What is it?

It’s just a fact that DSP in pedals is better than ever. It’s also way more accessible, too, meaning that it’s not only the big guns like Strymon or Eventide that can make impressive do-it-all reverb units packed full of studio-quality sounds.

That’s where the Hotone NC-200 Verbera comes in. Packed with instant IR loading, superb tweakability, and a comparatively reasonable price tag, this is The Hunan, China-based pedal maker branching out and proving they can hang with the big dogs.

The Verbera is built around a rather unique dual-engine design, with one side capturing the nuanced reflections of real spaces through IR convolution, while the other offers XR, a sophisticated algorithmic reverb that is there when you want massive trails and epic ambient beds. Of course, combining the two is where things get very interesting indeed.

In case that wasn’t enough, you can also clone your favourite pedal and use it to create custom IRs, storing up to 1024 within the unit – arguably way more than anyone would ever need. Of course, as you'd expect, there is a companion software, Neon Collector, that makes managing your IRs and presets a little easier.

Using dual-colour LED rings for quick status checks, intuitive one-touch IR sorting, dual footswitch mode, and full MIDI and expression pedal support, the Verbera offers a host of contemporary features at a very reasonable price tag, indeed.

Specs

• Launch price: $299 | £249 | €299
• Type: Digital reverb pedal
• Controls: Decay, ATK/PRE-DL, Tone/Mod, Preset, Mix, IR, ALT/Menu, Clone, Active, Freeze
• Features: 120 impulse responses pre-installed (saves up to 1024 IRs and 200 presets)
• Connectivity: Input: 6.3 mm stereo jack, Outputs: 2 x 6.3 mm stereo jack, MIDI/EXP: 2 x 3.5 mm stereo mini jack
• Bypass: True Bypass
• Power: 9V, 1000 mA (1A)
• Dimensions: 84 x 126 x 63 mm
• Weight: 485g
• Contact: Hotone

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

I must say, this is a pretty good-looking pedal. With its neon-glowing lights, it could easily be a part of the inner-working mechanics of the Death Star, but they serve a practical purpose, too, but we will get to that later.

To me, the build quality feels solid too, which is what I’ve come to expect from other Hotone pedals I’ve tried in the past – I’m a big fan of its volume-and-wah hybrid, the Soul Press.

The unit itself is robust and sturdy, with smooth controls. It’s genuinely satisfying to dial in your settings on this pedal. The twin footswitches are pleasantly light and soft underfoot, making them incredibly easy to operate – they are pretty close together, though, so if you have large feet, you may find it a tad cramped.

Now, if I were to have one major complaint about this pedal's build, it’s the downright bizarre positioning of the MIDI Thru and MIDI IN/EXP jacks. For reasons only known to Hotone, they’re situated at the bottom of the pedal, directly beneath the footswitches.

Considering there’s ample space on the sides of the unit, it makes me wonder why Hotone couldn’t have placed the MIDI jacks there. Perhaps the internal circuitry simply wouldn’t allow it?

Whatever the reason, the jacks being there make me very uncomfortable. Not only are they easily knocked, but on a tight pedalboard, this placement makes even less sense. That said, if you don’t plan to take advantage of the MIDI functionality, then it won’t be a problem at all.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★★

This is a packed pedal, so it's easy to assume it could be challenging to operate. However, that’s simply not the case.

This pedal can be used in two main modes. Right out of the box, the dual footswitches are used to scroll through the numerous presets, with the right pedal cycling up through the presets, while the left one allows you to go backwards. Pressing both switches simultaneously transitions to a mode that more closely resembles a traditional stompbox.

In this configuration, the first switch is a dedicated toggle for the effect, while the second activates the very fun Freeze function. Both modes have their advantages, but for the sake of this review, I found the second mode suited me more.

As I said up top, there are two different styles of reverb in this pedal, and thankfully, Hotone has gone out of its way to make sure it’s as easy to operate as possible. When the pedal is amber, you’re in the realm of IR reverb; switch to blue, and you're exploring the algorithmic reverb options.

Positioned directly above the easy-to-read screen, you'll find an encoder dial for navigating through presets, a mix control to fine-tune the intensity of the effect, and an IR encoder that lets you scroll through the extensive range of impulse responses loaded within the unit. One standout feature of the IR encoder is its ability to allow you to reorder the IRs by simply pressing it down, which significantly streamlines the process of locating the perfect sound – trust me, with so many IRs to choose from, this was a welcome addition.

Further up, you'll find controls for Decay, Attack, and Tone – a pretty standard affair for any reverb pedal. However, these controls do change when you engage the Alt button, switching you over to the algorithmic side. In this mode, the top controls become Decay, Pre-Delay, and Modulation.

With so much going on inside this pedal, I genuinely felt like I was going to get a bit lost, but I never did. Each dial is clearly labelled, and the coloured lights surrounding the knobs provide continuous feedback, ensuring I am always aware of which settings I am tweaking.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

Okay, I won’t beat around the bush, this pedal sounds mega. The sounds here are massive. Seriously, that’s the best way to describe this pedal. The way it mixes realistic room sounds from the IRs with the wild, modulated tones of the algorithmic verbs is honestly impressive when you get the settings just right.

Yes, it’s easy to go overboard and drown your sound in too much verb. But if you find the right blend of long trails and keep enough attack to hear your notes clearly, this pedal is truly engaging.

For testing, I used my beloved Fender Strat, which has low-output '54-style pickups, into a wide open and clean Fender Twin, with the reverb turned off. I wanted a fairly neutral starting point for the pedal so I could hear every detail of the verbs.

A couple of standout presets for me were the Arena 5000, which, unsurprisingly, was captured from a 5000-seat stadium. This verb is huge and super fun to play with, especially if you dial in the mix just right. Both cave settings are also wild, and Brent Heaven, which is captured from a church, is, well, heavenly.

We even have a Ping Pong Fun setting that comes directly from the Peavey Dual DeltaFex Multi Effects processor and a superb-sounding Plate captured from the legendary Universal Audio EMT 140.

I love the Freeze feature, too. Press it once, and the pedal holds your reverb trail, giving you an ambient background for lead parts that can almost become synth-like.

If I were going to nippick, I’d say the basic spring sounds are a bit bright for my taste, but you can adjust that with the tone knob. If you want a classic ‘60s spring reverb, this might not be it. This pedal is for lush, modern reverbs with huge, endless trails, and it really delivers on that front.

Verdict

If you’re after a basic reverb for a tight spring or a general sense or ambience, this is not the pedal for you. To me, this is a creative, inspiring, and genuinely useful, do-it-all verb that sounds so good, it should be making the industry leaders, Strymon, sit up and take notice.

Despite boasting a colossal number of presets and a myriad of fancy modern features, this pedal remains very intuitive to navigate, with a layout that’s clear and even beginner-friendly. Honestly, it’s a breeze to dial in, and it certainly helps that the vast majority of presets are instantly usable straight out of the box. Okay, so I’m not the biggest fan of the spring settings, as they simply don’t measure up to the ethereal, spacey options onboard, but the rest are pretty killer.

My only real gripe with the unit is the downright weird placement of the MIDI jacks. Honestly, I just don't understand the choice here; they just seem too easy to knock loose. Perhaps we can convince Hotone to change this in future versions.

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Hotone Audio

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What is it?

