This new King Tone format has turned out to be something of a Marmite project for the brand - with consumers having mixed feelings on this new shape - which I feel owes a lot to the Danelectro Billionaire Series, which in turn surely took its form-factor in part from a computer mouse shape.

King Tone is beset with so many grey and black market fakes of its signature pedals, that these new designs are designed to both enhance the specific pedal performance and experience, but also make it ...

This is a project that has been going on for a while. I was just missing the Soma ’63 Vintage Preamp and the Sucker Punch High Gain Distortion - both of which I managed to source recently at relatively reasonable prices.

Out of this collection of 9 - quite a number are now discontinued - the Supa Cobra Overdrive and the entire bottom row - Hammer Distortion, Little Samson Overdrive / Distortion, and Sucker Punch High Gain Distortion.

I’ve always considered Nick Greer to be the King of ...

The new format of Blues Power has elicited mixed feeling from the pedal community. A little ’Marmite’ I guess - with some loving the new rounded enclosure style with inset knobs - while others are being far from complementary. It’s kind of reminiscent of some former Danelectro enclosure shapes - while very much its own thing. And those flush inset knobs actually look really cool.

It’s a touch unusual to have the In/Out TS Patch Cable socket stacked on top of each other - but I feel this ...

I’ve waxed lyrical for a long time about the potency of the Daily Driver - where I originally acquired it based on how close it came to the tone and timbre of the Pete Cornish CC-1. The CC-1 can replicate / reproduce the tones of the TS808, Timmy, Klon and Blues Breaker with ease - and this new Boost addition makes it even more versatile.

The original had those 4 key corner knobs - and a single toggle switch for More Hi-Cut / None / Some Hi-Cut. Those 5 controls gave the pedal an incredible...

This article was originally suggested by my now good friend Henry Kaiser - leading guitar and guitar effects experimentalist and prolific producer and recording artist. He’s been a long-term friend of Toshihiko Tanabe - of Tanabe.TV fame and thought I should do one of my pedal roundups on Japanese Boutique Pedal Builders.

I had long intended to do a feature on Japanese Pedal Makers - but could not decide on the context or format - as there are so many notable brands. Upon Henry’s suggestion...

So it’s that time of year again when I trawl through the releases over these past 12 months or so and endeavour to extract the pedal highlights of the year. This exercise is all about drawing a line in the sand and figuring out which pedals deserve to be on the notable side of the line.

Of course everything I publish on Guitar Pedal X is highly curated - those are my own particular preferences and choices, and those are the pedals that I like the look of. So everything that appears on ...

May was a fairly regular month all-told, punctuated by 2 extraordinary releases and the upbeat Birmingham Guitar Show - re-energized after last year’s hiatus. The two killer releases being the revolutionary Meris LVX True Stereo Modular Delay System (Sound Designer), and the really cool OBNE + Chvrches Screen Violence Stereo Saturator + Modulator Shoegazer style pedal collaboration - both of which I was fortunate enough to get in on the first run - I look forward to reporting more in-depth on ...

I’m a little late to the party on this brand which seemingly came from nowhere in a very short time - and which now has pretty much attained worldwide distribution - including at Andertons. Scotty Smith of ProAnalog Devices is back in the mix again after his 3rd alleged financial meltdown - which saw large amounts of money owed to Cusack Music - which was in part resolved by Cusack / Mojo Hand FX taking over the IP of the Manticore and releasing it as their own Sericon Klone. And while I’ve ...

So I last did one of these back in 2020 - meaning that these ’Best of Overdrive’ run-downs seem to be a circa biennial affair. We’ve upped the numbers to 32 this year, while they represent barely a quarter of the overdrives I have in my reference collection - so there are obviously a lot of honourable mentions listed below - before the Final Thoughts section.

These types of exercises are incredibly tricky to strike the right balance of generally considered classic overdrive pedals and ...