Readers of this blog should be well aware by now of Skindred’s Lead Guitarist and Redbeard Effects Head Honcho Mikey Demus. And while I had been very familiar with his band Skindred for a number of years - my focus didn’t shift fully to Mikey himself until he got into partnership with Adrian Thorpe and started producing his own range of signature pedals.

The first release was an exceptional take on Mikey’s core signature Orange Rockerverb 100 Amp sound - the Red Mist ...

I’ve been following this pedal’s development since it first emerged - now pictured in its second iteration with more evenly spaced toggle-switches around its perimeter. In short each of those 12 x 3-way switches is neutral / off in its middle position - while left/right or up/down gives you different pathways through the circuit which often impacts multiple circuit elements and component values simultaneously. In some ways this is something of a chaos-engine with around 500K ...

This post is to a large extent triggered by the recent launch of the new V2 Decibelics Angry Swede Distortion - with added Blend control. This has for a significant time been my favourite straight-up HM-2 Heavy Metal replica favourite - and is an even better proposition now.

Of course if you want more extended-range alternatives - I have listed out my preferred candidates at the different enclosure sizes - Mini, Compact, Medium and Large. Since the last time I did this exercise I&rsquo...

This article was triggered by a question from Ryan C who wanted my take on the Boss OD-200 vs the Strymon Sunset - and why the latter was a more permanent part of my own pedal-chain versus the seemingly more capable and full-featured OD-200 - which I will endeavour to answer here as best I can.

I decided to widen the selection as far as possible and get in a few more alternatives for sake of comparison - while that task proved a lot tricker than I had foreseen. The key criteria were to...

I periodically do these category round-ups, typically triggered by a pedal launch or two, as is the case in this instance. This is my own preferred Overdrive selection - intentionally as broad as possible - with actually 12 categories of overdrives, but could still be an even longer listing, and I’ve had to make some very difficult choices for the final selection even though it is relatively numerous at 28 strong. I would have liked to have included one from my so called ’Harmonic ...

I’ve encountered a number of ’Best Compressor’ articles this year which I really felt were not fully representative of the very best of what is out there. That was the catalyst for this feature, along with a couple of new compressors I had not properly featured yet, and the fact that I’ve not done a Compressor round-up for a good couple of years now.

Pretty much all the compressors listed here are / were already known to me, while I picked up a few new ones ...

There have been a number of new Tremolo pedals fairly recently released, and in fact I was tempted to acquire another in a roundabout fashion. The catalyst was actually the new Rock Fabrik Effects Kuek Touch Sensitive Dynamic Tremolo - yet that comes in a medium vertical BB enclosure and I only have space for a compact. So luckily Anasounds entered the scene with their own version new Ages Harmonic Tremolo which did much the same thing as the Kuek - but in my preferred size / form factor!

&...

For me, this turned out to be the best The Guitar Show yet - where I pretty much managed to round off all my pre-show goals - in terms of seeing what and whom I wanted to / needed - as per the following highlights. I caught 2 great lunchtime showcases - first by Mikey Demus of Skindred / Redbeard Effects fame and then Rabea Massaad of Andertons, Chapman, Dorje, Toska, etc. fame - and D’Addario as it turned out - albeit people were really just there to see Bea play.

I must have ...

Robert Keeley has of course modified more than these three Boss pedals - yet I personally feel that these are the ones really worth having. I have featured both the Keeley Freak Fuzz Modded BD-2 Blues Driver and Twilight Zone Modded MT-2 Metal Zone on this site several times before. In fact the Freak Fuzz Blues Driver is my favourite overdrive pedal of all time! It cleans up wonderfully with your guitar volume control - much in the same way as a Fuzz Face, and it has that same sort of boost ...

Birmingham’s The Guitar Show is the UK’s main guitar / gear show, and this year features the largest selection of pedal brands yet as far as I’m aware. Obviously there are several large distributors here representing a number of brands - like Audio Distribution Group which covers Cioks Power Supplies, Darkglass Electronics, Death by Audio, EarthQuaker Devices, Emma Electronic, Fulltone, JRAD / J Rockett, JPTR FX, KMA Audio Machines, Meris, Neunaber, Maxon, Nobels, Old Blood ...