GPX Blog

I’ve already largely decided what new pedals I will be targeting this year (that I know of!) - following on from the various reveals and announcements made over the last week, and other projects I’m aware of and various themes I will be pursuing in 2020.

First of all to explain the above visual - this features and extrapolation of my current pedal-chain - with the NAMM legend in front of various new / newish pedals - Green means already acquired - or at least already ...

So despite the perilous state of the world, the first NAMM of the new decade actually turned out to be pretty stellar. I had thought that last year’s exceptional show might end up as the all-time high water mark - but this one turned out just as many pleasant surprises.

Slightly different to last year there were a more significant number of pedals announced and launched in advance of the show - while a lot of pedals at the show had very little by way of collateral and some are ...

I have conceptually always loved DBA pedal, yet its finest flagships are always a little too large for my preferences. The Evil Filter for example has long hovered on my wishlist, but I am still stalled by its oversized footprint - which is the same for this fantastic Reverb.

The Rooms Stereo Reverberator somewhat justifies its size by having all the proper ports / jacks present, and 6 different algorithms / modes to get vibing with:

• Room
• Digital
• Peak
• Gate
• Wave
• Gong

You have...

When I first caught sight of the new pedal without reading the notes I looked rather disappointingly at the singular input and output, and the apparently just singular Preset onboard. This of course is the much improved and more compact version of the Context Reverb which brings it into line with the Tensor and Particle V2. Bizarrely though all of those are quite systematically different - with different control topologies and Preset executions. I really like my Particle V2 Granular / Pitch-...

Chase Bliss Audio Pedals and Collaborations are a little like London Buses these days - you get nothing for a while, and then all of a sudden a fully formed line of innovative pedals. Starting with the Dark World Reverb, Chase Bliss Audio very significantly dipped its toes in oddball Glitch-style effects last year with the trio of MOOD Micro Looper, then CBA Edition Cooper FX Generation Loss, and finally the long awaited Blooper Modifying Looper.

We all knew about and were eagerly ...

Gamechanger Audio continues to blaze a trail of innovation with yet another inspired technological evolution - this time focused on the humble spring reverb - whose popularity was reignited last year by Anasounds’ smart Elements take on the same format. Anasounds simply split out the noise generation and signal processing elements into two separate scalable boxes, while Gamechanger has evolved a whole other type of Spring Reverb.

The basic fundamentals are the same in that you ...

Crazy Tube Circuits, or CTC as I like to refer to them, seem to be on a roll of late with lots of smart innovations and updates happening across their range. Following hot on the heels of the excellent Cyclone Phaser and Killer V Vibra-Drive which I recently featured, we now have majorly enhanced and updated version of the Space Charged and Splash Reverb pedals.

The Space Charged Real Tube Drive gets two extra knobs to go with a new second Boost Footswitch - Boost Volume and Boost Gain...

I’m possibly writing this just a touch prematurely as at the point of writing - one of the pictured pedals hasn’t turned up quite yet, and it will be touch and go if gets released out of customs before the end of the year. That pedal being Sinvertek’s new N5+ Drive - featuring no less than 7 beautifully milled aluminium knobs along with 5 toggle-switches - and all within a compact enclosure format - but more of that later.

This year has mostly sort of gone to plan - ...

Just shortly after releasing updated versions of its flagship X4 large format Flashback and Hall of Fame delay and reverb units, TC Electronic concludes the cycle with updates of the Mini pedal equivalents. I could have done with this news a couple of week back during my dedicated Mini Pedals Week!

In any case the biggest change here is that the Hall of Fame mini gets two more knobs - where you used to have just a single Reverb knob, it now has 3 - Tone, Decay and Level - and of course...

I had meant to do this article a lot sooner as Banana Effects have been on my radar for a while - back to a time when they were much more difficult to get a hold of. Nowadays though they’ve struck up a distribution deal with Amazon.com and they are available via Amazon in most countries - all priced at the equivalent of $199 / £189. So price-wise these are definitely smack bang in the middle of boutique territory - yet their diminutive form factor belies a true richness of features....