October was a super busy month - one of the busiest ever - with such a scope and scale and body of work covered - I’m quite shattered as a result!

We had of the penultimate Events of the year :

• The 2nd Woking Boutique Guitar Show
• Kempton Park London International Guitar Show

And around one dozen key posts  as below also :

• Letter from Dr.No
• Teaching Machines FuzzBillion Component Combinations Wheels Gain-Shaper
• Hangman fx DAGG’R Dynamic Auto-Gain/Gate Mighty Morphing Gain-Ramper

Here it’s the turn of the new distortion pedals this year. Where I own all but 7 here :

• Crazy Tube Circuits Heatseeker Enhanced Full Stack Marshall style Preamp
• God City Instruments Brutalist Distortion
• Krozz Devices RoyalBreaker Extended Rat style Distortion
• Noise Engineering Dystorpia Fuzz/Distortion
• Soldano Super Lead Overdrive Plus
• UAFX Anti 1992 High Gain Amp
• UAFX Knuckles ’92 Rev F Dual Rec Amplifier

So of this selection of 34 I own 27 :

Finalists

• Audiostorm Grand

It’s that time of year when I pick out my personal favourite pedals in each category - starting with the Boost and Overdrive ones. I weigh up each candidate on the basis of my own experiences, preferences and sensibilities - and include pedals also that I intended to get but did not quite yet around to acquiring during the year of release!

For this selection I personally own all but these 8 :

• Aleks K Production Honey Moon Sweet Overdrive V3
• Bleak District Slate Discrete Gemanium

In the light of a number of new arrivals this year, namely :

• Coriolis Hail To The King Ultimate Edition Dual BluesBreaker Overdrive
• Menatone MenaWatt Hiwatt DR103 style Preamp
• Menatone Wreck’T Trainwreck Express style Preamp
• Tubesteader ROY Twin Channel Vox AC30 Top Boost style Tube Preamp

It seemed about the right time to do an update of my original April 2023 16 Iconic Amps and Pedals Article. This has had some tweaks along the way, and on the 9th slot still features a pedal yet to ...

So the current Voxy & Plexi slots are #18 and #19, while the first formation occurred back at the start of 2018 - with the Bearfoot EGDM on slot #15, and the MI Effects Super Crunch Box V2 on slot #17 - we’ve obviously come a long way since then! That original pairing had a very decent 2 year innings. Which was actually a few month more than the enduringly popular Pettyjohn Electronics pairing. Of all of these - those 2 pairs have endured the longest, with the Menatone TBIAC + KOB duo putting ...

Readers will be aware that I recently added 2 further Dumble style Overdrives to the reference collection. First the Menatone Dumbstruck V2, and then most recently the superb Tanabe Zenkudo.

I’ve decided that I’m at a point now where this selection is fully representative of this genre, of course I do have a few more targets in this category, while I feel I now have most of the major top-tier contenders. Notably missing here is Robben Ford’s evidently much loved Lovepedal / Hermida Zen ...

Another totally mad month for sure - loaded with frenetic activity and peppered with highs as well as crushing disappointments. The first give-away for GPX didn’t quite hit the highs I expected (said give-away closes tonight at 23:59 BST). And there are some weird gaps in the entrants’ home countries - certainly no shortage from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or much of mainland Europe. I’m active in a lot more countries than have so far entered the give-away, so I don’t fully understand why ...

Before we get into the detail of the Santanabe, it’s important to note that both the May Queen and Santanabe pedals are derivations of the the core Zenkudo circuit - with certain EQ, Voicing and Gain Tweaks / Alterations. For instance the Gain curve on the Zenkudo and May Queen has a Linear B Taper, while the Santanabe is of the Logarithmic A type curve.

Both the May Queen and Santanbe have significantly more gain onboard than the Zenkudo - with 3 times the amount of the Zenkudo at Max ...

I’ve long had a Vox AC30 style pedal on the board - slot #19 nowadays - where the Brian May Queen sound is one of the key tones in my arsenal. Not all those Voxy pedals are equal by any means - in fact a lot of them don’t quite quite reach the Top-Boosted Heights you need to cover Brian’s more searing riffs and solos. I’ve long sought out the perfect pedal to replicate those tones - and while I’ve come close on a number of occasions - I’ve never quite totally nailed it with just the one pedal -...