There’s been quite the trend for Tube Preamp pedals of late - what with Friedman’s IR-D and IR-X, ThorpyFX Electric Lighting, Tubsesteader Lightkeeper and Magnesium, obviously some fairly large format solid-state types too like Thermion’s Freeway. And longer-term players too like Kingsley and Victory Amps. There’s never been more choice! And so much of what is now available is fantastic.

This new Tsakalis Mothership is another really smart take on floor-based tube amp / preamp with 2 ...

I’ve gone a little bit movie poster on this one! The saga of the forgotten Top Gun :

’The Bluesman!’

I’ve long been a fan of Chris Buck - and indeed named him as one of my favourite 25 Guitar Heroes back in a 2022 article. His incredibly expressive touch is second to none! And he can wring out the most impressive detail and nuance over several bars - from just a single note!

So it’s entirely fitting that Thorpy has built him an equally dynamic and expressive pedal to match Chris’s ...

I covered the IR-X back on September 28th - marking what a rip-roaring success it was - combining an all-analog Twin 12AX7 Tube Preamp with DSP Emulated Power Amp and Cab IR’s.

The control topology of the two pedals is nigh identical, with a few subtle differences, including Dual Bright + Structure Switches on the IR-D. Both pedals have Gain and Boost trimmers on the right-hand side. And both pedals retail at $499 | €595 | £499. Still relatively compact at 165 x 140 x 58 mms, while the ...

In a fairly signifiant innovation here - David has managed to distil down two of his most popular amps - the Plexi-style Small Box 50, and Hot-Rodded Plexi / JCM800 style BE-100 - into a single relatively compact 2-Channel + Boost format. Interestingly, and differently to the full-fat Victory Amplification V4 floor-based amps (Analog Tube Preamp + Analog Power Amp), David splits the two halves of the circuit into Tube Analog (Preamp), and DSP Modelling (Power Amp, Cab Sim & IR’s). This ...

So in my recent ’Guitar Elements’ series it’s finally come to Amps now - where I list out what I believe are the most historically significant and therefore Iconic amps. A lot of you are still conflating Iconic with Vintage, and discounting some of the more recent models - while Iconic does not necessarily infer a long term history and provenance - just that said item or element is a major marker or step forward in the evolution of that device - whatever it may be.

I’m not the first to do ...

When I started down this road many moons ago, my intentions were to keep things as simple as possible - but that particular rule book has long since been torn up and thrown under the bus. My rig has evolved pretty organically into a stereo setup - where I always have and most likely always will have a Solid-State amp on the Left Channel, and an All Tube variety on the right (along with 40 or so pedals in my pedal-chain).

My current incumbents are the Boss Katana KT100 and Carvin V3MC -...

Poland was both trickier and yet eventually easier to rationalise than originally perceived. I have scanned through many a country now, and Poland seems to be the last of those with sufficient numbers of high calibre pedal builders to warrant a dedicated feature*. As noted before - these sorts of article take quite a lot of work to complete - and so this is the last of these I will be doing for a while.

* Note that USA and Japan are the leading pedal builders of the world still and too ...

I feel Boss still kind of bossed it in 2018 - with 3 heavy hitters that took on all-comers in those categories - the Katana Air, Katana Artist and Nextone Artist - a trio pretty much suited for any sort of conditions - the first as the best of the portable practice amps - and the latter two as the ultimate versatile gigging-machines - for those that still like to lug amps around.

I feel that this sort of cabinet form factor of amp will be largely restricted to more fixed locations as ...

After the Best of French roundup, the German leg of the European tour turned out to be quite arduous. Germany have easily as many pedal builders as he UK but with a little more strength in depth. There’s a mix of everything from Germany - both vintage and innovation, and they’re of course very strong in the area of overdrive and distortion as backed up by their many superb high-gain amp builders.

Overall, I felt that there were a few more brands here that I was familiar with, and I chopped ...