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 ...

I obviously need to add the Hephaestus to the collection as I have each of the other 3 corners of that quadrilogy. And where for the others the single knob is a sort of Master Volume - i.e. combined Volume and Gain, for the Hephaestus you control how many Volts pass through the circuit. At its core it’s a fairly classic 2-transistor Fuzz - albeit with some smart variations. While when you turn the knob down beyond the 1 o’c mark - you get a really cool harmonic sub-octave which does some really...

This article has been a long time coming - I’ve teased it a few times now - but there was always one or two pedals missing from the list - and in fact new varieties and iterations inbound! I have all of these in the reference collection now bar the Analog Alien Bucket Seat Overdrive and the super rare Keeley Bootlegger Overdrive - which was a Sweetwater Limited Germanium Run of the Red Dirt - back in 2016.

I probably won’t be getting the Bucket Seat as I don’t really see the point in that ...

Much like with the recent 32 of the Best Compact Overdrive Selection I now own all these Mini Fuzz Pedals featured here. Actually where the Decibelics The Reverend (Mini Expandora) has yet to be officially released - I should be receiveing the latest prototype any day now, and judging by Guillem Vilademunt’s previous Mini Masterpieces we have every reason to look forward to that one.

Other than that - everything is now in the collection - while this larger quest is nowhere near complete yet...

Readers should know by now that I’m a huge fan of the overlapping genre of Fuzzy-Drive and Fuzzstortion style gain pedals - which tend to cover a variety of Fuzz, Overdrive and Distortion pedals - which all have a certain fuzzy character to them where they blur at least a couple of boundaries.

For me the sort of archetype of that sound is the Bixonic Expandora - while there are a great number of pedals that fall into that same sort of catchment area - and the 28 listed here are just a small...

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 ...

So this is one of most significant works in a while, and carries on the legacy of two of my most popular all-time articles on the 12 Degrees of Saturation - the Original that evolved in the early months of 2017, and the follow-up which materialised in September of 2018.

I obviously deal with a lot of reader inquiries pretty much on a daily basis, and one of the more popular lines of inquiry has been about overdrives. And while Josh Scott attests to the fact that there are only 5 core ...

It’s about time I did a feature on the Other Green Overdrive - which has long since become a firm favourite of Nashville session players. It’s very much a mostly flat-mids overdrive as such where its overall output profile is quite different to the better known TS808 - with quite a bit more low end present and much less in the way of compression - so a somewhat fatter more open-pored sort of overdrive.

Most are fans of the extra low-end body, while several players have ...

It’s been a couple of years since I last did one of these particular genre roundups and this year has seen a number of new entrants into this category which really makes this worth visiting again right now. I’ve already done a feature on the larger dual-channel Bluesbreaker style pedals this year - KOT etc. While the Fredric Effects Blue Monarch, Jackson Audio Golden Boy and Siren Pedals Juneau are the newbies for 2020.

Moreover - the much loved Bondi Effects Del Mar has been reissued in ...