Ryan (Clarke) of Dr Scientist is actually responsible for this article for the most part. He mis-identified my previous ’World Odyssey’ article as a Fuzz roundup - and referred to it as the ’Fuzz Pedal Olympics’ - which it really wasn’t although Fuzz as probably the biggest overall category / genre in that roundup - or 7/25. In any case I decided that for Ryan’s sake - we had better have that ’Fuzz Pedal Olympics’ proper - which this finally is! And obviously the 7 Fuzzes from the previous ...

It’s been a while since I did a Marshall / MIAB roundup - where last time I leant rather more into EVH / Brown Sound variants. In this current selection we mostly have Plexi and JCM800 types, but also some that extend down to JTM45, and a few that get up to JVM levels of gain.

I’ve always been interested with Marshall Colour Association - where in the visual you can see a fair smattering of gold and red variants, a few black ones too - which are kind of the core colours. Purple seems to have ...

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 in my usual twisted fashion I’ve somewhat fallen down a rabbit hole of Mini Pedals these days. This project was sparked off by the recent Andertons Ultimate Doom Pedal Shoot-out. That has some very oddly selected pedals within its shoot-out considerations, but where the Tone City Matcha Cream Green Russian did extremely well - in fact winning the most rounds - 8 in total of all the pedals trialled.

The eventual winner was kind of immaterial to me, I was all of a sudden intrigued as to ...

Readers will be aware that I recently added 2 further Dumble style Overdrives to the reference collection. First the Menatone Dumbstruck V2, and then most recently the superb Tanabe Zenkudo.

I’ve decided that I’m at a point now where this selection is fully representative of this genre, of course I do have a few more targets in this category, while I feel I now have most of the major top-tier contenders. Notably missing here is Robben Ford’s evidently much loved Lovepedal / Hermida Zen ...

I hadn’t intended to upgrade my power supply infrastructure this year - but was kind of compelled to because of the recent Poly VERBS addition to the chain. The Poly VERBS needs 500mA, so I swapped over the supplies for the VERBS and Hologram Microcosm slots - as the Friedman Power Grid was powering the particular VERBS slot and only delivers 350mA - which turns out is actually not enough for either pedal (Microcosm states 400mA requirement). The Microsm kind of works with no noticeable ...

This rundown has been a long time in the making - having been iterated many times over, and changed as recently as this last Tuesday - when Keeley brought out its Muse Driver - Super AT Mod replacement!

Readers will know that I’ve cited the Keeley Freak Fuzz Modded BD-2 Blues Driver as my favourite all-time overdrive pedal, and be extension - the Blues Driver circuit and variations of it are my own very favourite gain tones. Some gravitate towards Tube Screamer, others Blues Breaker, Timmy ...

So we featured 120 pedals across the 5 Genre categories this year - as you’ve witnessed over the last 5 days, and those have been whittled and distilled down to these 27 Magnificent and Exceedingly Flavoursome candidates.

Picking out the very best of those is obviously a slightly subjective exercise while based on a series of exacting criteria - including innovation, versatility, practicality, variability, playability, quality of manufacture, quality of output and sheer enjoyment.

Here ...

And so to the final category - where competition is extremely fierce this year. No doubt some of your favourites will have missed the cut here - but hopefully this selection is fully representative of the best of the year. Obvious I lean more towards immersive stereo effects - mono doesn’t really do it for me so much - while there is a smattering of mono pedals in here too. Price, format, versatility and practicality - everything counts!

Of the 23 featured in the selection - I own around ...