What a magnificent start to the year -  I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong January selection - I could almost stick a pin in it and take the rest of the year off! Several of these slots won’t see much change between now and the end of the year - and so impressive is this latest batch of additions - that I can’t really see what might be improved in order to replace most of those.

I was not expecting to add the Eventide H90 quite so quickly - while the Hologram Microcosm has always ...

As contemporary mainstream music output becomes ever more polished there is a growing trend towards dissonance and imperfections at the same time. We’ve seen a number of recent pedals with White Noise features and/or scramble type filters - that somewhat deliberately ’mess up’ your sound!

The recent Beautiful Noises Exploder is just one such example, and Fairfield Circuitry have somewhat carried that sort of thing forward with AM / FM Radio Frequency / RFI Modulation on their new Roger That...

So I last did one of these back in 2020 - meaning that these ’Best of Overdrive’ run-downs seem to be a circa biennial affair. We’ve upped the numbers to 32 this year, while they represent barely a quarter of the overdrives I have in my reference collection - so there are obviously a lot of honourable mentions listed below - before the Final Thoughts section.

These types of exercises are incredibly tricky to strike the right balance of generally considered classic overdrive pedals and ...

So this is the first of my big annual category run-downs - where I list my favourite new pedals of the year - per category, and then do a final ’Best of the Best New Pedals’ feature. Note that these are my own preferences - selected on a variety of criteria - including tones, versatility, innovation, practicality, ease-of-use, and value - and of course just basic personal preference! Anything released over the last 12 months is eligible - but no more than 2 pedals from each brand can be ...

2021 has been another solid year for fuzz pedals - and the Fairfield Circuitry About 900 Fuzz is another superb example of enormously versatile and dynamic fuzz.

The 4 Knobs control Input Gain, Second Stage Bias and Gain, Second Stage Gain, and Output Level - where you essentially balance the input and output of the Two Cascading JFET’s. This hugely variable fuzz takes you from overdrive / fuzz-drive, through full-on fuzz and dense distortion - depending on how you dial in each ...

I actually only got to know ’Axe and You Shall Receive’ Owner / Founder Scott Hager relatively recently - while I first bought a pedal from his store (courtesy of Reverb.com) back in 2017 - my much loved ’Gold Bar’ edition of Dr Scientist’s The Elements Preamp / Drive which readers will have seen heavily featured on this site.

Earlier this year - back in March in fact - Scott and I bonded over Big Tone Music Brewery’s (BTMB) EQ’d Vintage Series...

I knew the ’These Go To 11’ website long before I was introduced to owner / founder Sebastian Nylund. It was the core reference for me for brands like BJFe and DanDrive and several more rarer boutique brands - and I have always admired Sebastian’s smart curation and selection process - and often used that in my own pedal discovery process.

These Go To 11 is an incredibly eclectic, but selective mix too of both mainstream and boutique pedal brands. It’s not exclusively guitar pedals like Joe...

UPDATE - Auction Results at base of article (below!)

I will start by saying that while not the biggest ever fan of Steely Dan, I am more than aware of their important cultural impact and influence in popular music. As a kid of the 80’s I sort of picked up on the second wave of Steely Dan - first with Club House’s major club smash mashup of Do It Again with Billie Jean (1983), then the use of ’Peg’ in De La Soul’s ’Eye Know’ (1989) - I also ...

This article was inspired by the recent launch of the Caroline Guitar Co. Somersault Lo-fi Modulator which is really a sort of Chorus - which all these others are indeed near enough all too at least to a degree. In fact Josh Scott of JHS fame kind of beat me to the punch on this with his last Thursday’s YouTube video - which I share in Final Thoughts below. Yet I had already drawn up my own shortlist of 9 in advance of that and Josh and I only overlap on 4 - the Somersault obviously, ...