This has been all over social media as of late, and I do generally enjoy the Kalimba format - I use mine quite a lot with my Boss RC-600 Loop Station - it’s a great instrument for looping and tweaking on-the-fly. And I had long considered the £275 Lottie Canto Colour Palette take on the Kalimba - which adds 8 effects to the core Kalimba - mine just has the output jack - which works very nicely with my wireless system. While Bastl Instruments’ take is a whole other category. Essentially the ...

The Habit was launched in March of 2022, and was the third of Chase Bliss’s Experimental Looper / Delay Trifecta - following the Mood Micro-Looper from June 2019, and the Blooper Endless Looper in September of 2019 - that same year. All three are Experimental Looper / Delay types - with the emphasis on Looping for the first two, and the emphasis on Delay for the Habit - which has some very clever tricks on scanning through and doubling up on the sample buffer. So in essence the Habit is a smart...

It’s funny how quickly things change! I thought I was all set to get the Walrus Audio Xero Polylooper as my next likely looper pedal. While Emily Hopkins’ demo in particular has persuaded me that it should rather be this Native Audio Pattern Keeper. Emily’s demo is also an excellent advertisement for her own OBNE Parting collaboration too - which I’m hoping to get in B’s Music Purr-Ting Edition eventually!

I always say you need to find your own lane for effects pedals - what sort of pedal ...

I’ve featured a number of sample-repeaters / micro-loopers of late - while I really like the sound and look of this one from Glitch Cloud Audio.

"Haze is a generative composer that transforms sound into texture. Skips, stutters, and fluid time become rhythm and motion. Feed it a loop. Plug in an instrument. Let it mutate for hours."

I recently covered the Puremagnetik JOTS - which I likened to pedals from Chase Bliss, Discomfort Designs and Kinotone. And this is another of that ilk, and...

This is my first exposure to Puremagnetik - where this is actually their second pedal, preceded by the LAPS Multitrack Collage Machine.

Puremagnetik seemingly mines sort of similar territory to Chase Bliss, Discomfort Designs and Kinotone - creating micro-looper style manipulators and multi-track layering and effects shaping.

The JOTS consists of 2 x 30 second Samples / Buffers / Tracks which you manipulate in various ways. There are 2 x toggle-switches, one sets which Track you are ...

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 - ...

This release came in very quick and hard! It’s happening more and more that pedal brands release limited special editions just for Black Friday. Originally those were just unique artwork variants - while latterly we’re getting entirely new and unique secret project circuits / pedals.

I love most everything Gamechanger does - while not every pedal necessarily fits in practically within my own usage requirements and preferences. Traditionally Gamechanger devices have all been rather oversized...

The Mood is Chase Bliss’s most perennially popular and celebrated bestseller - by far and away the most sold Chase Bliss pedal to date.

It also happens to have had the most different special and limited edition artworks - and I’ve selected 4 each of those for the Mood I and Mood II - I’m sure I’ve probably overlooked 1 or 2 variants - while hopefully I’ve covered all he best looking ones!

Up until now the Light Bright edition was my favourite - while I feel that may have been pipped by the new ...

Kinotone’s Jaak Jenson is proving to be one of the finest sound engineers of his generation - with a trio now of killer unique pedals.

I wasn’t sure how I would deploy the Ribbons in my chain - so that one’s still on the ’maybe’ list - lots of my friends really love it, and use it for all kinds of things - while I’m still seeking a proper connection there.

I did get the Sparks Harmonic Processor - or Stereo Overdrive + State Variable Filter + Wavefolder. I mostly got that one because of...