Here we have a revival of the near decade and a half old Dr. Scientist Reverberator 9-Mode Reverb. It’s a versatile mono pedal with 8 x Reverb Modes, and a 9th bonus chorusey Rotary Mode.

We have a very elegant control topology with just 4 controls - Mix, Level, Delay Time : Short / Long, and the 9 x Modes.

Controls - Mix, Level, Delay Time : Short / Long, MODE : H1 Bright Hall / H2 Warm Hall / R1 Bright Room / R2 Standard Room / R3 Warm Room / P1 Standard Plate / P2 Bright Plate / P3 ...

The RoomMate D’luxe was announced at NAMM, where the Fuzztopia was out late last year - where I did not manage to fit it into my schedule.

It seems very timely now since the RoomMate D’luxe is in the same format - and those 2 pedal pair very well together. 

The RoomMate D’luxe delivers 8 x Tube saturated Modes covering off all the main Reverb food groups - Room, Hall, Plate and Shimmer Hall.

And the Fuzztopia Dual Channel Fuzz + Distortion is fairly distinct for having separate Dry ...

New Pedals in the Class of 2025 Pedal-Chain Snapshot = 41

[OCTOBER]  = 9

[NOVEMBER] = 6

[MARCH] = 5

[SEPTEMBER] = 5

[AUGUST] = 4

[JANUARY] = 3

[FEBRUARY]  = 3

[APRIL] = 2

[JUNE] = 2

[MAY] = 1

[JULY] = 1

[A-Z by Brand]

1. Becos FX CompIQ Pro Yuna Soft Knee Blackmer VCA Studio Style Compressor [SEPTEMBER]
2. Blue Colander Grimrobe Dual Cascaded Super Rat [OCTOBER]
3. Blue FX Devices Fuzz Fields Ultimate Modulated Fuzz [SEPTEMBER]
4. Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble Leslie / Rotary Speaker

In many ways this is the most straightforward category with singular award nominees - GOLD, SILVER and BRONZE.

It’s the second smallest category after Distortions - and the one where I own the least number of pedals in proportion to the whole - just 10 out of these 26.

The order pretty much set itself - with the Cornerstone Nucleo being the clear winner from the start. I’m so impressed with every aspect of that pedal - it’s a perfect Trifecta of Design, Feaures and Playability - pretty ...

So I’ve had my eye on Ghost Note Audio for a while - where the main principal seems to be of Icelandic descent - his name - Valdemar Erlingsson is very Icelandic, and I see he’s been educated at the University of Iceland. Valdemar is usually written ’Valdimar’ but both are valid.

In any case - Valdemar has been delivering some killer pedals to-date - mostly of the larger preamp pedal variety - and all those are analog of course. I love how some of those sound - but consider them to be ...

August turned out a little bit different than expected. Not so many releases - as expected - but really busy regardless - with a number of Marquee Events and Articles throughout the month. With the king of the crop being the Extended Capacitor Primer - to which I’ve just added a further section on Capacitor Lifespan. Obviously I hit 15,000 followers on Instagram - which is a significant achievement - a really killer month all-round with some big articles - meaning I’m a little bit burned out ...

I own a fairly significant number of Reverb Pedals - where I’m mostly focused on Workstation style Pedals with multiple algorithms. I normally have at least 2 Reverbs on the board - a Primary Multi-Verb, and a Secondary more Specialist Verb. Occasionally I have a 3rd Reverb - which can be another Stereo Secondary, or more likely a Mono Tertiary. In fact I can have as many as 4 Reverbs on the board - as the Eventide H90 is always there too!

You can see from my various Pedal-Chain posts that ...

The Oceans Abyss takes over from the Oceans 12 as EHX’s flagship Reverb Workstation. The Oceans 12 has 12 Core Reverb Voicings - including Echo and Mod - which are replaced on this more potent model by numerous additional Delay and Modulation Effects options - where you can create your own signal path using all those effects.

So this pedal is more like the Meris Mercury X and Strymon NightSky - in being a Sound Design device focused on Reverb - but with a number of additional extras in the ...

So January 2025 sees a momentous milestone - where we have the peak possible number of pedals in the chain - which now numbers no less than 52 Pedals. It’s an incredibly tight squeeze - and all the available space is now fully used up.

I’ve re-flowed the main visual - where I used to try to have a fixed format arrangement - but now have re-numbered the slots entirely corresponding to the number and order of those pedals. Last January I noted that I was going to switch out my 2 Friedman ...