I was a touch critical about the HX One - possibly overly so - as it’s really decent for what it delivers and how. While I could not be more effusively positive about this new POD Express!
For anyone starting out in guitar effects - you get everything you need in one smart little box - with intuitive and mostly surfaced control (vs Noise Gate).
If I was thinking of buying in my very first guitar effect pedal - then I don’t think I could do better than this. It contains 7 Amp & Cab ...
Wow, The Guitar Show was certainly a rollercoaster of an event with the busiest crowd I’ve witnessed to-date. At times it was quite a struggle to make your way through the packed waves of attendees, which did though start to peter out just a little after 3 o’c. For me it was fast and furious from the start - and I found it a little awkward navigating around the hall - as the stand layout seemed to have all kinds of little nooks and crannies - which made some booths incredibly easy to overlook ...
As mentioned, the KMA Machines Endgame Duality Calibrator has been several years in the making, and no expense has been spared in delivering the ultimate end-of-chain tone-enhancer - this thing is wholly feature-packed!
It combines True Stereo Double-Tracking, with stereo width enhancement, with Stereo FX Loop, Celestion IR / Cab Sim, with further Tube Power Amp Sim - options for Bluetooth or TRS inputs, alongside Ambient Space Simulation, and a plethora of connectivity - with pertinent ...
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 ...
The Modutility roundup combines Modulation, Utility and Pitch type pedals - it also includes Multi-FX and Multi-Modulation pedals of course. Some years this selection is relatively sparse - while this year it’s totally chock-a-block! In fact it was a struggle to whittle the Longlist down - and inevitably some pedals I wanted to feature did not make the cut - including the Endorphin.es Ghost Pedal Multi-FX and Subdecay Prometheus 3 Dual Super Filter.
I still feel that this selection of 26 is...
So right at the end of last month Rob Chapman posted up a YouTube video of a rundown of his all-time favourite guitar pedals. He initially states he’s going to name his 10 most favoured ones - but goes on to mention 20 - which I’ve fully included here.
Rob has a great ear for tone - as countless of his own and Anderton’s videos have proven time and time again. And I really love his everyman approach to guitar gear. I’ve encountered him in person 2 or 3 times now over the years - and he’s ...
Boss has really pushed the boat out with its super neat and actually incredibly potent compact IR-2 Amp & Cabinet simulator. You get 11 superior quality amp types - loaded with Celestion Digital IRs - as detailed below. For a simply huge range of sounds - with the minimum of fuss. You don’t quite have the granularity of some of the more advanced IR pedals - where you can define mic placement down to the centimetre - what you have is instant satisfaction though - and you can deploy this ...
The FREEWAY is actually a sort of shrunken down and evolved version of Thermion’s ZERO Amplifier - minus the Power Amp stage, and with some extra features for the modern player. Its key attribute is how you can pretty much plug it into anything - analog / amp / DAW - without the need for any additional interface.
As the above visual highlights - this features a version of the ZERO Analog Amplifier with further Analog Speaker Emulation, and an expanded Digital Reverb section from the ZERO - ...
At the upper echelons of load boxes you kind of have the Universal Audio OX Box (Amp-top Box) as the Reactive Load / Load Box reigning champion - with the Boss Tube Amp Expander as its main challenger. Obviously Universal Audio has a lot of pedigree and experience in this area, and have put all of that extensive knowledge to great use in a new stompbox format - which covers most of what made that utility so great.
It has to be noted that his is specifically a Dynamic Speaker Emulator and ...
So IK Multimedia / AmpliTube has at last released a pedal hardware version of its highly celebrated ToneX Modelling Software - thereby issuing a challenge to Kemper, Fractal Audio, Helix and everything else that it out there. Of course most of those other devices are infused with Multi-FX - some with very extensive Effects Libraries, while this ToneX pedal has simply 5 Stereo Reverbs (from the X-Space), a Compressor, Noise-Gate and 3-Band Parametric EQ beyond its Modelling abilities.
The ...