The Nux MG-50Li is the new flagship amp modeler and profiler from the Chinese brand. Nux used to be known for its budget gear, and while that remains the case today, over the past few years, they’ve begun to take steps into the intermediate level of the guitar market with some seriously advanced tech, all while retaining that value-for-money focus.

The MG-50Li is yet another entrant into the busy multi-effects pedal market, but it’s got some very unique features that help it stand out from a congested field. The first feature that caught my attention is the addition of native support for the Neural Amp Modeler (NAM), an open-source software that uses machine learning to capture tube amps, preamps, and drive pedals.

It may well be the tech that brings the cost of amp modeling down dramatically, and with access to a quarter of a million amp captures for free, it massively expands the capabilities of the MG-50Li. Previously, you needed a laptop or PC to run these due to the processing power, but different methods of shrinking down these neural captures have made them usable on DSP-equipped units. You’ll also find NAM on modelers from Hotone and Valeton, and there are rumours that bigger names are starting to adopt the technology too.

Surprisingly, the MG-50Li can be run on an internal lithium battery (hence the ‘Li’ in the name), which is very impressive. There’s a similar feature on the Boss GX-1, and it shows just how far we’ve come with respect to the power of amp modeling. The ability to take captures of the world’s most famous tube amps in a portable, power supply-free unit is leaps and bounds away from where we started with the Line 6 POD.

The 5-inch HD colour LCD screen doesn’t feature any touch compatibility, so 7 encoders allow for control over parameters on the unit itself. 5 of these sit below the screen for tweaking settings, while two larger ones sit to the right for more overall control. It’s got 7 footswitches, 2 that handle banking up and down, 3 that control presets, and an additional CTRL switch that can perform a variety of functions. It’s also got a full-size expression pedal that can be assigned to various roles.

There’s plenty of connectivity, too, although there’s just a single mono input. You can send signals out via dual 1/4-inch jacks or XLR outs; both carry the same signals, but the former is better for sending to FRFR cabs, while the XLR outs are for connecting to a PA system or an audio interface. There’s an additional expression out for hooking up another expression pedal or a switch, as well as a 1/8-inch aux in, headphone out, and MIDI in/out ports. Finally, there’s a USB-C port for the included N-BT1 Bluetooth dongle, and a separate USB-C for connecting to a computer. The internal battery can be charged by using the included 12V DC power supply.

Specs

• Launch price: $499 | £389 | €419
• Type: Amp modeler & profiler
• Controls: 7x rotary encoders, 4x buttons, 6x footswitches, 1x expression pedal
• Features: TS/AC-4K white-box physical modeling, DeepImage profiling, stereo Cyber IR cab engine, dual send/return loops, built-in USB-C audio interface, Bluetooth connectivity, built-in rechargeable battery, 5-in. HD color LCD
• Connectivity: Ins - 1 x 1/4", 1 x 1/8" (aux), Outs - 2 x XLR (DI), 2 x 1/4, Headphones - 1 x 1/8", Send/return - 4 x 1/4", MIDI In/Out, 2x USB-C
• Bypass: Buffered
• Power: 12V DC power supply
• Dimensions: 71.8 x 392.9 x 209.8mm
• Weight: 2.79 kg (6.17 lbs)
• Options: Dark Blue colour option also available (White reviewed)
• Contact: Nux

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Taking the MG-50Li out of the box, it’s a hefty bit of kit indeed. It weighs just below 3kg, which is fairly weighty for a pedal, more than the Quad Cortex and close to the similarly sized Blackstar ID:X Floor Three. It definitely takes away from the portability of it. Despite the battery operation implying use as a travel rig, it’s not quite chuck it in a gig bag and hardly notice it, that’s for sure.

It does feel durable, though, and the heavy-duty aluminium shell is very robust. My review model is a white one, but you can get it Dark Blue if you prefer something a little more muted. The expression pedal is all metal, which no doubt adds to the weight, with a textured grip surface and the Nux logo in silver in the corner. A metal bar on the left side of the pedal helps prevent you from knocking the control encoders when stomping, and the two bank footswitches come with the option of a couple of orange Nux footswitch toppers to make them more accessible.

The screen is recessed into the unit, which should hopefully prevent it from taking any damage, and each of the 5 encoders below can be pushed in to select parameters. The far left encoder is detented, whereas the others rotate freely. The travel of all the encoders is nice and smooth, but they do feel a little loose as I turn them, although there is a small Allen key grub screw that can be used to tighten them.

All of the footswitches offer an audible click when you press them, but it’s that soft-touch footswitch I often see on modern modellers, with none of the ‘clack’ you get on a traditional stompbox.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★☆

If you’ve never used a multi-effects unit before, the Nux MG-50Li comes with a clear card that goes over the front of the chassis, with some instructions as to which button does what, although it’s quite hard to read with light grey writing on a white background. For those who’ve already used one, operating the unit is pretty simple.

The two bank switches move you up and down, while the three footswitches marked A to C select three presets within each bank. With 99 banks, that means 297 different presets are available, which let’s face it, is more than most of us are ever likely to use. The first 64 banks are already preloaded with presets from the factory, with the remaining free for users to create their own. When you press the bank switch, the display flashes, and it’s only once you’ve settled on a patch and pressed the appropriate lettered footswitch that the sound changes.

Like most amp modellers these days, the MG-50Li has a stomp mode, accessed by pressing the far left endless encoder or by pressing both of the bank footswitches. Here, you can assign one block to each of the three lettered footswitches to treat it more like a traditional pedalboard. This mode also allows you to see the full signal chain, with 14 blocks available to chop and change your signal flow. There are options to split your signal across multiple amps or run effects in parallel, and you cycle through the chain by using the master encoder in the centre of the unit.

It takes me a while to get used to using it, however, because the controls are weirdly spread out. A push of the master encoder, for example, does not let you dive deeper into the selected block but turns it on or off. Instead, there’s a dedicated button under the encoder that allows for deeper editing, which feels backwards to me. Similarly, when I press the back button under the encoder, it doesn’t return me to the previous menu, but takes me all the way back out of editing mode to the overall preset menu.

There are also multiple ways of doing the same thing, which in my early forays in the pedal led to a bit of confusion. Entering stomp mode shows the same screen as when I press the master encoder in. Pressing the left button under the encoder enters a slightly different - and much more useful - edit menu where images of the effects each block is simulating appear, and I can control parameters using the smaller encoders under the screen. It’s a shame there’s no way to change the effect order in this mode, as I find I much prefer working on it in this way.

No modern piece of tech would be complete without an app, so I head to Google Play to download the Nux Audio companion app. Handily, the Bluetooth adapter is included with the pedal, which is a nice touch as some manufacturers like to make you pay extra for this. The app finds it instantly, and I’m able to immediately start jumping into tweaking the effects, as the app mimics exactly what is on the screen of the MG-50Li, which is a nice touch.

Annoyingly though, on certain amp blocks, the settings don’t respond, which means I have to lean down to the pedal to change them. It only seems to be when there’s more than three parameters to control, as it works fine on those but not others where there are five controls.

The app is very slick indeed in its feel; there’s no discernible lag between changing something on my phone screen and the action happening on the pedal, and it’s quick and responsive to changing menus. There’s an option to use the looper via my phone, and a menu to access the global settings, including the input trim that allows you to save six different instrument settings, great if you’re swapping between active and passive pickups.

