With me being a pedal aficionado first and foremost - that’s obviously my main area of focus for this imminent show and the above pedal brand visual - while there is an equal amount of killer Synth brands present too - as listed below.

This London Synth & Pedal Expo is my good friend Paolo De Gregorio’s first UK Event - who always has a fantastic multi-brand Stompbox Exhibit Booth at the NAMM Shows - and has organised a series of events for several years now throughout the North ...

This is probably the most anticipated of my 12 Degrees roundups - and is a touch more complex and different to the other 2 in the series. Within each category here there can be a huge difference in character and output - for instance with Fuzz Faces going from quite mild to rather searing Meathead and Regulus VIII levels of aggression. So the gradual step up in gain per category doesn’t apply here. And because of circuit variations and differences in components and construction, each and every ...

And so to the 4th and final of the ’Pedal Primary Colour Wheel’ series. Here I highlight the most obvious of pedal colour associations or the Green Tube Screamer pedals - as originally by Ibanez, and Maxon to some degree as the OEM builder of said overdrive. It has to be the most ubiquitous of overdrive pedals - pretty much every pedal builder there ever was has made their own derivations of this relatively simple mid-humped drive circuit at some stage - albeit not all in signature Green ...

This is the second of likely 3 features inspired by my ’Pedal Primary Colour Wheel article’. I already covered off the colour ’Red’, and now we’re onto a fairly obvious category wholly dominated by the MXR Phase 90, its adherents, evolutions and derivations.

I own only a single on of the 9 featured here - the Alexander La Calavera, while I also possess a sort of mini version of the MXR Phase 99 AKA the Phase 95. My own favourite phaser is still the Chase Bliss Audio Wombtone, but I own 2 ...

After my 28 strong Compact Tone Bender roundup it was inevitable that I would do the same sort of thing with Big Muffs. My understanding and experience has of course improved immensely since I last did a proper Big Muff overview, and here like I did with the Tone Benders, I try to select a representative selection by each of the different main varieties of Muff - as indicated by icons in my above visual.

Even though Kit Rae’s Big Muff Page identifies 12 specific versions of Big Muff - each ...

Last time I did a Tone Bender overview I limited the selection to 12, and as much by chance as anything else I still managed to get a pretty decent roundup of most of the main Tone Bender varieties although not quite all as featured here. In the world of fuzz though only the Big Muff can compete with the convoluted and complex nature of the Tone Bender Family Tree - which I will endeavour to distil first, and then extrapolate into my own favourite / preferred pedals!

It all starts with the ...

So today Maxon announced its own contribution to the 808 Overdrive 40th Anniversary celebrations - most will know that Maxon OEM’d Ibanez’s original TS808 Tube Screamers and continued making the same after the partnership dissolved - as the OD808. Maxon has delivered a pretty bog-standard looking OD808 bar for an option/mode toggle above the Balance knob, and Robert Keeley’s familiar signature in sharpie fashion across the main facia. In fact only 40 of this exact signed model...

There have been a number of new Analog Delay Pedals released this year and with the most recent release of the Bondi Effects Art Van Delay - I thought it opportune to do a round-up. When I last featured 12 of the Best Analog Delays - I covered pedals of all sizes - while here I’m just focusing on the compact enclosure ones. In fact I’ve made a slight concession towards the Stone Deaf Syncopy which is slightly over-sized - or the same size as its tremendous Tremotron Tremolo sibling ...

I’m one of the relatively few players who still really likes flangers. You no longer see them that often on the typical pedalboard - as mentioned in my previous ’4 Next Level Medium to Large Enclosure Flangers’ a recent casualty to popular whims is the still excellent Chase Bliss Audio Spectre - the only pedal featured here with tap-tempo. I’ve gone with the discontinued but analogue Boss BF-2 instead of the newer digital BF-3 which does have press and hold tap-tempo ...