You can count on Land Devices to harness the very best studio  / audio grade components to generate superior tones and textures. And this Moonbow combines dual hi-fidelity resonant filters across a cutoff frequency range of 20Hz to 5kHz.

You can further use a CV input to control the cutoff frequency more dynamically.

And finally you have an Overdrive circuit based on the Land Devices control strip with a 33dB Gain Range, running from -13dB to +20dB.

With those 5 key controls you can...

I’m not going to dwell too much on Blackfeet tribal lore and heritage (Amskaapi Piikuni) - other than to say that the design is derived from a culturally significant 4-band blanket which has relationship with the seasons and the many stages of life.

This is quite a departure from the usual styling of the brand, and a very welcome one in my opinion. These earthy colours, and the overall aesthetic of the pedal - with those distinctive knobs and symbols for labels mostly - interestingly that ...

So I’ve been meaning to do this article for a while, but kept putting it off - in the hope that we might see more brands materialising from this country. That has not been the case though - so now seems as good a time as any to focus on the small but mighty trifecta of Croatian brands - Dawner Prince Electronics, DryBell Musical Electronic Laboratory and Polarbear Effects.

I typically have a grid of a 9 for this style of article - so here I’ve selected my favourite 3 choices from each brand...

While this pedal shares the name of its Silky Smooth Saturating Overdrive sibling and they both share the same Audio Output Transformer - everything else is quite different. In fact the Silicon Steel Boost is a totally separately originated circuit - developed to deliver ultimate high headroom clean boosting, with potent EQ and subtle harmonics.

However much you raise the level - you never quite induce Overdrive breakup - you do get a subtle degree of saturation, while this pedal is mostly ...

I’ve always admired this Studio Style Console Box / Control Strip - while I’ve questioned whether I really need it. I have the Empress ParaEQ 2 DLX for all my EQ’ing needs, and I use some very specific gain-staging pedals, where some have up to +60dB onboard and an additional +30dB indenpdent boost - for pretty much limitless versatility.

I have several pedals with Audio Output transfomrmers onboard too, so I feel that I’m mostly covered for what I need already, and how I use those gain ...

So Fractal Audio Systems has thrown its hat in the ring with its first non-modelling device / unit - the VP4 Virtual Pedalboard Multi-FX Processor - which is quite a departure for the brand.

It’s obviously gunning for Line 6 and Eventide in particular, but also looking to knock out Boss and Strymon Workstation pedals. It has several of its own advantages, but with a number of caveats too. Overall it’s well priced for what it delivers - but for my own preferences it’s still somewhat over-...

Considering my well documented fallout with this brand - this is a slightly odd article for me. I might not get along with said brand name head honcho - but Jackson Audio still make some very decent pedals. They’re not necessarily always the best sounding overall, but in terms of their format innovation, build quality, feature set and usability they’re still a formidable force.

Pedal industry relationships are always complex - as they don’t just involve the builders, but distributors and ...

On first seeing this striking pedal you get instant Chase Bliss vibes - while this is an entirely new incredibly creative sort of glitchy circuit which Microlooper-style records its input into a buffer - where 9 x ’Playback Operators’ grab snippets from a 15 second Buffer and randomly play those back at different speeds and in different vector directions. The randomisation hits once per second where the 5 Playback Operator types get fired off randomly - i.e. some are played, some are not, and ...

So this is the final phase of the range revamp, bringing the Twain Dual Band / Stacked Compressor up to date with the other models. This is a refined and improved model over its predecessor - with serial changes inside and out.

Like the Stella - you now have the option of having the DITOS transformer-enhanced Balanced DI Out factory fitted by default.

And we see some significant updates with the Feed Forward / Feed-Back section, and Side Chain Filters. While the dual saturation engines ...