GPX Blog

Latest is not always greatest! Like many other pedal aficionados no doubt, I am quite particular about the function, aesthetics and format of each effect pedal I acquire. Many a pedal has been in production for numerous years and has seen all manner of iterations throughout its lifetime - not specifically special editions, just the core default pedal naturally changing and evolving over time - of course there are custom, limited and special editions too along the way but we’re focusing on...

I have covered off a number of my favourite Summer NAMM pedals already - including the Boss 200 range, RC-10R and SY-1, the Fulltone OCD Ge, the REVV G2, the Spaceman Effects Gemini IV, and Walrus Audio Kangra for instance. And there’s a couple more surprise ones I will be posting as dedicated features very soon - so stay alert for those! In the wake of one of the best ever Winter NAMM’s it was clear that the Summer NAMM could never match that degree of innovation - in fact most of ...

I’ve actually been meaning to do this post for a while now - I’ve had several requests over the years to do a ’best of’ feature for Catalinbread - with some even wanting one specifically on delays - which actually only number 6 and therefore don’t quite merit a solo outing - although we’ll see. So this at last is that post - taking in the best of new and established, innovative and unique - across the 4 sub-categories - Foundation Overdrives | Delays and ...

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 ...

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 a follower of Juan and Nick’s Pedals and Effects YouTube Channel - I’ve been aware of Meris from day one, and have showed interest in and featured all of its pedals on this site at various times. I was the one that stated that Meris effects were probably more like weekend sportscars rather than daily runarounds, and I’ve had a Meris or two on my wishlist for a while. I came very close to acquiring an Enzo at one stage, but in the end decided that it wasn’t quite right...

I already singled out the Newly Revamped Matthews Effects Range in my piece on Pedal Graphic Design - but there I focused more on the design of the actual pedals - principally the facia graphics and control topology - knob choice etc. However there was much more to the Matthews Effects Range Revamp than just a pedal design change - and some of the most significant improvements happened within the disciplines of Packaging and supplementary Collateral. ...

Now definitively defined as a Pedal-format Modular Synthesizer, Sequencer and Multi-Effects unit. The control interface consists of a small OLED screen accompanied by a grid of 40 (5x8) 7-coloured LED backlit soft-touch buttons, 4 further control buttons for Secondary Functions, and a large Menu scroll dial. There are 3 footswitches to activate live playback and scroll through presets.

Essentially you have a building-block interface-led hybrid-modular-synthesiser where you chain ...

Following last year’s ’Year of Fuzz’, I declared that for 2019 I would shift my focus to Granular Synthesis or Micro-Sampler/Looper / Glitch Effects Pedals. To those ends I did a slightly more long-form overview in mid-December - ’16 of the Best Glitch Effects Pedals’ of which I’ve acquired 5 to date.

In fact I’ve honed the list down further to the six above, which I believe are currently the ’state of the art’ for this genre, with ...

So some of you know that I declared 2019 would be my ’Year of Glitch’ following on from last year’s ’Year of Fuzz’. I had a longlist of 16 of the Best Glitch Effects Pedals - and indicated which of those were my preferred options. I very soon had 4 of those pedals in my collection - in order of arrival - King of Gear Mini Glitch, Montreal Assembly Count to Five, Drolo Molecular Disruptor V3, and the gold-face Pladask Elektrisk Fabrikat. There are a few missing off ...