This is obviously a follow-up from the Josh Scott / JHS January 1st YouTube video as below. Where Josh carried out and exercise where he compiled the best pedals released over the last two decades - in 6 specific categories - Best Overdrive / Distortion, Best Fuzz, Best Time-Based Effect, Best Modulation, Best Compressor, and Best Weird / Other - all must have been release January 1st 2000 or later.

Along with his own take, he solicited opinions from Jamie Stillman of EQD, Matthew ...

And so here is the culmination of everything that happened to the pedal-chain in 2020.

There were quite a few more displacements than I had expected - all told 22 slots changed over this year - including 19 Brand New Pedals for 2020, then 3 slightly older pedals, and some incidentals.

The most significant shift, and the one that caused the most disruption was the arrival of Boss GT-1000 CORE in October. This is often the case when you bring in a big new pedal - and you need to...

So I’ve now completed 5 preliminary shortlists type articles featuring between 9 and 30 or so of the best pedals released in 2020 - in each of the following categories :

• Best New Reverb Workstation Pedals (9)
• Best New Overdrive and Distortion Pedals (29)
• Best New Fuzz Pedals (31)
• Best New Delay and Reverb Pedals (20)
• Best New Modulation, Pitch, and Utility Pedals (28)

I sincerely apologise if I’ve overlooked any here, while I’m not sure they would have necessarily ...

And here is the first of the category overviews for the year - combining those Overdrive and Distortion pedals which sparked some interest for me. Note that there will be 4 of these types of articles - Overdrive & Distortion (this one), Fuzz, Delay and Reverb (exc. Reverb Workstation already covered), and Modulation + Pitch + Untility pedals. Before I then reveal my overall 25 or so favourite favourite pedals for the year in a Best-of-the-Best listing - with possibly some sneaky additions. ...

Reverb.com has revealed the best-selling pedals of 2020 on that particular platform. And while there are plenty of other big retailers on the Interweb - Reverb is likely the largest single entity - so some heed should be paid to these stats, while they don’t necessarily give you the full global picture. Plenty of manufacturers sell direct - and you have all those major stores - with Andertons, Sweetwater and Thomann leading the charge - which play into things too. Nevertheless it always ...

As reported on this site a couple of times already - James Brown, celebrated 5150 amp engineer and circuit designer extraordinaire, sold his Amptweaker brand to Alpha Distribution earlier this year after he accepted a new post at Fender’s EVH Gear Division, Amp Department specifically.

Amptweaker has been best known for its high gain pedals - in particular the FatMetal and TightMetal series - but also the TightDrive and TightRock / BigRock Overdrives. The range had sprawled into ...

So this is one of most significant works in a while, and carries on the legacy of two of my most popular all-time articles on the 12 Degrees of Saturation - the Original that evolved in the early months of 2017, and the follow-up which materialised in September of 2018.

I obviously deal with a lot of reader inquiries pretty much on a daily basis, and one of the more popular lines of inquiry has been about overdrives. And while Josh Scott attests to the fact that there are only 5 core ...

There’s not much more that really needs to be said about the Chase Bliss Audio Automatone Preamp MKII (Boost + EQ + Overdrive + Fuzz + Preamp) that hasn’t been said already - it’s every bit as good as everyone says it is. I though still felt that I had to touch on one of the best executed and innovative gain pedals of all time as it would be unforgivable for me not to do my own take on the subject. Obviously it’s a pricey proposition, a little large, and a little fragile...

I must confess that this pedal somewhat slipped under my radar when it was first teased / introduced at January’s Winter NAMM show. In fact I only really became properly aware of it when Roman started doing his head-to-head YouTube videos - where he looked to dial-in near-match tones to each of those very well-known classics - per the video references at the base of this article.

First Roman compared the Daily Driver (which I will henceforth occasionally refer to as the DD) ...

This is probably not the best time to be featuring a range of pedals whose average price is circa £379 equivalent (for the Compact varieties, and where the most expensive currently is the larger DJ1 Bass Overdrive/Distortion at £474). Yet this article follows on from my recent post on Josh Smith’s pedalboard - where of course I featured his most excellent Signature Vemuram Myriad Hybrid Fuzz.

I have had my eye on a few Vemuram pedals over the years, but have always ...