It was only natural that the Compact Format Preferred Versions feature should follow the Mini examples. Again largely inspired by the recent ’12 Degrees’ projects.

Once more I’ve had a change of mind on some of the candidates and the preferred examples are slightly different to those previous references. Obviously new pedals have arisen, and priorities and preferences can shift fairly regularly based on prevailing mood.

That said, most of these are long-term...

This article is in part inspired by my features on ’Mini Pedals State of the Art’, and those various ’12 Degrees’ posts I did at the tail-end of last year. Moreover I have had quite a few readers recently asking me for my preferred recommended mini pedals on various pedal-chain slots.

I last did this sort of exercise 4 years ago - where TC Electronic was kind of the dominant player - covering 8 of those 20 recommendations, with Mooer fairly close with 6 entries...

Free The Tone’s Brand New Motion Loop Pitch Shiftable Short Looper reminds me of a sort of cross between a DigiTech Whammy Ricochet and Chase Bliss Audio Mood. At its core this seems to be very much a Micro-Looper style of pedal with extended Parameter control.

Essentially the pedal can sample up to 4 Seconds of sound - which you then manipulate in various ways. There are 4 main effects sections as such - Pitch, Loop Signal, Waveform and Delay.

The Pitch shifter gives ...

Dune fans will undoubtedly appreciate this theme a little more than most. And in fact the Atreides is based on Electro-Harmonix’s now vintage 1980’s Mini Synthesizer.

What we have here is a perfect complementary amalgamation of different modulations with a hearty Fuzz and Sub-Octave element. There are 7 lit-up sliders for which in the above visual I have highlighted in red text how they group / break down.

Essentially we have Output Volume, then Sensitivity and ...

And so here is the culmination of everything that happened to the pedal-chain in 2020.

There were quite a few more displacements than I had expected - all told 22 slots changed over this year - including 19 Brand New Pedals for 2020, then 3 slightly older pedals, and some incidentals.

The most significant shift, and the one that caused the most disruption was the arrival of Boss GT-1000 CORE in October. This is often the case when you bring in a big new pedal - and you need to...

So I’ve now completed 5 preliminary shortlists type articles featuring between 9 and 30 or so of the best pedals released in 2020 - in each of the following categories :

• Best New Reverb Workstation Pedals (9)
• Best New Overdrive and Distortion Pedals (29)
• Best New Fuzz Pedals (31)
• Best New Delay and Reverb Pedals (20)
• Best New Modulation, Pitch, and Utility Pedals (28)

I sincerely apologise if I’ve overlooked any here, while I’m not sure they would have necessarily ...

This is the fourth of the preliminary roundups - before I reveal the 25 or so ’Best of the Best of 2020’ - it covers most other pedal genres not yet feature - including in particularly modulation and utility types. Note though that there will be a couple more surprises in the final reckoning!

Unlike the Delay and Reverb category I actually own a few of these, while other outstanding ones are very high on the priority list for next year.

I own 7 of these all-told - ...

This article pulls together Jack White’s 4 key pedal collaborations from the very first Union Tube & Transistor Bumble Buzz Fuzz through to the recent Coppersound Triplegraph. I myself have been intrigued about these along the way - and am still pondering if I still need to add one or two more of these to my own collection / rig.

I already have a limited edition Yellow Plasma Coil, and am in line to get a standard Triplegraph in the new year. I was sort of waiting for the ...

Key to Eddie’s signature sound has always been his use of Chorus, Flanger and Phaser effects in particular, along with some Wah-based flourishes. As a result MXR has built up a small range of EVH branded pedals - which Eddie mostly used on his latter-day pedalboards - with some occasional exceptions.

For this particular exercise I’m referencing one of Eddie’s 2012 pedalboards - as per the visual below - which also features a Boss OC-3 Super Octave, and an MXR Analog ...

I’m no stranger to Coppersound Pedals or Jack White’s Third Man Records imprint and in fact have one of Jack’s earlier limited edition collaborations in the guise of a Yellow colourway Gamechanger Audio Plasma Coil pedal. The Coppersound collaboration marks the fourth occasion Jack has engaged in such a project - the first first was the Union Tube and Transistor Bumble Buzz Fuzz (sort of Super Fuzz), next came the Mantic Flex PLL pedal collaboration, then Gamechanger obviously...