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

Krozz Devices’ Murilo favours fuller flavour effects - much like Jannis Anastasakis of JAM Pedals. The effects pedals each of them releases - are always bolder and more flavourful than is the norm for that genre - Murilo’s Airborn Flanger is a great example of that fuller flavour effect.

And here he’s turned his engineering magic on the Rat Distortion - combining elements of the White Face Rat and Turbo Rat with a magnificent Marshall-esque core - courtesy of that central ’Rising’ Silicon >...

2024 has been quite the monumental year for me as regards Modulations - with several of my all-time favourite varieties having been added to the reference collection this year, some very recently - including the slightly older Krozz Airborn and Strymon Lex V2 - which I could have gotten in sooner, alongside 3 killer modulations that were released this year :

Modulations added to the Reference Collection in 2024 :

• 2024 : Chorus : PastFX Kurt’s Cologne Small Clone Multi-Era Analog Chorus -

Brazil is a fascinating guitar pedal marketplace - mostly inward looking, and mostly closed off from the rest of the world. I was the first European I believe to get Aura Amps and Tone Ink pedals shipped out of Brazil. Some of those brands have some experience of shipping up the landmass and into Central and North America, but little or nothing ventures across the waters in either direction.

Andy Timmons has long favoured the GNI/ NIG Music OctaFuzz (as pictured left of centre) - where I’ve...

Apologies that his is a little late - it took and age to research, compile and complete - and is filled with myriad wonderful fun facts - I sincerely hope you enjoy this one - as a whole heap of work has gone into bringing it to you!

So I spent the whole weekend working on updating my pedal inventory records to figure out exactly where I was at with the Reference Collection, the last time I did that exercise was a couple of years ago. I had kind of mentally estimated that I had around 1.300...

So despite this being a relatively quiet month for releases - I was somehow manically busy throughout!

The month started with custom editions of ThorpyFX and Empress pedals, and I then did 2 massive articles for the Glou-Glou Flancher Series of Stereo Analog Delays / Modulators, and in-depth coverage of Henrik Nordvang’s excellent 1590B3 Series. I’m not sure people realise just how much works goes into those kinds of articles!

Also this month - Mini Pedals were a major feature - all ...

I need to start off by mentioning how much I love the Krozz Devices Airborn Flanger - that was an instant hit for me - such a smart combination of features and functions within the perfect form factor - and exceptional sounding of course. I really love everything about the Airborn - which is just as well really - as much the same philosophy is carried across to the Krakenheart - including the right-hand Max Speed Footswitch - albeit with some further additions.

I’ve had the Krakenheart for ...

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 ...

As well documented on this site - I’m a huge fan of the Flanger modulation category - and the Airborn is my own 19th pedal of that genre - where I already own a number of superb High Fidelity Specimens - many with incredibly rare BBD chips onboard.

This Airborn itself also has a pretty rare NOS Matsushita MN3207 BBD Chip onboard - which is quite evident from its output on first encounter. Flangers are typically fairly variably musical - while this one is a particularly great example of a ...