After the quiet comfort of February, March unleashed an avalanched of work - both in terms of new releases and acquisitions, but especial in the field of Guitar and Pedal expos - where I attended 3 within a month - first The Birmingham Guitar Show at Cranmore Park, then the London Synth and Pedal Expo at Studio 9294, Hackney Wick - and then back to Birmingham for the Noise Maker Market at Centrala, Digbeth - all grand events.

I burned myself out a little this month, and came back willingly empty...

Hopefully most of you saw / read last years’s post on 15 of the best Compact Noise Gates. In that article I indicated my most likely next noise gate would be either the Red Seven NGR-1 or the KMA Machines Pylon.

In the end it was the NGR-1 that won me over with its featured set - and combination of Analog Noise Gate with Digital Control. The A/B Mode in particular was what really appealed to me - the ability to have a higher and lower Threshold setting that I could switch up on the fly. ...

We all know Joe Anastasio for his long-standing Lone Wolf Audio brand - Left Hand Wrath etc. while he now has a new umbrella brand ’Void Manufacturing’ which covers both Void and Lone Wolf Audio brands of pedals, alongside Void Modular Eurorack Devices.

My good friend Joe Light of Joe’s Pedals in Exeter, UK now stocks a range of Void Manufacturing and Lone Wolf Audio Pedals - which feature 8 new varieties - 3 of which have alternative colourway editions.

The range consists of 5 x Large,...

So we have Santiago Alvarez (ex Marshall), Tommi Otsavara (ex Darkglass Electronics), and Torsten Woelle (ex Hughes & Kettner) in a very formidable new partnership - with an excellent mid-priced full-range offering! Quite a pedigree really in terms of the principals involved.

According to Andertons these are mostly at the £169 mark, with two of the compacts being just £149, and then the Tube Preamp / Tube Driver going for £269 - all announced, but not yet in stock. Actually GuitarGuitar got...

When I first saw this pedal I thought it could be decent competition for my Poly Ample (which has 56 different Amp Types onboard), while it turns out that the Nux Amp Core Studio is more like that - with the below selection of 26 Amp Types : 

Jazz Clean, Deluxe Rvb, Bassmate, Tweedy, Twin Rvb, Hiwire, Cali Crunch, Class 15, Class 30, Plexi 100, Plexi 45, Brit 800, 1987 X50, SLO 100, Fireman HBE, Dual Rect, Die VH4, Vibro King, Budda, MR.Z.38, Super Rvb, Brit Blues, Match, Brit 200, Uber ...

So I took a little bit of flack about the 4 of a kind noise gates I included in that feature. It was really just a matter of the first 4 I came across that fit the pattern - I did not do any extra curation for that selection - simply first come first serve. Inevitably I left out some killer ones - which I make amends for by including the largest possible selection of high quality compact noise gates in his very article - including my current incumbent - Alchemy Audio Modded Boss NS-2 - which ...

All 4 of these are One-Knob 4-cable / 4-port Noise Gates - where you can place all your ’noisy’ pedals in an FX Loop, and allow your other effects to pass through unaffected. I feel Boss pioneered this approach first with its 3-knob NS-2 from 1987 while there may have been someone before then which I don’t have any references for!- while I still rely on my Alchemy Audio Modded NS-2 Noise Suppressor - which has been firmly lodged in my rig / signal chain almost from the start - probably my ...

So Fractal Audio Systems has thrown its hat in the ring with its first non-modelling device / unit - the VP4 Virtual Pedalboard Multi-FX Processor - which is quite a departure for the brand.

It’s obviously gunning for Line 6 and Eventide in particular, but also looking to knock out Boss and Strymon Workstation pedals. It has several of its own advantages, but with a number of caveats too. Overall it’s well priced for what it delivers - but for my own preferences it’s still somewhat over-...

So I said I would expand the scope of the 10 Pedal Challenge to Mini and Large Enclosure variants if the original was well received. And in indeed that seems to be the case - with several readers encouraging me in particular to do the Large Pedals Edition.

So of course I’ve done the 2 remaining categories - Mini and Large! The Large Pedals were pretty much all obvious choices really and that board largely suggested itself. It was the Mini Pedals version that took the most cogitation!

It...