Red Panda Lab never do things by halves and here have hewn a most mighty ring modulator. My good friend Henry Kaiser, who is something of a Ring Mod connoisseur, has actual had one of these for a while and really loves it. He speaks very highly of the Dr Scientist Phreak too - which he acquired similarly early.

To date I’ve not really gotten into Ring Modulation, and the only pedal of that type I own to date is the cool Pigtronix Ring Master Analog Multiplier. I’ve long intended to get into...

So May started with my posting the last of the NAMM Show stragglers, followed by an initial eclectic mix of different pedal types - while gradually leaning into ’Andy Timmons’ Month. I’ve always thought Andy to be a wonderful human being and a particularly fine journeyman guitarist. While it’s only in fairly recent years that he’s become somewhat more elevated in my affections as one of my all-time favourite guitar heroes. You will note that he did not feature in my last article on personal ...

It was about time I did my roundup of favourite and preferred Mid-Size enclosure pedals. This means we’re covering Medium-Slim, Medium-Tall and Medium-Square enclosures - depending on my prevailing mindset - the Horizontal / Medium-Stout types I often group with ’Large’. For my Pedal-Chain in particular - space is very tight - and I really cannot accommodate anything beyond Medium-Square on those slots.

The thought process is deciding between Compact and Medium box solutions involves your ...

And so to the final pedal category roundup - ’Time-Based Effects’ - before I reveal the Best of the Best New Pedals for the year. This category is not quite as congested as the others - and while last year was for sure the year of the reverb - we did see a few more prime examples during the year. I guess this year was also to a tiny degree the year of the Analog Delay - with some great new contenders there too!

For my own preferences - I am almost entirely a Stereo Workstations guy when it ...

And here is the turn of the combined Modulation, Pitch and Utility category - which I affectionately label ’Modutility’. Obviously as frequently mentioned -  2021 was ’Year of the Phaser’ - so 8 favourites of those here, alongside 4 choruses, 3 flangers and a couple of stand-out Amp and Cab sims. 

Some genuinely innovative pedals here - and particularly handy new expression controllers in the guise of the Chase Bliss Audio Expression Roller, and Cooper FX Expression Generator. Free the Tone...

Andy Ebsen’s Effekt Boutique has been one of my own essential pedal reference and resource website for many years now. Andy is so smart with his curation and pedal selection - that there are several pedals there that just cannot easily be found elsewhere if at all. I regularly check in on Effekt-Boutique.de several times a week - just to see what smart pedal choices Andy has most recently unearthed!

Over the years I have acquired a fair few pedals from Effekt Boutique - obviously...

Since we have had 5 cool new and formidable Stereo Reverb pedals this year - it seems opportune to review the category and figure out which are the standout options and alternatives - past and present.

My own journey into Reverb started with the Strymon BigSky - which was my mainstay for a while, then Source Audio announced its new Dual-Channel Ventris and I was very keen on that - but that edition was very slow to materialise, and so I moved instead to Boss’s excellent RV-500 next.

The...

I’m a huge fan of Red Panda’s output - I love the V2 form-factor and extended feature sets of its 5 core pedals. In fact I should really own more - while the only one I’ve thus far acquired has been the V2 Particle Granular Delay.

At this year’s virtual Winter NAMM Red Panda introduced their new and improved Bitmap Bitcrusher - which is fantastic and category-leading, and this week for Summer NAMM they have updated their remaining Raster Digital Delay to V2 ...

Red Panda’s Bitmap Bitcrusher Pedal is the next of its range to see enhancements and size-shrinkage - bringing that into line with the same size format now as the Tensor, Particle and Context - in fact only the Raster Digital Delay remains to be updated.

This is probably the most significant Red Panda Update yet as the previous version had just 6 controls - compared to the 11 of this V2. The Modulation and Wave Sections in particular have seen a lot of additions - with numerous ...