When I eventually got around to sound testing after exploring all the features, I found that having the app open on my phone with the pedal at my feet worked really well as a workflow for playing and recording. No need to bend down and change settings on the pedal itself as these were readily available on my phone, but I could still do all the quick switching, expression pedal use, and bank changing with my feet. I can also engage the looper with my phone, which is much easier than trying to hit both bank buttons at the same time.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Plugging in my trusty Telecaster Player Plus and using two XLRs into a Universal Audio interface, I set about cycling through the presets already on the pedal. As is pretty usual, some are good, some are great, some are not so good. The sounds themselves are very hot going into my audio interface despite my relatively low-output single coils, and I frequently find myself having to turn the amp models down as they clip the inputs. Strangely, the master volume has no effect here, but they can be reined in with the expression pedal.

The presets consist of the usual amp modeler fare, with all the basic food groups represented. There are Fender cleans, Marshall crunch, Diezel high gain emulations, and everything in between. Some of them sound really great from the off, others feel like they need tweaking, especially in the high end, which can get quite harsh at times. With my phone open on my desk, it’s really easy to chop and change things and get them more to my liking. I like that the switching is almost completely seamless, with a drop in sound measured in milliseconds.

With one of the big appeals of this pedal being the ability to run NAM profiles, I download the Nux Image app, which takes mere seconds, install it on my MacBook, and head to the Tone3000 website to take my pick of a cool quarter of a million different profiles. Grabbing some of the most popular ones in clean, mid-gain, and high-gain formats, I import them onto the pedal via the Nux Image App, which then converts them and allows me to load them up on a user preset.

First, I set up the MG-50Li’s white box Deluxe Reverb as preset A, with one of the ‘Images’, or captures/profiles depending on your preferred nomenclature, as preset B, before putting the NAM profile into preset A. I configure all the settings to be as close as I can get them, as they all slightly differ coming from different places. I also add a room block turned down very low to presets A and B, as the NAM profile also features a capture of the room. There’s a clear winner, though, as I cycle through each preset playing the same profile.

The MG-50Li white box modeled amp sounds really good, although it’s a little woolly on the low end, easily compensated for using some EQ. The Nux ‘Image’ is the worst of the bunch for me, sounding quite hollow and thin in comparison to preset A. The NAM profile is streaks ahead of the others, though. It’s that classic scooped Fender clean tone, and the response of it just feels better to me. I cycle through a few more times to be sure, but there’s no getting away from that amp-like feel the NAM profile offers.

I don’t stop there, though. Next up, it’s a white box Plexi 100 from Nux versus a NAM profile of a Plexi 50, as these were the closest two Marshall sounds I could get. Due to the Plexi 50s' lesser headroom, it naturally has a bit more saturation than the Nux version, and again, I try to compensate by neutralising settings on both amps to make it a fair comparison. They both sound really great, but I find the NAM profile to be superior. Even with more gain, it’s clearer when I strum open chords, and the higher notes sound smoother and less shrill than those on the stock amp.

Finally, I bring up the Nux 5150 and place it up against a NAM profile of a 6505. I match the cabs as close as possible, both using oversized Mesa 4x12 cabs with Celestion V30s, plus a Tube Screamer in front of the amp. There’s so much more bottom end to the NAM profile though, that it’s not even close here. Even when I try to amend the Nux version with EQ, that fat, controlled low end is so much more satisfying on the NAM profile. The NAM profile just does the thing straight away, meaning I keep playing rather than feeling like I need to reach for the settings.

Verdict

There are a lot of amp modellers and budget multi-effects out there at the moment, and the Nux MG-50Li definitely holds its own against some much esteemed and established competition. It’s got all the features you’d expect to find on a modern floor modeller, plenty of connectivity, and the addition of battery operation is a genuinely useful one – offering around five hours of use on a charge.

The UI isn’t as good as some of the competition; however, with a bit of a learning curve to get you around the unit. The inclusion of a Bluetooth adapter and using your smartphone as a remote control is a really nice touch, but it’s a shame that some functions of the app aren’t working currently.

The real ace in the hole is the NAM profile compatibility, putting instantly great guitar tones at your fingertips with just a few clicks of the mouse button. It allows it to compete with the Neural DSPs and Line 6s of the world, and all at a price that’s significantly less. The built-in modelling is overall pretty good too, although I imagine most players will want to do a bit of tweaking to get them to their liking.

MusicRadar verdict: It’s not perfect but for the money, there’s a lot to love about Nux MG-50Li. It’s a very full-featured amp and effects modeller, solidly put together, and has everything the modern player demands in terms of features and sounds. The UI and companion app can be clunky at times, but the addition of NAM profile compatibility pushes it well beyond your average multi-effects pedal, massively expanding the scope and scale of what’s possible at a reasonably low cost.

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Elmo Karjalainen

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Electro-Harmonix has expanded its Pico Series with Shimmer, a “cosmic” reverb pedal that promises otherworldly ambience from three distinct sounds.

The Pico Series is the storied NYC-based guitar effects pedal brand’s super-compact digital mini pedals range, and all that DSP power under the hood of these pedalboard-friendly enclosures allows it to offer something a little bit weird, off-piste options for less ordinary electric guitar tones.

It has given us the Intelligent Harmony Machine, the two or three-part harmonizer you can stick in your pocket. The Pico Atomic Cluster presented us with a glitch-cum-synth pedal that takes the signal from your electric guitar and deconstructs it. The Swello launched the POG2’s polyphonic attack filter as a standalone effect. Now this, the Shimmer.

Like the Swello, the Shimmer is a pedal that draws inspiration from the EHX back catalogue. EHX’s superlative Oceans Reverb plants the seed, and the three variations on the Shimmer theme descend from this. For such a small pedal there are plenty of controls to get acquainted with.

There is a Scene button at the top of the pedal that cycles through Intergalactic, Off-World, and Etherdust modes.

The latter is your “glitchy” option in which a randomised delay time is applied to the reverb tails, “ creating stutters ranging from short granular sparkles to distinct glitch echoes”.

Intergalactic is what we’d recognise as a shimmer reverb, although by the sounds of it this one will be a little more sci-fi, your tone cheerfully ferried to the outer reaches of the galaxy and all that, carried forth upon “polyphonic octaves, reverb, modulated delay and compression” – and a string synthesis engine because why not? Let’s go nuts.

Rounding out the trio is the Off-World shimmer, described as a more mellow option with delay modulation, vintage synth vibes, and as the name might suggest this might be more chilled out, bliss at the touch of a footswitch, and so on, but still astral and weird.

There are four knobs, all of which pull double shifts. Primary functions include Blend, Time, Voice and Depth. Press and hold the Scene button and the Secondary functions come online, and the aforementioned controls now adjust Reverb Mix, Delay, Depth and Rate.

And there is more. Press and hold that footswitch and you access Infinite Reverb Mode. The Pico Shimmer has digital, analogue and hybrid buffered bypass modes. It ships with its own power adapter and is priced $149.

For more details, head over to Electro-Harmonix.

Eventide has reimagined its H9 Harmonizer with a Gen 2 update that adds a lot more sounds and improves workflow for the high-powered multi-effects pedal.

The H9 Harmonizer has never lacked features, but this Gen 2 unit is one giant leap for the concept. We still have the same compact form factor that makes it so pedalboard-friendly. We now have all of the all of the algorithms from the H9 Max and H90, and under the hood there has been a power-up of full ARM processing, making what Eventide promises will be a faster, easier-to-use pedal.

