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 /...

There are 32 Finalists in the Fuzz Category, where I own all but 3 :

• 29 Pedals Toki Overdrive / Fuzz
• Cachalote 214 Fuzz
• Subdecay Noise Theory Parallel Waveshaper Fuzz

The Finalists

• 29 Pedals Toki Fuzz Driver - $269
• Beetronics FX Tuna Fuzz - $99
• Beetronics FX Whoctahell V2 Low Octave Beeast Babee Edition - $149
• Cachalote Audio 214 Fuzz - R$1418 / $235
• Cornerstone Nero Dumble-Fuzz - €299 | $299
• Danelectro Nichols 1966 Liverpool Fuzz Tone - $199
• Decibelics Reverend V2 Mini

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

It’s that time of year when I pick out my personal favourite pedals in each category - starting with the Boost and Overdrive ones. I weigh up each candidate on the basis of my own experiences, preferences and sensibilities - and include pedals also that I intended to get but did not quite yet around to acquiring during the year of release!

For this selection I personally own all but these 8 :

• Aleks K Production Honey Moon Sweet Overdrive V3
• Bleak District Slate Discrete Gemanium

As promised - this turned out to be quite a big month - we had 5 substantial pedal rundowns - where I hope you appreciate the time and effort put into those - they take a very long time to compile and write up! :

• Reference Collection World Odyssey [25]
• 32 Favourite Compact MIAB Distortions
• Fuzz Pedal Olympics [25]
• 32 Favourite Compact Rat Style Distortions
• Drunk Beaver 15 Favourites

I attended just one show this month - but it was a great one - the #2 Alternative Guitar Show @ Hackney...

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...

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 ...

So my 4th Lichtlaerm Audio pedal is also my 39th Rat style Distortion - and right up among the very best of that genre. It doesn’t have the multiple clipping options like many of the others do, but it more than makes up for it with its extensive shaping abilities - which include Active 3-Band EQ, a smart 3-way Range Boost, and a sweepable Era control which takes you from a classic White Face Rat voicing to a Turbo Rat Voicing fully clockwise - and with all kind of interesting in-between ...

So I typically do the metal pedal roundup in and around Autumn, while now seems to be a decent time to do a recap - as quite a large sway has changed since I last did this exercise back in 2022. And we have had a number of really strong new contenders - which each sounds fantastic, and overall heralds a kind of new era of heavy metal pedals with even more range and dynamics.

There are 10 New Pedals since 2022’s rundown, more than a quarter of the previously listed pedals have been swapped /...