Wishing You a Happy Xmas and a Wonderful New Year!

I would sincerely like to thank you all for accompanying me on this year’s adventures.

And I would like to apologise to a few of you that I may have snapped at somewhat towards the end of the year - I was already burned out in mid October - it’s a miracle I’ve made it to the end, but not without some casualties in the latter weeks. My mental health these days - and demeanour has been a little fractious - so I do apologise if you ended up on the receiving end of that.

I’ve been so busy this year that I’ve lost count of the all-nighters I’ve done - and the numerous evenings that I barely had 3 or 4 hours sleep. The sheer volume of work done this year  has also meant that I’ve not been particularly good at answering comments and messages - there’s just been nothing left in the tank for that. I would really like someone to help me run the community - that I can liaise with regularly - and they can relay some of my answers for me - not sure how practical that is - but Phillip McKnight somehow makes that work for him!

According to the site stats I’ve written 416 articles this year - including this one!

There have been some notable milestones too on Instagram - before this year I had not broken 2,000 likes on an article - this year I then had this following sequence - by date :

17th February - Drunk Beaver Distortion = 3,115 Likes

10th March - Guitar Headstock Ergonomics = 10,642 Likes

7th April - 16 Most Iconic Pickups = 20,136 Likes

I now get fairly regular articles in the thousands - but that wasn’t a thing before this year.

I was at 5,000 followers on the 23rd of October last year, and I’m now up to 11,200-odd as of writing this - so a signficant jump this year. I even leap-frogged Markus Reeves briefly at around 10,600 - but he’s stormed ahead now after a couple of strong reels. I pretty much know which articles can bring in the numbers - but that’s not what I’m about - I’m the antithesis of clickbaiting! Still very much an evolutionary year.

Not everything I started in 2023 worked out - and there will be some changes in 2024 - my Merch Store will finally go up - as will my Patreon page. I’ve been consulting with lots of different people - and the going has been a little slow - but things are starting to fall into place. Hopefully will have some decent advertisers on the site too in the new year!

As I write this I can feel the last embers of adrenaline starting to seep away - I’m so exhausted I fear that I may fall into some manner of coma hereafter.

I will be taking a couple of weeks off to recouperate and re-charge my batteries.

In terms of additions into the reference collection - this was the first sub-200 year - just! The December tally stands at 196± pedals - some prototypes also arrived thoughout the year - and I’m still not sure if those are final or simply iterative editions - so not sure they go into the total. January is a big month already - as I’ve some killer pedals landed and landing for then - will be good to start off the new year on a strong note!

It just remains for me to wish you all a wonderful time with your nearest and dearest over the festive season - and hopefully an inspired and prosperous 2024!

Kindest regards as always,

Stef

Guitar Pedal X