All in, that’s what? Seventy-four algorithms, with the caveat of course that you can still only use one at a time. But when these sounds tend to combine elements from across the Eventide effects palette, there’s a lot of strange magic to apply to your sound.

There is a lot of sounds – especially for a pedal with just two footswitches, so Eventide has given us more than a thousand user presets to save them down too.

Some of Eventide’s algorithms will do something familiar to your electric guitar tone. You can use the H9 Gen 2 as a studio-quality delay pedal, with kinds of flavours on offer, including vintage tape echo style repeats, modulated delay, digital, multi-tap, reverse, and so on. It can be one super-powered reverb pedal, too, offering the holy trinity of spring, hall and plate plus a myriad of “otherworldly” options.

Some will do something familiar but still super-weird, such as the PitchFuzz algorithm that combines a fuzzstortion with three pitch shifters and two delays (and if this modern classic from 2017 is confusing it does come with 36 presets, most of which were designed by Eventide’s artist community).

And then there are the newer algorithms such as the Granular family of Cosmic Web, Glitch, GrainMod and Stutter – not to mention the vocal harmonization, guitar-to-synth sounds, looper and Eventide Harmonizer classics such as Crystals, which evokes the H3000 with its twin reverse pitch shifters, reverse delays and reverb for some outré sounds.

The next-gen H9 also has SIFT technology to render all those polyphonic algorithms (e.g. Polysynth, Polyphony, Polyflex, and Prism Shift) just as Eventide’s flagship unit.

Elsewhere, you’ve got all the I/O connections you’d expect. There is USB-C, MIDI, aux switch and expression pedal inputs for expanding its functionality – and Eventide says Bluetooth compatibility will be available in a future update. Indeed, expect this to be a multi-effects pedal that will be regularly updated by Eventide as new algorithms and features leave the R&D lab.

You will also notice that the enclosure has had a bit of a redesign, with the interface larger at 2.5”, with all the knobs and buttons you need to dial in the sounds available right there at your fingertips.

Pre-orders for the H9 Gen 2 are available now, with the pedal priced £/$599 and shipping on June 24. See Eventide for more details.

What is it?

Fender has been somewhat lacking a decent tuner pedal offering for guitarists since its PT-100 chromatic pedal tuner, which was discontinued some time ago. So when Fender announced it was finally ready to enter the market to join TC Electronic, Boss and Peterson, to say I was intrigued would be an understatement.

The Strobo-Sonic Pro is a more precise strobe-type tuner that Fender claims to be accurate with ±0.01 Cent, which puts it above some of its main pedal competition, with the exception of the Peterson Strobostomp models that claim the same degree.

While you can use the Strobe display, there’s also a Needle display mode if you prefer. Whichever you choose, it’s illuminated on the large 2.3x2.1” LED screen, which sits front and centre.

Specs

• Launch price: $129.99 | £99 | €119
• Type: Tuner pedal with strobe and needle display modes
• Features: ±0.01 tuning accuracy, 2.3" x 2.1" display, auto-dimming screen brightness, adjustable reference pitch from 430Hz to 450Hz
• Connectivity: 1/4-inch Input/Output, USB-C
• Bypass: Switchable true bypass, buffered bypass or mute footswitch modes
• Power: DC 9V, 180mA
• Dimensions: 2.6x4.5x1.7in / 66x115x44mm
• Weight: 8oz / 0.23 kg
• Contact: Fender

Build quality

Tuner pedals need to withstand some serious abuse, especially from touring musicians who may stomp on them hundreds of times in just a single tour. Luckily, the Fender Strobo-Sonic Pro feels tough as nails with a sturdy aluminium enclosure and a soft-touch relay footswitch that's satisfyingly responsive with its click.

The controls have been kept simple, but there's a surprise too, with the Bypass modes (True, buffered and mute) and Mode / Pitch button located with physical controls on the side for quick and easy customisability when needed.

The back of the pedal is completely flat, and unlike Boss stomp pedals it’s not rubberized – making it easier to attach velcro to it neatly for use on a pedalboard, though there is the option of adding the stick-on rubber feet that are in the box.

Usability and features

The Strobo-Sonic Pro takes a leaf from TC Electronic's success with the PolyTune by making it relatively slim. Space-saving doesn’t just come from its physical proportions, though. Fender has placed the input and output jacks at the top of the pedal, allowing other pedals with top-mounted jacks to sit closer together on a pedalboard. Unlike Walrus's Canvas Tuner, the LCD display can't be rotated for the option of sideways placement, but with the power input placement on the top too, Fender has kept things streamlined for your 'board vertically here.

There is flexibility in the power department, because while there's no battery power option, players can choose use a 5V USB-C power input or the 9V DC input. The latter has a current draw of 180mA that's higher than the PolyTune's 100mA and TU-3's 85mA maximums, but well under the Canvas's 300mA with its 2.8" TFT screen.

The bonus of the USB-C power is countered by its side placement, though, which will be an issue for close placement alongside other pedals.

The hardware controls for the pedal's mode are refreshing in an industry that moves towards app and screen parameter controls. While the bypass mode is changed with a slider switch, holding the button on the Stobo-Sonic's side enters Mode functions if it's pressed briefly or Pitch changes if it's held longer

The reference pitch can be changed between 430 and 450Hz to cover most needs. There's no control for brightness control on the pedal but Fender has already considered this with auto-brightness dimming. This light-sensing will adjust the screen's brightness according to your surroundings, and I found it worked so well in my testing it negated the need for user editability.

I really like the Fender Stobo-Sonic's choice of Strobe and more old school Needle modes to change between super precise ±0.01 Cent tuning accuracy in Strobe mode and a faster, but less precise ±1 Cent in Needle mode. You might decide the latter is a worthwhile compromise for quick changes in a live set.

The main display in Strobe mode actually cleverly manages to combine a hybrid of both, with the LED pattern strobing to the left or right for super fine adjustments to make the note more flat or sharp, while the needle display is shown above and below this graphic to help you dial in broader adjustments.

My guinea pig for testing is a Fender Stratocaster with a hardtail bridge and American Standard tuners (the non-locking type). It was supposedly set up by a professional before I purchased it second-hand several years ago – the action has always been spot on, but I was keen to see if the intonation is holding out since my last check.

The interface on the Strobo-Sonic Pro makes it easy to dial in rough tuning adjustments with its needle graphic, which is displayed at the same time as the more accurate strobe that's vital for intonation. I found it fast and efficient to help the process of setting the intonation, and being my go-to tuner for general playing for a couple of weeks. I also plugged in my Yamaha TRBX174EW bass guitar to see how the Strobo-Sonic Pro handles its lower frequencies, and I had no problems there either.

Verdict

Tuner pedals, much like many ‘utility’ parts of our setups, fall into the category of reluctant purchase; you can’t be without it, and you probably don’t think about changing it very often. Therefore, it pays to get a good one. Fender has wrapped high-performance tuning capabilities in a remarkably compact, lightweight aluminum chassis that shaves off significant bulk compared to the traditional options you may have grown up using.

Where it truly triumphs is in its versatility and value proposition. At $129.99 USD / £99 GBP, it is priced competitively. It undercuts some premium strobe tuners while remaining accessible to everyday gigging musicians. By offering a hybrid display interface that combines the rapid, macro-level guidance of a traditional needle mode with the micro-tonal precision of a moving strobe ring, Fender ensures that users do not have to sacrifice stage speed for studio accuracy.

