So this was truly a full-throttle month - with so much activity this month and a really busy NAMM release schedule. We also had a couple of JHS Faux Hist this month - some real and some not so much.

The month saw my most popular article ever on Instagram - the Iconic Pickup one - with currently 17.6K likes - still growing as the number of followers surpassed 8,000. It’s been a really grad graft slowly making my way up that slope - but some of the recent Guitar Elements posts have really ...

This is essentially the significantly re-engineered Nudist Buffer - with even greater high fidelity and signal preservation and an overall more refined experience.

Buffer’s are essential utilities for preserving higher frequencies in particular - which otherwise get diminished in an among your guitar and pedal cables. For every meter of cabling you will likely suffer an equivalent degree of signal loss - particularly in the upper register. 

A buffer very much boosts the fidelity of your...

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 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...

Obviously I’ve just recently done the run-down of the key Phaser releases for 2021. Where a number of those ended up in my Reference Collection. In fact the sum total is now 15 pedals - as pictured above! These are all different sizes and types really where the vast majority are analog, and the Alexander Calavera and Strymon Zelzah are digital. Here follows the inventory :

• Alexander Pedals La Calavera 3-Mode Phaser - $189
• Boss PH-1R 4-Stage Analog Phaser - $135
• Chase Bliss Audio Wombtone 2

It was evident fairly early on - that 2021 would be a significant year for Phasers, and as I kept adding them to my collection that kind of underlined the pertinence of those sentiments. So I’ve rounded up most of the usual suspects - and as many as I could comfortably fit into a visual - or 16 candidates - I may well add a few more as bonus rounds, and do note that the PastFX Foot Phaser Deluxe is from very late last year (December 29) which totally makes it eligible for this selection, which ...

August has been another impressively busy month with lots of excellent new pedal releases which has certainly kept me on my toes. I always thought August used to be a fairly quiet month in the annual release calendar. While I guess this year there have been so many delays - because of parts supply issues and the like - that lots of launches have been unusually pushed back - which means those pedals just weren’t ready until about now.

I am particularly impressed to have got my hands on the ...

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...

I’ve already called 2021 as being the year of the Phaser - with several varieties released this year and 4 of those entering my own collection already - including this one of course. This is a very significant step-up from a Phase 90, PH-2 or Small Stone and greatly expands the range and versatility of those earlier simpler formats.

At its core, the Phasia is an all-analog OTA variety of Phase-Shifter with a choice of different stages and Waveforms alongside 4 smart, intuitive ...