New Pedals in the Class of 2025 Pedal-Chain Snapshot = 41

[OCTOBER]  = 9

[NOVEMBER] = 6

[MARCH] = 5

[SEPTEMBER] = 5

[AUGUST] = 4

[JANUARY] = 3

[FEBRUARY]  = 3

[APRIL] = 2

[JUNE] = 2

[MAY] = 1

[JULY] = 1

[A-Z by Brand]

1. Becos FX CompIQ Pro Yuna Soft Knee Blackmer VCA Studio Style Compressor [SEPTEMBER]
2. Blue Colander Grimrobe Dual Cascaded Super Rat [OCTOBER]
3. Blue FX Devices Fuzz Fields Ultimate Modulated Fuzz [SEPTEMBER]
4. Boss RT-2 Rotary Ensemble Leslie / Rotary Speaker

This has turned out to be the largest category for 2025 with 38 pedals in this selection. As I favour those pedals that I own first, and then the more pedalboard-friendly editions - inevitably there would be some casualties for the year. With the most significant of those being the larger format Meris Enzo X, and the Polyend MESS Multi-Effect Step Sequencer. I know there are some who favour each of those - but they just aren’t targets for me personally.

 I always talk about having a lane - ...

I’m not sure most are aware, but I’m a huge fan of Jamaica derived Dub Music - Osbourne ’King Tubby’ Ruddock, Hopeton ’Scientist’ Brown, and of course Lee ’Scratch’ Perry, Neil ’Mad Professor’ Fraser, Adrian Sherwood and more. I own and favour dozens of Dub Recordings - classic and modern - and touching on all the different varieties of speaker shaking dub - proper Dub Sound System fare.

So this Riddim & Ting device is right up my street - what a superb idea, and as is usual for Teenage ...

Occasionally something so innovative materialises - that it transcends boundaries. And while this is of course massively and mostly a pedal blog - I do also have time for innovations in related fields too.

I’m not going to go into too much detail here beyond the Specs! - you just need to watch the demos to be convinced.

What Roland has achieved with the TR-1000 is utterly magnificent - in combining full vintage style analog circuits with cutting edge digital ones - giving you the key ...

So I obviously invested in the Polyend Step Drum Machine Pedal back in February of this year ($499) - which has a little more about it than the Bead Buddy 2 - including 2000+ Samples, 1000 Song Presets, 332 Beats, 245 Kits, 65 Punch-in Effects, 16 Steps, 15-20 Parameters per Step, and 4 Tracks of Drums, Percussion, Pads, and Stabs.

By contrast the Bead Buddy 2 has 24 Genres, 13 Drum Sets - including 4 Drum Sets, 220+ Styles / 230 Songs Onboard, and romo for 320 Drum Sets.

While the Bead...

Mooer was due to be at the recent London Synth and Pedal Expo that I attended over the weekend, but ended up being a casualty of the Heathrow Substation Fire - the only pedal that got there in time was its GS1000 Intelligent Amp Profiling Processor and there was some kind of power supply issue with that - so it needed to be retired on the very first day!

I was hoping to see the GL100 Looper and this Prime M2 at the show - while alas neither of those pedals made it in the end! 

The Prime...

So February, as expected, turned out to be quite the slow moving month - with not too many featured releases. You always get the big announcements at NAMM - and then it takes a few months typically for those pedals to filter through.

There were a few heavy hitters that emerged in February or sooner - including the Kernom Elipse Modulation Playground, and the Polyend Step Drum Machine Pedal - both of which went on the board this month.

I also made the Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah a permanent ...

I’ve had my Polyend Step for around 3 weeks now - thank you to the excellent customer support at Polyend - in particular Borsuk and Mitch. Great customer support is always a sign of good things!

So I’m 3 weeks in now, while I’m largely still fairly just scratching the surface! If you look at the topline statistics we’re talking about 2000+ Samples, 1000 Song Presets, 332 Beats, 245 Kits, 65 Punch-in Effects, 16 Steps, 15-20 Parameters per Step, and 4 Tracks of Drums, Percussion, Pads, and ...

So we’ve had smart Drum Machine Pedals before - best exemplified by the Dedalo Beat, DigiTech SDRUM, Rainger FX Snare Trap, and Singular Sound Beat Buddy, while Polyend’s ’Step’ - takes the whole concept a level higher!

This is almost a kind of Linn Drum in pedal format - with 2000+ Samples onboard, 500 Presets, 200 distinct Drum Kits, 4 layers of Drum Tracks, and 16 (4 x 4) clearly visible rhythm steps.

You can kick in a whole load of different effects, drum fills and outros - a load ...