In my continuing quest for pedal perfection, and following on from my piece on ’The Perfect Compact Guitar Pedal Design’ I now present a brief overview on my perfect mini pedal. In this instance the original source template is a Pigtronix micro pedal but with some significant modifications.

I have tried to cram in a serious amount of technology into a mini pedal, so I am not sure in this instance, whether it would stand the addition of Fender Pedal-style illuminated dials - possibly that ...

Hot on the heels of my Perfect Compact and Mini pedal prototypes here follows the Medium size enclosure version. I have based this on an extrapolation from the classic Strymon medium enclosure - taking those same box dimensions and extrapolating my Compact pedal prototype to fit the larger form factor. Note that I’ve tried to scale the above visual to the same relative size as the previous Compact and Mini pedal visuals - which means no space for additional diagrammatic legends - as I use on my...

This piece concludes my musings on ideal pedal formats in the different enclosure size categories - starting with Compact, then Mini, then Medium, and now finally Large!

I have always subscribed to the view that larger workstation pedals are the way to go for the most productive playback of Modulation Effects, Delay and Reverb. A key reason why this is the case is that the principal representatives of the genre - the Eventide X-Factor pedals, Strymon’s ’Stryfecta’ of Mobius, TimeLine and ...

Following on from my visualisations of Perfect Pedals and Amp I now add my take on my idealised guitar - of course largely building on and evolving from PRS here. When I scope out a guitar for myself I have a number of key criteria in mind - which must be present in a guitar or easily upgradeable at home. In fact the easiest way to communicate this is why a top-to-bottom checklist with explanations - the highlights of which are covered in the visual above:

I will preface this article with two statements - firstly, I currently run a stereo rig with a 39-pedal-chain, going into a Boss Katana KT100 on the left channel, and an all-tube Carvin V3MC on the right. The Katana is obviously a digital modelling amp based on an EL34 tube amp profile, while the Carvin V3MC runs on proper EL84 tubes - which gives you a lovely warm, dynamic and sparkly tone. The two amp profiles combine really well together to give you a beautifully harmonically rich and wide-...

Guitar Pedals have come on in leaps and bounds over the past few years - becoming smarter, more capable, more versatile and smaller generally. To my mind the peak of pedal innovation can currently be found with Joel Korte’s Chase Bliss Audio pedals - of which I have 5 in my pedal-chain.

The Chase Bliss Audio Influence

In my recent 3 key pedal trends piece I touched on how the Chase Bliss pedal design / topology was influencing many pedal-makers. The two banks of 3 dials, 3 x 3-way toggle ...