So the Katana-Mini X sits between Boss’s Katana Mini (7W) and Katana-Air (30W) both in girth and output levels. The Mini is 230mm wide, the Mini X is 287mm wide, and the Katana-Air is 350mm wide, while the Mini X is the tallest - at 200mm, compared to the Katana-Air’s and Mini’s Height of 181mm.

There are several points of interest to this new amp. I feel that Boss got the balance here between feature set and simplicity wholly spot-on. And besides having a superb sounding 5 Inch 10 Watt ...

I got my Boss XT-2 Xtortion around the same time as the MZ-2 Digital Metalizer - a few years back now - and always felt that the Xtortion pedal never quite reached its full potential. There was something strange about those controls - where you could kind of feel the potential of that circuit - but never quite get to the best version of it. Unlike the MZ-2 which was already every way brilliant!

My good friend Vitalii also harboured similar sentiments when he first encountered the Boss ...

So for circa 30% less outlay, and a 38% saving in footprint - you get mostly the same device as the larger GX-100 unit. The obvious differences are the 5 fewer footswitches, and lack of CTL/EXP and In/Out Settings buttons. You also loose the 5-pin MIDI In & Out - where you need to use the USB port for that instead on the GX-10 Unit.

Other than those few elements we’re mostly talking about the same device - it has the exact same 4.3" LED Touch Screen, and same high fidelity sound engine as ...

So the current Voxy & Plexi slots are #18 and #19, while the first formation occurred back at the start of 2018 - with the Bearfoot EGDM on slot #15, and the MI Effects Super Crunch Box V2 on slot #17 - we’ve obviously come a long way since then! That original pairing had a very decent 2 year innings. Which was actually a few month more than the enduringly popular Pettyjohn Electronics pairing. Of all of these - those 2 pairs have endured the longest, with the Menatone TBIAC + KOB duo putting ...

So a follower on instagram challenged me to shrink my elaborate pedal-chain down to just 10 pedals. My original plan was just to fill a Pedaltrain Nano Max board with 10 compact pedals. But I then decided I should do a Mid-Size variation too, using the Pedaltrain Classic 2 board or thereabouts. I may do further Mini and Large Format editions as a follow-up - depending on how well this article is received!

This was a trickier exercise than you would imagine - as I needed to shuffle through ...

Another strong month for sure! A little dominated by Keeley Electronics, but some solid releases over the month - with a crazy flurry towards the end - to coincide with Europe’s largest Guitar Gear Show - Mannheim’s Guitar Summit. It seems evident now that Guitar Summit is an event I should really be at - and I will make a concerted effort to be their next year.

As it was I attended just one guitar gear event this month - EarthQuaker Devices Showcase at GuitarGuitar in Camden - where I got ...

We’re back onto the fully similar pedals again - with 4 contemporary examples of a vintage 2-knob chorus. All of these sport the exact same chip set - consisting of the 3207 + 3102 Boss CE-3 style chipset - but using the CoolAudio V3207 and V3102 variants - versus the original Matsushita / Panasonic MN3207 and MN3102 variants. In fact there’s just one tiny difference here in that the Way Huge Blue Hippo has a different Chinese BL3102 variant of that chip type - but with identical values. Which ...

I still love my SDE-3000 EVH Delay Workstation unit - that combination of pristine digital delay and uniquely flavoured modulation just sounds superb - and you can cover EVH and Andy Timmons delay patterns with ease. A significant advantage of the SDE-3000 is the precise digital screen - where you can easily set delay values in Milliseconds or Beats Per Minute - in actual numerical integers.

While the controls of the SDE-3 are much more analogue in their nature - and need to be guided by ...

I last did this exercise around 4 years ago now, and in that time have advanced my Rat style pedal collection to 44 units, where 29 compact editions of those are featured in this listing of 32.

From the listing I don’t yet have the NRG Effects 2024 Edition Gnawer, Oneder Red Ryder Distortion, or Walrus Audio Iron Horse. The last mentioned of those is the easiest to acquire, but I’ve not 100% made my mind up on that yet - there may be other more extended range Rats out there that I’ve yet to...