MusicRadar verdict: For touring musicians looking to lighten their load, studio engineers demanding immaculate intonation, and any player seeking a modern, highly visible board centerpiece, the Strobo-Sonic Pro is an investment that easily earns its place on the pedalboard of any guitarist.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Fender

Now here is a guitar effects pedal that is all kinds of nuts, places all kinds of sounds at your feet, and exists somewhere way outside of the regular overdrive, modulation, delay and reverb continuum – it’s called the Ottobit X, and the very fact that it is from Meris, and commands a whopping $599 price tag, tells us that we are in for something completely different.

Maybe even something weird. Meris describe the Ottobit X as a “modular degradation and texture engine” with lo-fi sounds inspired by a nostalgia for the ‘80s. This is where cutting-edge digital signal processing is leveraged to recreate old-school analogue and early digital sounds, and there is so much going on with the Ottobit X that it is difficult to know where to start.

Terry Burton, founder and engineer of Meris, says the R&D project took him way back to his salad days. “This project was one of our funnest,” he says. “It took me back to the days of riding my BMX to pick out a VHS.”

Should we think of the Ottobit X as a de facto time machine for our electric guitar tone? It has the features to invoke ‘80s sounds, with a heap of effects on offer. There are six types of glitch effects, including Grain Freeze, Stutter, Tape Stop, Stutter Step, Push Loop and, our favourite, Wikki Wikki, the latter a real-time vinyl scratching looper.

Because we all know that a little degradation on a signal can make a tone better, the Ottobit X has all kinds of tool at its disposal for degrading your guitar signal in a way that makes it sound pleasing. The Sample Rate dial has a huge range to it, taking you from 48Hz to 48Khz. There is a Bits dial that can adjust the bit depth of your signal from 1 to 24 bits.

Players can then consult the services of the Filter knob to dial in the filter’s cut-off frequency, making it darker or brighter to taste. There are three different filters; Ladder, State Variable and Otto Tron.

And there’s more. There is VHS delay and VHS reverb to add depth and space. There are five pitch effects and five different types of modulation. Again – Ring Mod, Div Trem, Tape Mod, Freq Shift, Otto Vibe – these are not vanilla modulation choices.

Furthermore, you can colour your sound with four preamps, including Volume Pedal, Tube, Vinyl and Wavefold.

When you find a favourite sound, you can save it down to any one of 99 presets stored across 33 banks. Cycle through the presets via the footswitches, and manage them with via the colour display screen. The pedal supports full stereo and MIDI and ships with 18 artist presets.

The sounds samples include the weird horror soundtrack synths, blissed out dream tones and videogame skronk, and we’re really only scratching the surface here on what is sure to be a pedalboard powerhouse for adventurous players. The best thing you can do is watch the demo videos above (sadly on YouTube and not VHS) and head over to Meris for more.

Here is some good news for all users of the Tone Master Pro – and for anyone with one in their shopping basket right now – Fender has just expanded its flagship amp modeller’s capabilities with a serious firmware update.

The update is free, available now, and comprises eight new amp models, eight cabinet emulations, and 15 guitar effects – plus there is a whole bunch of utilities, such as a second page of footswitch assignments (that means you have a total of 16 footswitches per preset),

This is Fender-heavy update, with some cult classics from its tube amp archive, digitalised for all your electric guitar tone needs. And with the Rumble 800 included in this version, maybe your bass guitar tone needs, too.

There are five Fender guitar amps in the update: the ’57 Champ, which could be the compact studio pinch-hitter you’ve been missing all your life; some silver panel combo royalty in the shape of the ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverb, ’68 Custom Princeton Reverb; and there is the ’65 Twin Custom 15, which is a Twin but with a 15” speaker.

Your expanded cabinet options now include the compact 8” driver of the ’57 Champ, the 1x10 formats of ’65 and ’68 Princetons, plus the 1x12s from a ’65 and ’68 Deluxe. The aforementioned 1x15” of the Twin is also available plus there’s the Celestion G12H from an EVH 5150 1x12 and a 4x12 “British” cabinet loaded with G12Hs.

Speaking of EVH Gear, Fender has added all three channels of the 50-watt 5150 III 6L6 head here, which will mean fun times for any rock or metal guitar player.

There are lots of effects here, some of which will be familiar. There are guitar and bass overdrive pedals inspired by EarthQuaker Devices Plumes and Blumes respectively, a “Seventy Sixer Compressor” which, no prizes for guessing, is inspired by the UA 1176 compressor.

There’s also a Rockbox 100 inspired by the Scholz R&D Rockman X100 headphone amp, so all your Def Leppard tone dreams might indeed come true.

Some will be less familiar, with eight Fender-designed effects including Step Tremolo, Prismatic Delay, Step Filter Delay, Spectral Reverb, Cirrostratus Reverb and Cirrostratus Synthverb.

As for the rest of the new features, search has been improved, there is a new favourites filter, and there has been a redesign of the looper pedal function and the guitar tuner now allows you to toggle between needle and strobe modes.

For more information, head over to Fender.

JHS Pedals has unveiled the Fumble, a clean boost pedal with a simple two-knob layout that will serve a variety of useful purposes on your pedalboard and it is only $89. Simple.

But how this guitar effects pedal came to be, and the very story behind the Fumble’s design, is a little harder to explain. Indeed, some of you might already have got your hands on this circuit before, because Josh Scott accidentally released it as the boost on v1 of JHS Pedals NOTADÜMBLË solderless DIY drive pedal kit.

From the layperson’s perspective, this seems like an easy mistake to make. Just picture the scene at a pedal company. You have all these schematics lying around. Some of them must start to look the same after a while, especially after a long day.

Anyway, JHS Pedals’ supremo Josh Scott was in the fever of creation. One side of the NOTADÜMBLË was the quintessential “boutique” overdrive pedal sound, a circuit inspired by the Dumble amps used by cats such as Robben Ford, Joe Bonamassa and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. The other was meant to be a buffered effects loop circuit that he cloned for John Mayer, a doofer built by Alexander "Howard" Dumble some time in the ‘80s that went by the name of A Box Later (Scott’s version was called Box It Later).

What Scott actually put in the original NOTADÜMBLË was something else entirely, a Dumble preamp box that coincidentally JHS had also built for Mayer.

Scott duly issuing a mea culpa on YouTube, offering refunds and hastily putting together v2 as he originally intended.

“I made a video. I told everyone,” says Scott. “We sold through the remaining inventory, discontinued the NOTADÜMBLË V1 after our batch of 15,000 sold out, and refunded anyone who asked to return their unit.”

It would be interesting to see how many people asked for a refund; in pedal culture, this mistake has a certain appeal, as though this new pedal that was designed by someone else and built by your own fair hands was itself something secret. Still, it wasn’t what Scott had intended. This Dumble-inspired, built-for-Mayer circuit laid around.

And if that seemed like a bit of a bit of a waste, then in time Scott would come to agree, hence we have the Fumble. This is a clean boost based on the Dumble BBC-1, a JFET preamp that Dumble made for his most-valued customers and then applied inside his own guitar amp designs for “the FET Mode”.

It was only when researching the BBC-1 that Scott had the epiphany. The BBC-1 was not a Dumble original; the late tube amp guru had cloned his circuit from a ‘70s acoustic guitar preamp.

“Which means the legendary Dumble FET sound – the one inside $200,000 to $400,000 amps – is a clone of a 1970s piezo preamp,” writes Scott.

