Famously Tom Scholz was the principal talent and main guitarist for the band Boston (More than a Feeling / Don’t Look Back / Long Time / Amanda etc.). He was an innovator for sure - and he created the Rockman brand to produce those devices he used in his own productions and live playback.

Core to his sound was his Power Soak Resistive Load Box - which resulted in a somewhat Mid-Rangey singing lead tone - which he further texturised with a chorus and echo - to deliver his signature sound - ...

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 -

I obviously just recently won me an AC Noises Ricorda Retro Series Reverb as a Chase Bliss Mystery Box Bonus Pedal - so the first iteration I had to make on this article was to update the standard Blue Ricorda image to the limited colourway edition that I was gifted by my Mystery Box. This selection is typically the one where I own the least proportion of pedals featured, in fact in this case it’s easier to list the few that I own here :

• AC Noices Ricorda Stereo Granular Reverb + Freeze /

There’s an incredibly rich mix here of no less than 38 killer Modulations, Utilities and Pitch-Shifters - no one does rundowns quite like me! I always dive in at the deep end of things - and give you maximum expansive scope!

There are several here that I don’t have yet, in fact some hat I’m somewhat unlikely to ever have - for reasons of rig compatibility, size and overall sensibilities, practicalities, and preferences!

These 19 are still to be acquired or eventually overlooked :

So I’m not always the biggest fan of Signature pedals - as often they’re simply a re-badged version of a standard pedal - like say the EHX J Mascis Big Muff or EHX Andy Summers Walking on the Moon Flanger - with little or no direct artist input for that actual circuit. At other times they’re too specific in their scope - like say Jack White’s MXR Double Down or Paul Gilbert’s JHS PG-14 examples. And sometimes they’re out-and-out cash-ins - usually priced a little higher and made available in ...

I would like to start my apologising that I got the previous One Knob Phaser article wrong - as I momentarily lapsed into thinking that the EHX Small Stone was a 2-Stage variant, where it’s rather the very first of the 4-Stage varieties. I’m so used to associating 4-Stages with the MXR Phase 90 - that it has always been my key benchmark, and until recently I’ve not been entirely clear on EHX’s illustrious phaser history - which I am now!

I still find it somewhat infuriating that you’re not ...

NOTE! - I made a mistake here - the EHX Small Stone is a 4-stage type - will need to re-do this article. Looks like I now have enough for a One-Knob 4-stage rundown - but so far can only find 3 One-Knob 2-Stage types - do let me know if you discover a worthy 4th!

I was originally going to focus on the Phase 90 4-Stage types, but could not find enough for a significant full house - while there seemed to be a lot more of the 2-Stage variety - which is what this selection consists of.

All ...

So this time around we have a slightly different take on this format - where each of these pedals has a similar outward control topology - that is to say 4 Knobs, with an additional 5th Switch or Button control.

And while the outward appearance is very similar, internally these are all quite different styles of compression circuits. Interestingly they’re listed out in alphabetical order, which just happens to coincide with a descending order of price!

There are generally considered to ...

It took me a while to process this ones - it’s a similar Tardis / Iceberg to its Joshua Ambient Echo sibling - with as many as 3 functions to each control. I loved the Joshua on first encounter - and this seems to have a similar magic about it! I really should have had the Joshua in already - but other priorities and commitments have gotten in the way so far this year. The Joshua and this Layers pedal are most definitely on my acquisitions list - and will hopefully be in the Reference ...