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The stomp switches have small LEDs to guide you in stage situations

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In simple terms, the M13 contains a chain of four stompbox modellers, featuring sounds from the company's earlier (and hugely successful) four-switch stompboxes, plus the Verbzilla from the Tonecore range. Each modeller has three memories, equating to the three footswitches under each control panel, so you can store three sounds for each of the modellers.

Now, the really good bit is that each modeller can run any of the M13's five main effects types: distortion, delay, modulation, filter or reverb. This means that the three memories for a given modeller don't have to be filled with variations on the same sound; you can put effects where you want them in the signal chain, and if you want four different delays running simultaneously, that's fine.

To avoid confusion, the five effect types are colour-coded, so the backlight of the display and the LED near the currently active footswitch will instantly tell you what type of effect is running in each modeller. Speaking of the displays, they're quite small, so if you're using the M13 for live performance you're not really going to see much more than the colour unless you crouch down.

"The reverbs are crisp and detailed, even in mono through a small valve amp."

Below the LCD screen, each modeller has its own set of six controls, five of which vary their functions according to the particular effect in use. The sixth control is used for setting the effect; you push it to select from the five effect types available, then you can rotate it to select the desired effect model.

So far, so good, but have we really gained all that much over previous products? Well, with the scenes footswitch, we certainly have. Pressing this switch changes the whole display, showing 12 'scenes', which can be selected with the main modeller footswitches. Each scene is a completely new configuration of the four modellers, each with their three possible uses, so you shouldn't run out of possibilities.

Saving your sounds is easy; in fact there's no need to physically save anything, as the M13 keeps track of the last adjustment you made on every module, from one scene to the next. However, if you'd prefer not to have the M13 constantly overwriting previous settings, you can switch it to the 'manual save' mode.

Apart from the scenes switch, there are two more function switches: one covers tap tempo for all delay effects and a number of modulation effects, while the other turns on the looper. The maximum loop storage time is 28 seconds (in mono) and recorded loops can be played back at half-speed or in reverse.

The undo switch erases the most recent overdub, leaving your previous work intact – a particularly useful function if you've just spent ages building up a beautiful texture, only to hit the wrong chord on the last pass.

You can also adjust the level of the looped parts so that previously recorded layers gradually fade in volume, and the looper can be placed before or after the effects modules in the signal chain. Even when you're using most of the footswitches for the looper, you still have access to whichever effects are currently active.

"The sounds have a crisp 3D quality that is often lost when you plug modelling units into guitar amps."