Which makes the Fumble a clone of a clone of a clone. And if all this confuses you then you are not alone. But rest assured, the Fumble is easy to use, and could be a hard-working little stompbox, capable of pushing an already driven amp further, for pushing your drive pedals further, for playing the role of always-on tone sweetener or buffer at the start of your chain or simply as an end-of-chain boost for extra oomph.

The Output dial adjusts master volume. The Input dial is weird. Fully clockwise, it is bypassed but as you pull it back it rolls off the input gain and, crucially, the bass, making for a “thinner, tighter” sound.

This, says, JHS Pedals, is pretty unique, a unique feature on a pedal with a really strange history. The Fumble is available now, priced $89.

See JHS Pedals for more details.

What is it?

Fractal’s flagship Axe-Fx III amp and multi-effects processor may be a bit overkill for most of us, not just in its £2.5k asking price (and that’s without a foot controller) but also in the facilities it provides.

However, Fractal is, of course, aware of this and does provide more affordable stripped-down iterations of its modelling technology with the likes of the FM3, FM9 and the (effects only) VP4 Virtual Pedalboard.

The current FM3 MKII Turbo (retailing at £1,149) has been the entry point into the full Fractal amp and effects world up until now, but that’s all changed with the release of the new AM4, which makes the sounds more accessible to a larger audience.

It still has the same four-footswitch form factor and the same price point as the VP4, but where the VP4 has no amp modelling, the AM4 has a full quota of Fractal’s finest amp models alongside a choice range of effects.

Specs

• Price: $699 | £789 | €925
• Origin: USA
• Type: Amp and effects modelling floor pedal
• Features: Buffered bypass, 104 presets, tuner, tap tempo, noise gate and EQ on each preset
• Controls: Level, Select, Soft knobs (A, B, C, D), 6x buttons, Footswitches (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Connections: Standard instrument input, standard outputs L (mono) & R, Standard Send, Standard Return, Pedal 1 & 2, 1/8” headphone output, SPDIF In & Out, MIDI In & Out, USB
• Power: Supplied 9V DC adaptor, 1500 mA 
• Dimensions: 252 (w) x 162 (d) x 62mm (h) 
• CONTACT: Fractal Audio

Usability and sounds

The AM4 falls neatly into the ‘compact modeller’ category with a size and shape that’s both eminently portable and suitable for slotting into a pedalboard alongside your other pedals. While its main use in a live scenario is direct connection to a PA system or an FRFR speaker, there’s no reason you couldn’t use it as an effects processor with a conventional guitar amp.

What you’re getting is a unit with 104 presets onboard in 26 banks of four, each preset comprising a signal chain of four blocks – one amp and three effects is the norm, but you can have four effects blocks.

Now, while four blocks may seem paltry to anyone who is used to longer signal chains, it really can be enough to cover many contingencies because those blocks have an inherent flexibility. Every block has four channels, each with a different model or parameters.

This means you can have four different amps in your amp block and four types of delay, for example, or simply one delay with four different delay times in your delay block. The amp block is of particular note as it has facilities that might otherwise have used up several blocks – it doesn’t just have the amp but also contains the full associated cabinet modelling with built-in stereo room ambience, plus a footswitchable boost.

For each preset you also get four Scenes, each Scene basically a snapshot of which blocks are active and which channel is selected for the block – this means you can call up a wide variety of sounds by switching Scenes.

Everything in a preset can be quickly set up or tweaked from the unit itself – there’s no touchscreen, but using the buttons and soft knobs is intuitive. Alternatively, you can use the excellent AM4-Edit software on a connected computer.

Changing between the three primary modes of operation (Preset, Scene, Effects) is implemented by pressing footswitches 1 and 2 together and then making your selection via one of the other footswitches, each corresponding to a different mode shown above in the display. In Preset mode you can gaplessly select the four presets in a bank with the footswitches, and bank changes are implemented by a press-and-hold of footswitches 1 or 4.

Scene mode lets each footswitch call up the different scenes within a preset, while Effect mode is for turning effects blocks on and off and, in the case of the amp block, turning its boost on and off.

There’s also an Amp mode of operation that assigns each of the four channels from the amp block its own footswitch, so you have access to four independent amp-and-cab setups.

While the signal chain may not be as complex as that of the Axe-Fx III, the AM4 still has its component-level physical amp modelling and DynaCab cabinet emulation, which makes for a classy range of sounds with excellent playing response.

You get more than 240 different amp models – albeit some being different channels of the same amp – with all of the big hitters covered, as well as a wide selection of more obscure and boutique examples. As for the cabs, there are more than 45 DynaCab models, all with real-time visual mic positioning, and there’s also the option of using your own IRs.

Effects are well represented by a selection of 80-plus drive models, loads of reverbs and delays, many modulation types, and compressors and wah pedals. While there’s no dedicated pitch shifting, there is some for shimmer in the reverb block.

The AM4 comes well stocked (22 banks) with usable pre-programmed presets for use straight out of the box or as advanced starting points for your own tweaks. A lot of these are in the format Drive>Amp>Delay>Reverb, which may be all you need. You can also choose from 16 different effects blocks (a maximum of two of any type) to easily set up your own chain, and if you need to free up blocks it’s useful to know that you can have reverb and delay in a single block by choosing one of the Echo models for your reverb block.

If you want to use other effects pedals with the unit, there’s nothing to stop you placing them before or after the unit, but there is also a send and return loop with a fixed position just before the output.

This would allow you to use external pedals in the chain while taking advantage of the AM4’s balanced outputs or the headphone output for a bit of silent practice. That headphone output also comes in handy for recording, taking advantage of the AM4’s ability to function as a 4-in/4-out audio interface.

Comprehensive MIDI capability is available for those who wish to take advantage of it, and there’s also provision to connect up to two expression pedals for real-time control of effects – essential if you want to use the onboard wah options.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

MusicRadar verdict: If you want to get into the Fractal amp-modelling universe, the AM4 is your entry point – but we’re in no way describing it as ‘entry level’. Make no mistake, it could grace any professional stage with its superb range of sounds, rugged build and great flexibility in how you use it.

Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Fractal Audio Systems

Ola Englund

• “The effects from the Axe-FX III are so good that simply putting them in a standalone box is already a knockout product”: Fractal Audio Systems VP4 Virtual Pedalboard review
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

DOD and Morley have pooled their R&D resources for the Wah-ocTo-Fuzz, a stompbox that is a wah pedal, a fuzz pedal and an octave pedal all at once.

The Wah-ocTo-Fuzz is equipped with a treadle with glow-in-the-dark grip tape, with controls for the octave and fuzz circuits on either side, and this DOD/Morley two-hander allows players to use these each of these three effects individually or to stack them, running two or all three together.

The wah, as ever, is activated by Morley’s optical circuit, so just step on it and it comes into play. You will find separate footswitches for engaging the fuzz and octave effects. The fuzz section has dials for Intensity, which controls the amount of gain in the signal, and Fuzz Level, which controls your overall output when the fuzz is engaged.

You’ve got three dials on the octave side, with controls for Octave Level for the octave-down effect, Tone for adjusting brightness, and a Direct Level that operates as a wet/dry for your effect, allowing you to keep it super-subtle or bring that octaver to the fore.

We can see an obvious appeal here for fans of Jimi Hendrix. Indeed, the sounds offered by the Wah-ocTo-Fuzz are old-school, only we’re talking ‘70s and ‘80s. These are all classic circuits from the DOD and Morley Archives.

