Where the Birmingham Show was a little sprawling and chaotic for me, I very much felt more at home at the Studio 9294 venue for this year’s London Synth and Pedal Expo. As Media Partner for the show, the second year in a row, I was of course in for the entirety of both the day, and actually in very early in particular on the Sunday.
I thoroughly enjoyed the two days -I love having the #90 Bar & Kitchen next door - for some very decent lunches - superb burger on the first day, and Sunday...
To many commentators - ’2023’ has sort of been the ’Year of Chorus’ so far - while overall I’m not sure there have been enough releases to fully justify the label. While at the same time my own collection of compact chorus pedals has reached a very decent 21. I also have the larger format ThorpyFX Deep Oggin, and recent TC Electronic SCF reissue. So really not short of options for that style of Modulation!
This year has seen a number of recent additions - including most recently the ...
1987’s Marshall Silver Jubilee 2555 Amp Combo / Head - had an innovative and unusual preamp section that gave it a slightly higher gain and a somewhat darker and smoother output than the JCM800. The preamp circuit had three gain modes : Clean, Rhythm Clip, and Lead. Where the styling of the amp was also quite different too - with a silver / almost mirror-like finish facia panel, and a sort of muted cream Tolex - contrasting significantly to Marshall’s usual Black and Gold styling.
Part of ...
Another healthy selection - Modutility covering Modulation, Pitch and Utility pedal categories - for one of the strongest selection to date. Some of the pedals here are truly stellar, and I have a little over half here already in the collection.
I’m unlikely to ever get all the pedals featured here, but there are several already earmarked for acquisition in 2023 - with the Eventide H90 at the top of that list.
The ones I don’t yet own, or may never own even - include :
So it’s that time of year again when I trawl through the releases over these past 12 months or so and endeavour to extract the pedal highlights of the year. This exercise is all about drawing a line in the sand and figuring out which pedals deserve to be on the notable side of the line.
Of course everything I publish on Guitar Pedal X is highly curated - those are my own particular preferences and choices, and those are the pedals that I like the look of. So everything that appears on ...
Back in March of 2020 I did a piece on leading Blues Breaker derived Dual-Channel Overdrives - where I only owned one of the ones featured - namely the JHS 4-Star Mod Edition of Analog.Man King of Tone. In the interim period I have managed to collect 5 more in a fairly happenstance sort of manner - so that the only one in the above visual that I’ve still to land is the Browne Amplification Protein Dual Overdrive.
Of all the ones I have - all are special and / or limited editions apart from ...
So it’s only about a year ago that VS Audio launched its Blackbird early Fender Amps Preamp - which then came with 5 controls.
The new edition significantly expands on the original template by adding a Bias Tremolo with Intensity and Speed controls.
On the Preamp side we still have Drive, Volume and Tone knobs and the ERA switch - where you flip between Brownface and Blackface Mode. The Channel switch is new - allowing to flip between Normal and Bright Modes, while the former Gain ...
As promised, I have recently taken delivery of a MKII Alchemy Chorus with the intent of putting it through its paces against its progenitor / predecessor. The demos for sure sound brighter and sparklier - while there’s no substitute for proper due-diligence!
The process involved straight up comparisons for same knob positions - across the range, and then a head-to-head with the various presets.
When when you play the MKI in isolation it’s not particularly noticeably darker on its own - ...
The original VS Audio Alchemy is already one of my favourite Choruses - where it borrows from the Chase Bliss Audio playbook of Analog Signal combined with Digital Control Layer. So you get those gorgeous warm Stereo Analog BBD sounds - but with the added benefit of 6 onboard presets - which with the manual panel settings gives you a combined 7 possible settings you can rapidly flip between via right hand footswitch - for superior live playback!
The upper left hand output socket - as well ...
After a slow start to the year, everything sort of came to a crescendo in March - where I took delivery of a pedal for each day of the month. Of course some of these were embargoed from earlier months - while that volume of pedals for testing and pedalboard accommodation can be a little relentless.
There were also a number of key launches this month which can stress me out a touch - I obviously want to do well for those brands I support and pinpoint launches are always a little messy as you...