33 slots updated this year - #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #9a, #9b, #10, #11, #12, #15a, #15b, #15c, #16, #17, #18, #19, #20, #22a, #22b, #23, #24, #25, #26, #29, #30, #31, #32, #33, #34, #36, #38, and #41.

There’s been a fair amount of re-routing and re-organising this year - which you should be able to pick via the pattern of changes. The introduction of the stereo Poly Amplitude introduced the biggest change to the board order - to get th most out of that format!

I try to limit acquisitions /...

So this is the big one - all the top performers from the year in one selection.

We’ve already covered :

• 35 Boost & Overdrive Pedal Finalists
• 34 Distortion Pedal Finalists
• 32 Fuzz Pedal Finalists
• 38 Modutility Pedal Finalists
• 25 Delay and Reverb Pedal Finalists

Total Overall Finalist Selection of 164 Pedals!

Distilled down to the final favourites selection, where I own 27 of them, and will try to secure the final missing ones next year :

• Coffee Shop Pedals London Fog Tape Delay -

Here it’s the turn of the new distortion pedals this year. Where I own all but 7 here :

• Crazy Tube Circuits Heatseeker Enhanced Full Stack Marshall style Preamp
• God City Instruments Brutalist Distortion
• Krozz Devices RoyalBreaker Extended Rat style Distortion
• Noise Engineering Dystorpia Fuzz/Distortion
• Soldano Super Lead Overdrive Plus
• UAFX Anti 1992 High Gain Amp
• UAFX Knuckles ’92 Rev F Dual Rec Amplifier

So of this selection of 34 I own 27 :

Finalists

• Audiostorm Grand

When I reviewed the original 1590BB mid-size edition of Eighty Master a little over one year ago I already proclaimed it to be one of the most instantly satisfying ’Marshall in a Box’ pedals that I have encountered. And this new compact dual-gain / dual-channel version is even more impressive - allowing you to ramp your sound up and down on-the-fly via a second footswitch.

The former had a couple of toggle switches in addition - a 50W / 100W gain structure switch, which is replaced by the ...

And so to my roundup of the best gear of the year - apologies of course if I’ve overlooked one of your favourites - and note again that this year I’ve split out Boost & Overdrive - and Distortion separately - as there are so many new pedals that it’s tough to fit them all into a single summary overview. Some of these pedals are incredibly extended range - and if I’ve used them more on the distortion side - you will find those listed in the very next Distortion Rundown article - like say the...

This year has seen a number of additions to my Uni-Vibe roster - where 9 of the 14 featured here are proper bulb / photocell varieties - indicated by the bulb icon. Some of these have Uni-Vibe as secondary voices, and some are very slightly adjacent or produce Uni-Vibe tones via other means.

New additions this year have been the Colortone Roundhouse, EQD The Depths, Fjord Fuzz Njord, Formula B Vintage-Vibe, ThorpyFX ER-2, and and Tru-Fi Ghost Vibe. For the longest time I just had 2 Uni-...

July was punctuated by two very significant events - Doug Tolley’s Witney Pedal Party on July 1st, and Phil Steere’s Brighton Guitar Show and FX Expo on July 15th - where I covered both of those in fine detail. Both were seminal events for different reasons, and while we were relatively few at Witney - we got to witness a truly legendary performance by David Rainger - which doubled up as about the best pedal demo I’ve yet / ever experienced - David was truly on fire - and the audience - we ...

So I’ve gone rather rapidly from just a handful of Uni-Vibes to where this Vintage Vibe makes it a baker’s dozen! I really like everything about this Vibe - it’s supremely easy to dial in - and really handy in having 2 different Speed dials - as that’s exactly how I uses this types of pedal - with the first Speed dial wound all the way down, and the second at a reasonable throb of around 3 o’c.

There’s definitely some Marco magic at play here = of course utilising primo components too - ...

I typically do the ’Boss’ thing when testing most pedals - and therefore start with all controls in the middle of their range and then tweak in either direction as is appropriate. On the Eighty Master that means all knobs at noon, Gain Structure at 50W, and Comp in the middle - and boy does it sound glorious from the get-go. It has the perfect Marshall flavour with just the right amount of zing - and you get there with the absolute minimum of effort - it really does sound incredibly impressive ...