The octave section comes from the FX35 Octoplus, a mid ‘80s DOD classic that wasn’t a million miles away from something like the Boss OC-2, offering analogue monophonic sub-octave that works a treat on single-note lines then starts to get messy with chords, which can be a cool sound in an of itself.

As for Morley’s side of the bargain, you’ve got ’70s-style Power Wah and Power Fuzz circuits, and that makes for a 3-in-1 pedal that you don’t see everyday.

It has been done to an extent. Dr No Effects’ RoadRunner ‘Octave Fuzz Wah Flying Machina’ springs to mind; it was definitely designed with Hendrix in mind, pairing that Roger Mayer Octavia-style octave fuzz with wah, and housing it in an enclosure that looks like it was designed by Evel Knievel and Jeremy Scott.

At $679, that is a considerably more expensive pedal. You can pick up the Wah-ocTo-Fuzz (DOD and Morley call it the WTF pedal for short) for $249.

Feed it 9VDC (300mA minimum) from a pedalboard power supply or 9V battery and you’re good to go. The WTF enclosure is made of rolled steel and is road ready. That electro-optical operating system for the wah pedal won’t break down on you. DOD/Morley says it's not just for electric guitar – it'll work fine with keyboards and bass guitar, too.

Find out more over at DigiTech/DOD.

This whole idea of moving fast and breaking stuff gets a bad reputation these days but musicians have been doing it for the longest time and Oliver Ackermann can testify that it gets results.

He didn’t get where he is today without breaking some stuff. Ackermann fronts Brooklyn noise-rock trio A Place To Bury Strangers and is the founder of Death By Audio. And the demarcation between these two roles is beyond blurred. Each informs the other, and the breaking of stuff – rules, guitar amps, recording equipment, noise limits et cetera – has been a through line of his career so far.

It’s the ethos behind some of Death By Audio’s most out-there designs, and it came from being exposed to hardcore, shoegaze and noise-rock in the ‘90s that presented a new frontier of electric guitar tone to explore. Ackermann was hooked.

“When I got into noise music and extreme noise music, that just seemed like, ‘How can I deconstruct these instruments to create other new sounds?’” he says, joining MusicRadar from Death By Audio’s HQ in NYC. “That’s when I started tinkering and pulling apart amps, and trying to build my own guitars, and build microphones, recording equipment and all this stuff. Eventually, you start to figure that stuff out.”

This conversation was meant to be about A Place To Bury Strangers new album, Rare And Deadly, a compilation culled from unreleased tracks and rarities that never found their way onto an album, and so the trio decided to do something a little differently and release it but make the tracklisting different for each physical release. “There were too many songs to put on one record,” says Ackermann. “I really didn’t want to do some giant triple-disc thing. So we broke them apart into different bits.”

But like we said, the supremo of Death By Audio and frontman/guitarist of A Place To Bury Strangers is the same guy. There’s no changing in the phone booth. The sounds Ackermann cooks up on the breadboard are the sounds we hear on record. Though, as he explains, we should not get too hung up on the gear itself. Don’t get to precious about it. Much of it is interchangeable. All of it is just a tool, to be used, or misused if that’s the sound you’re looking for.

Rare And Deadly is technically speaking a compilation and no two editions of it are alike, with you switching up the tracklisting. Is there a case to be made that it’s actually a great introduction to A Place To Bury Strangers?

“Yeah, it's one of those things where it’s just the pure essence of all of these years of recordings and things that we’ve done. You’re constantly writing songs – at least that’s what I’m always doing.

“This is a collection of all that leftover stuff, but maybe it was never finished and polished further, and really taken to that point of being, like, ‘This message that we want to make.’ It’s a real raw snapshot of all of these years.”

Where do you get the time, Oliver? Are you making pedals by day, tracking at night? Do you ever have spare time?

“I don’t know! [Laughs] I’ve filled up my time with all of the sorts of things that I love to do. I’ll always be trying to start some random bands with friends and do all sorts of crazy things, and start companies, or other different art projects, and build furniture, all sorts of stupid stuff! [Laughs]

“One of those things that’s really fun to do is record music and write songs. I’ve just got more proficient over the years at being able to connect and express myself in songs, from start to finish.”

You were originally from Virginia. Did you have this romantic notion of New York before you arrived? A song like Out Of Place has got that sort of romance for a New York that doesn’t exist anymore – the NYC of Scorsese’s After Hours

“Yeah, for sure. It’s all chasing that romance of Where are these nights going to go? But we still go out and have fun and do crazy things here in New York. It’s just that it does seem more tame and not like those old movies in a way.

“I still think that there’s a seedy underbelly of neat, cool stuff that’s happening. I try to keep that stuff alive. Music is one of those great things that can take you to so many different places, where it’s like you drift off into a dream of your reality.”

You were a hardcore kid growing up. Who were your New York influences? Was the no wave movement big for you?

“Yeah, big time. When I feel like really fell in love with the music was around that transition, of transitioning out hardcore and punk, and that kind of stuff. I was really open to exploring all kinds of music.

“I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, and it was the time when there was a noise scene that was going on. That really opened up my eyes to all sorts of different stuff, and this lifestyle of just smashing things and doing whatever the hell we wanted, deconstructing music, and exploring what was up with these cities and these environments. I fell in love with that stuff, and that was why I moved to New York.

“It seemed like another city which was lawless, and you could do whatever you wanted. There’s still people here that remember that, and still try to embrace it, but it’s like all these people sort of had to start following the laws as they got older. That’s what I gravitated towards, the idea that there’s no rules. You build your house. You make your art – whatever it is – and share it with the community.”

That’s the thing with all these revolutionary cultural movements, like punk, they become kind of conservative in their own ways.

“I think people see money and they get comfortable, and then they like things like good food and stuff, and then they get complacent. Fuck all that shit, you know? Yeah, just push forward and consume some art [laughs].”

Who were your guitar tone heroes growing up?

“It was bands like My Bloody Valentine, Jesus and the Mary Chain, Slowdive, and that was at a time where I just had no really idea of what sounds they were making. That was just such a mystery and so interesting. Or bands like Curve.

“It was right at that time in the mid ‘90s, when you’d listen to this music and it sounded like someone could have been driving a car into a wall, or smashing something or cutting something with a chainsaw. Or the sound of whales, or space aliens shooting through the sky… I had no idea what that was, and that really intrigued me to be like, ‘How do these people make these sounds?’

“And then knowing that they were guitar bands it was like, ‘Oh well, what can you even do with this instrument!?’ Plugging it into an amplifier and cranking it all the way up, hearing the sounds and the feedback, it just made me think that maybe this was something that I could do. They were not necessarily playing complicated songs or anything. It was all just about these atmospheres and soundscapes, and so I chased all of that stuff down.”

The only rules you really have to follow are the rules of physics, which way the electrons are flowing.

“I think a lot of people were so concerned with what those rules were, and the laws of physics, they lost track of what their goal was, which was making sound. I always came at this stuff from the perspective of a musician. So when when you’re trying to design a circuit, I’m always thinking, ‘Well, what else can this do? What other things can we do to break this?’

“Sometimes you’ll see people on forums and they’re like, ‘Oh, you can’t do that.’ Then you do it and you’re like, ‘Wow! This sounds even cooler than it did before.’ And maybe there’s some sort of issue with it where it’s gonna blow up, or burn up, or create sounds that could blow up your amp, but as a musician, you can use these sounds and create more interesting sounds.

