I thought this was the 4th or 5th pedal that MXR had released in this format, while this exact format including the Presets only came in with last year’s Bass Synth! There were two pedals before that with the two colour-changing top push-buttons and 6 knobs - the first was the Poly Blue Octave in 2022, then the Joshua Ambient Echo in 2024. I though the Layers was similar - but that has quite a different topology,

I have a feeling that the Joshua will eventually be updated to include the ...

From a distance things look to be fairly similar (identical shape and dimensions) - but go closer - and you can see there’s a slew of new options and controls. The facia has double its previous controls - now 8 in place of 4; there are 3 controls on the rear panel - where there were none previously. And the optional extra Footswitch now has 2 further operational Modes to select via a 3-way rear slider-switch. We also have a new Spectral Dual Resonance Engine to extend the pedal’s prowess even ...

"Continua is a stereo dynamic sampler and multi-effect that doesn’t just play your sound back : it listens to how you play and reacts in real time, capturing, shaping and transforming your repeats through a wide range of controls including mix, tempo (TAP function included), pitch, sustain, freeze, glitch, dimension, lo-fi, downsampling, reverb, smear and filter."

I am a huge fan of Continua’s predecessor - the Ricorda Granular Reverb, and will undoubtedly love this new one just as much - ...

WHAT is the RECODER?

’A SPECTRAL MORPHING WORKSTATION’

• a signal cross-pollinator
• a dynamic filter
• a moving audio prism
• a ghostly vocoder
• a formant resonator
• a granular echo creator
• a sound-imprint machine

I’ve featured a number of sample-repeaters / micro-loopers of late - while I really like the sound and look of this one from Glitch Cloud Audio.

"Haze is a generative composer that transforms sound into texture. Skips, stutters, and fluid time become rhythm and motion. Feed it a loop. Plug in an instrument. Let it mutate for hours."

I recently covered the Puremagnetik JOTS - which I likened to pedals from Chase Bliss, Discomfort Designs and Kinotone. And this is another of that ilk, and...

There was a ripple of excitement when people first saw the somewhat oblique teasers for 2 ’new’ Chase Bliss pedals - turns out it’s just new colourways! Exciting still possibly for those who favour single tone pedalboards - but I already have these in their original editions. I don’t feel the need to have duplicates of these, and I actually prefer the original colourways. I run a large pedalboard of 52 pedals - which changes every week - it’s essential for me to be able to rapidly identify and ...

This is my first exposure to Puremagnetik - where this is actually their second pedal, preceded by the LAPS Multitrack Collage Machine.

Puremagnetik seemingly mines sort of similar territory to Chase Bliss, Discomfort Designs and Kinotone - creating micro-looper style manipulators and multi-track layering and effects shaping.

The JOTS consists of 2 x 30 second Samples / Buffers / Tracks which you manipulate in various ways. There are 2 x toggle-switches, one sets which Track you are ...

This has turned out to be the largest category for 2025 with 38 pedals in this selection. As I favour those pedals that I own first, and then the more pedalboard-friendly editions - inevitably there would be some casualties for the year. With the most significant of those being the larger format Meris Enzo X, and the Polyend MESS Multi-Effect Step Sequencer. I know there are some who favour each of those - but they just aren’t targets for me personally.

 I always talk about having a lane - ...

I’m not sure most are aware, but I’m a huge fan of Jamaica derived Dub Music - Osbourne ’King Tubby’ Ruddock, Hopeton ’Scientist’ Brown, and of course Lee ’Scratch’ Perry, Neil ’Mad Professor’ Fraser, Adrian Sherwood and more. I own and favour dozens of Dub Recordings - classic and modern - and touching on all the different varieties of speaker shaking dub - proper Dub Sound System fare.

So this Riddim & Ting device is right up my street - what a superb idea, and as is usual for Teenage ...