This is the 2nd Iteration for this article - where we go from a selection of 13 to 16.

I landed 4 of these these last year - the Crazy Tube Circuits Heatseeker, Flattley Outlaw, Fortin Kali, and Tubesteader Gainlord.

And two early this year - the Car Martin PlexiRanger and Seymour Duncan Diamondhead

We have 4 distinct types of pedals here across 4 format sizes (Compact / Mid-Horizontal / Mid-Vertical / Large) :

1. Dedicated Dual Channel Plexi + JCM800 Overdrive / Distortion with

I first covered the Diamondhead back in November of 2019, and it’s been on the wishlist ever since. I guess I was never presented with the right opportunity - until I came across it during my Christmas visit to Reykjavik’s 2 main pedal shops - Tónastöðin and Hljóðfærahúsið.

It turns out that it was the only reasonably priced pedal that I encounter in Iceland - where it was priced at 32,500 ISK which amounts to around £192 equivalent. I had my father in tow - and he managed to wrangle a ...

So this is the 4th in my recent Guitar Elements Series - which started with Ergonomic Headstocks, then Iconic Body Shapes, and Modern Tremolo Bridges. I have a few more to come - next up is Iconic Fret Markers / Fredboards, then Strings, and some more Body shape ones - I’ve already completed the follow-up - and feel I have enough remains for a 3rd 25, I may even be able to do a 4th - so 100 guitar body shapes all-in.

I had some blowback on the use of the word ’Iconic’ - where some ...

So the recent launch of Origin Effects’ Halcyon enhanced TS808 type screamer prompted me to refresh my memory on what the competition to that was - and if the Halcyon was quite as appealing as it appeared to be. So I’ve trawled through all my usual resources, including my own memory banks - and come up with this list of 28 suitable candidates.

This list is specifically on enhanced / evolved Compact enclosure Tube Screamer types - so I exclude hybrids - such as Matthews Effects The Broker (...

And so to the final pedal category roundup - ’Time-Based Effects’ - before I reveal the Best of the Best New Pedals for the year. This category is not quite as congested as the others - and while last year was for sure the year of the reverb - we did see a few more prime examples during the year. I guess this year was also to a tiny degree the year of the Analog Delay - with some great new contenders there too!

For my own preferences - I am almost entirely a Stereo Workstations guy when it ...

Since we have had 5 cool new and formidable Stereo Reverb pedals this year - it seems opportune to review the category and figure out which are the standout options and alternatives - past and present.

My own journey into Reverb started with the Strymon BigSky - which was my mainstay for a while, then Source Audio announced its new Dual-Channel Ventris and I was very keen on that - but that edition was very slow to materialise, and so I moved instead to Boss’s excellent RV-500 next.

The...

I obviously featured 3 of these in my recent Eddie Van Halen Pedals roundup, and have only just completed the overview of compact enclosure EVH-style pedals in that same territory. As a final bookmark to Eddie’s legacy, at least for now, I’ve decided to expand the scope of the medium enclosure alternatives for those looking to recreate that classic EVH Brown Sound and have more real-estate/ floor-space at their disposal.

As with the compact enclosure exercise there is a mix...

Key to Eddie’s signature sound has always been his use of Chorus, Flanger and Phaser effects in particular, along with some Wah-based flourishes. As a result MXR has built up a small range of EVH branded pedals - which Eddie mostly used on his latter-day pedalboards - with some occasional exceptions.

For this particular exercise I’m referencing one of Eddie’s 2012 pedalboards - as per the visual below - which also features a Boss OC-3 Super Octave, and an MXR Analog Chorus in place of Eddie...

By all accounts a rather fabulous and timely pedal, in a great form factor, yet a couple of things have me a touch peeved from the outset. One fairly minor, while the other is likely a lot more significant. On the minor side - I always get somewhat annoyed when builders are overly opaque about the mechanics of their pedals. Seymour Duncan does not mention what manner of technology generates the tone, while one would guesstimate OpAmp as the likeliest source - I am one of those who likes to know...