I hadn’t intended to upgrade my power supply infrastructure this year - but was kind of compelled to because of the recent Poly VERBS addition to the chain. The Poly VERBS needs 500mA, so I swapped over the supplies for the VERBS and Hologram Microcosm slots - as the Friedman Power Grid was powering the particular VERBS slot and only delivers 350mA - which turns out is actually not enough for either pedal (Microcosm states 400mA requirement). The Microsm kind of works with no noticeable ...
This rundown has been a long time in the making - having been iterated many times over, and changed as recently as this last Tuesday - when Keeley brought out its Muse Driver - Super AT Mod replacement!
Readers will know that I’ve cited the Keeley Freak Fuzz Modded BD-2 Blues Driver as my favourite all-time overdrive pedal, and be extension - the Blues Driver circuit and variations of it are my own very favourite gain tones. Some gravitate towards Tube Screamer, others Blues Breaker, Timmy ...
The final arrangement for the year - all the pedals that impressed the most!
So we featured 120 pedals across the 5 Genre categories this year - as you’ve witnessed over the last 5 days, and those have been whittled and distilled down to these 27 Magnificent and Exceedingly Flavoursome candidates.
Picking out the very best of those is obviously a slightly subjective exercise while based on a series of exacting criteria - including innovation, versatility, practicality, variability, playability, quality of manufacture, quality of output and sheer enjoyment.
Here ...
And so to the final category - where competition is extremely fierce this year. No doubt some of your favourites will have missed the cut here - but hopefully this selection is fully representative of the best of the year. Obvious I lean more towards immersive stereo effects - mono doesn’t really do it for me so much - while there is a smattering of mono pedals in here too. Price, format, versatility and practicality - everything counts!
Of the 23 featured in the selection - I own around ...
So Strymon delivers another first for them - this time around tackling the Uni-Vibe format in their usual fashion. This Ultraviolet is not quite as evolved and enhanced as its two predecessors - the Cloudburst Reverb and Brig Delay.
And instead of putting the Mix on a fully variable knob - they’ve instead implemented that with a 3-way toggle - which has the classic 50:50 Chorus on the left, a new 70:30 Blend in the middle, and a 100% Wet Mix Vibrato on the right.
So apart from their ...
So the new Brig dBucket Delay is of the same lineage as the former Strymon Brigadier - while not at all a distillation of that pedal, but rather entirely its own thing - where the only thing those pedals properly share is that they are both Analog Bucket Brigade Device Emulating Delays.
At the core of the Brig are 3 different delay voicings :
Strymon never go about things lightly - and while this Reverb started off as a compact take on the BigSky’s Cloud Algorithm - this version has been developed to be so much more. As an example - the Decay from 1 o’c to 5 o’c is identical to the Big Sky Cloud - while when you move the dial into the left hemisphere things get much more subtle and lighter.
For each of these controls - typically to the right of centre / right hemisphere you get more accentuated / textured tones - while dialling...
What a magnificent start to the year - I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong January selection - I could almost stick a pin in it and take the rest of the year off! Several of these slots won’t see much change between now and the end of the year - and so impressive is this latest batch of additions - that I can’t really see what might be improved in order to replace most of those.
I was not expecting to add the Eventide H90 quite so quickly - while the Hologram Microcosm has always ...
As you will see in my forthcoming end of the month Pedal Chain Update - I acquired an Eventide H90 Harmonizer over the Christmas period - before that - my various Power Supplies / Outlets were already at Maximum capacity / use - with all outlets already assigned.
This means that I inevitably had to add one more Power Supply into the mix - where the only suitable candidates really came from Cioks - as the H90 requires at least 1,200 mA of current - where you need to use a Cioks Parallel ...