unique flavours.

This could easily be someone’s signature tremolo - while there are overall...

EHX’s latest Mini / Pico pedal is he fairly unique Atomic Cluster - which with Speed and Atoms knobs fully clockwise gives you a full resolution rendering of your Dry Signal - but lower the output resolution when you crank both this knobs counter clockwise. Essentially lowering the output frequency resolution!

The right-hand Atoms knobs breaks the signal frequencies down into lower resolution oscillations - where you get a fairly acute ’mangling’ counter clockwise - with the signal’s ...