Another totally mad month for sure - loaded with frenetic activity and peppered with highs as well as crushing disappointments. The first give-away for GPX didn’t quite hit the highs I expected (said give-away closes tonight at 23:59 BST). And there are some weird gaps in the entrants’ home countries - certainly no shortage from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or much of mainland Europe. I’m active in a lot more countries than have so far entered the give-away, so I don’t fully understand why ...

The XO Variable Crossover essentially allows you to combine the Lower Frequencies of one pedal with the Higher Frequencies of another - blend them in parallel, and create entirely new textures and tones through that specific pedal combination - and by varying the centre point / mix of each side.

So you have in effect a High Pass Filter on the Right Channel - which shaves off all Lower Frequencies beyond / below the Threshold / Centre Point you set on the Crossover Frequency Knob, and the ...

I’ve followed Rabea Massaad for quite a few years now - and while I’ve not attended any of his Toska, Dorje or Frog Leap gigs yet - I’ve been to a number of his impressive Guitar Clinics - including at the last Birmingham Guitar Show most recently.

I’ve obviously grown up with Rabea mostly courtesy of his association with Rob Chapman and Lee Anderton / Andertons - having watched most of his output on those channels - including in particular ’Sounds Like’ alongside Matt Hornby - and a number...

Australia and New Zealand together have a fair few brands of international repute, and I for one certainly have a number of pedals of Australian origin in my collection. Foremost amongst those is Michael Ibrahim’s eponymous MI Audio / MI Effects - from which range past and present - I have 7 to date - with a couple more on the ’nice-to-have’ wishlist. Of the ones I have 2 are permanent features in my pedal-chain - the Super Crunch Box V2 (my Brown Sound pedal of choice) and ...

This is the 11th in the Pedal Builders Country Series as such, although I’ve had to cast the net slightly wider as I currently don’t consider there to be enough top-tier / International-level builders in a single country here to satisfy the usual criteria. Brazil and Argentina come fairly close - with Brazil having significantly the most concentrated volume of builders of any Country in that part of the world. Generally Brazil, Argentina and Chile are particularly well represented.

I used 4...

Throughout this year I’ve covered most of the typical pedal type categories - probably somewhere around 25-30 types overall, yet there are many more oddities that sit outside the scope of what’s regular or even marginally mainstream. Certain categories I haven’t covered yet include various utility pedals like ABY types - I may tackle those eventually, but certainly not this year. Yet I still like to spice things up every now and again with pedals that are often quite ...