Reader Charles H requested that I do a roundup of Clean Blend Overdrives - which resulted in the following selection. Most Bass Overdrives have Clean-Blend by default - while all the ones I have selected here are more specifically Guitar Overdrives. I personally don’t find myself needing to use Clean Blend so much - but I can totally understand why so many players find this functionality useful or even essential. The Blend knob is variously labelled Blend, Clean, Dry and Mix. I’ve tried to ...

This is my third and final Medium Enclosure overview for this year - following on from Flangers and Rotary Pedals. I surmised that for most modulation type pedals most of the action and preferred candidates as such can be found well within the Compact Enclosure Format - while for the 3 effects categories I’ve featured separately - there is a need to consider a slightly larger form factor as that’s where the main concentration of exemplary contenders lies. That’s not to say ...

Back in the autumn of last year I realised that while Marshall tones were overwhelmingly well represented within my pedal-chain, I had nothing to represent that other classic UK amp type - the wonderful Vox AC30. The Vox AC30 is one of the few amps that has both stellar clean and distortion tones - best described as ’sparkling’ - both being unique and distinct and brilliantly utilised by The Beatles, U2’s The Edge, and above all - Brian May of Queen. In fact it was the Brian ...

I must confess that I have thus far not paid sufficient mind to the exact power needs of my aforementioned fairly lengthy pedal chain (see Pedal Chain Delight). In fact I use 6 different power-supplies and probably too much daisy-chaining at the moment. Improbably though, my chain is still remarkably noise-free (perhaps not totally 100%), but I pretty much know where it could do with improvements.

A key problem is that decent, properly isolated power supplies are relatively dear, and I ...