“That seemed like where my interests were, creating pedals that would totally deconstruct music and sound waves, yet be like an interactive way in which someone could be there, on the lever, pushing it over, and destroying their own music. It’s beautiful.’”

There is a beauty in destruction. Everyone loves an explosion. Is there anything from the early days of designing pedals that you would love to bring back, or something that you have forgotten the schematic for?

“There is always those things. I will always look back on that stuff. There’s this pedal that I use right now all the time, Armageddon. It was the prototype, super-big distortion pedal, and it’s got all these circuit boards inside that are all glued together with wires and tape and stuff, and I’m constantly changing the parts out and glueing it back together, but it's so mangled on the inside it’s too hard to tell what is going on… [Laughs]”

You’ve glooped your own pedal!

“Yeah, I think it’s something that will rebuild again, but it always just seemed out of range because some of these circuits were so complicated and so complex, and everything was built all point-to-point.

“Now we can do things with easier processes, building on machines, and so you could do way more complicated circuits, way easier. We didn’t have the ability to share these things that you would spend a month building that [now] some machine can spit out all the transistors and resistors and everything in seconds. Welcome to the future.”

Meeting Richard Fortus was important for you as a builder. He was a real early champion of your pedals. But so too was Lou Reed.

“Lou Reed, totally! I had no idea. Many people were like, ‘Lou Reed told me to get this!’ And I was like, ‘Holy shit! That’s fucking nuts.”

What is it that Lou Reed uses? You should put that on the box.

“I don’t know! Yeah, I should definitely have that on the box. Definitely.”

Are there any of your pedals that are pretty misunderstood?

“Yeah, I mean, that stuff happens kind of all the time, but also there’s pedals that we have that I don’t even understand why anybody likes them. Sometimes they’re so insane, and you hear people like, ‘That’s my sound!’ And they use it on everything. And you’re like ‘Wooft! ...not a good idea.’ But it’s all subjective.”

There are no bad tones.

“You see some dope band who play some terrible pedal all the time and that’s their sound, and that can be awesome. Things that are useful for me are not necessarily for other people.”

Exactly. And it’s so dependent on people’s rig and how they’re using it. A lot of this tone-seeking involves being at one with volume.

“Totally! And some people aren’t with that. When I play a show, I’ll have my hands on the amps, dials on everything that you could possibly control, and whatever you can do in the space. Move your amplifiers around. Take the vocal microphone and put it on the kick drum, or whatever.

“You have this chance – in this space – to mould these things and do whatever you possibly can. You need to be able to adapt your sound. Your pedals are gonna sound different in some other place, and it’s important to know how to use them, to know how to create the sounds that you want – go for it and figure that stuff out.”

Was the Echo Master vocal effect a success for Death By Audio?

“It’s freaking insane. It’s so popular. It’s so nuts. My buddy has this music festival in New York where it’s like 300 bands, 400 bands, and I saw so many shows and, seriously, more than half of the people were using that pedal. It’s just so easy to use. It just sounds so good. You could instantly sound like Suicide and that’s fucking awesome.”

The Echo Master made me think of Deicide’s debut album in which Glenn Benton stated no effects were used on the vocals. There are so many death metal vocalists who’d love this thing!

“Dude, totally! So many people. I was always surprised playing with hardcore bands and seeing all those vocalists playing through all those pedals and all those racks and stuff, and getting like the octave-down vocals. I was like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.'

“I thought it was just some dude without his T-shirt on, running around, yelling into a microphone, but he’s all super-processed and doing all this crazy vocal distortion shit. That made me see that more people could do it themselves and make that sound.”

That’s what makes Death By Audio so exciting. Your pedals are not for polite company. If I am looking for some tidy reverb pedal to do a job and be out of the way, I’m not going to buy it from you.

“Yeah, I think that that’s important. I don’t feel like there are people who are doing this stuff and totally into pushing those boundaries, and doing something kind of dangerous.

“That was the music that I fell in love with, people who were spitting into the crowd, and doing something fucked up, and you felt sick from eating acid or whatever. Those nights and that insanity, and that stuff was what was thrilling and exciting about music – especially at a live concert.

“I want pedals that you can turn on and it sounds different – you can instantly hear what the hell is happening, and so the artists can use that to have those moments where things jump out all of a sudden, that it increased the dynamics in their show and gave them something that they can paint with, create their own sound, and have it be different.”

And in concert, it can be different from one moment to the next. The show is where we can create those experiences and memories and reintroduce the danger in sound.

“Yeah, at least right now that stuff is so interesting and live music is just so great to go to. When you go see a band and there’s someone sweating onstage and they’re barely making it happen, and they’re hanging on for dear life, it’s bliss. It’s just awesome.”

• Rare And Deadly is out now via Dedstrange
• Find out more about Ackermann's pedal designs at Death By Audio.

We are truly living in an age of abundance when it comes to guitar gear. We live in the golden era of guitar effects pedals, a digital era of amp modellers and hybrid designs, and with that we have all kinds of tones available at our fingertips.

We also have never been better informed about gear, about which pedal does what, and how to find the perfect overdrive pedal. And in this online information eco-system, it is only natural that some items of gear attain a certain cachet – especially when the gear in question happens to be rare. In short, there is a lot of cork-sniffing going on.

But the lesson from Khemmis’ bravura new album, a self-titled capital H, capital M heavy metal epic with an über-metal concept (complete with a full-on story arc, demons, madness and all that cool stuff), is that you don’t need to break the bank in search of a tone that inspires you.

The Denver-based doomsters’ sound could be attributed to the Orange Rockerverb tube amps that both Phil Pendergast and Ben Hutcherson play through. It could be attributed to their Dunable electric guitars, and the Bare Knuckle humbuckers they use.

But Pendergast reveals that the secret sauce in his rhythm guitar tone on the record was a pedal so cheap that you could go into a guitar store and buy a round of them for your friends. You have probably paid more for a takeaway pizza.

“My secret weapon for this record was the cheapest possible guitar pedal that you can buy, the Behringer SF300 fuzz pedal,” says Pendergast, joining MusicRadar over Zoom. And what he finds especially amusing is that he doesn’t even use the SF300 as a fuzz.

“In the Boost mode, it is the entirety of the guitar tone for my main rhythm tones on the record,” he explains.

The Behringer SF300 Super Fuzz is one of those cult classic pedals, loved for its super-cheap retail price – Pendergast's was $28 and you can literally pick one up for just over 20 quid (currently £21.30 at Thomann or $28.90 from Sweetwater) – and mocked for its plastic enclosure.

But it's pedal whose tones speak for themselves, offering players two fuzz modes and a boost, and a fuzz circuit that performs very much like a Boss FZ-2 Hyper Fuzz.

Pendergast only bought it because he wanted to sound like Jus Oborn and Liz Buckingham, then realised that, actually, this was doing a job for him.

“I mean, I bought that pedal just so I could play Electric Wizard-esque riffs, just to try it out, ‘cos it was $28 or something,” he says. “Then I just went to the Boost mode and I was like, ‘That sounds pretty damn good.’ It’s just a really good pedal for preserving the sound of the pickups that you’re using, and then letting you sweeten it a little, and you have quite a bit of control over how, because there is an EQ. There’s a low and higher mid-range tone knob on it. It just worked. I mean, it just was the right fit.”

Pendergast had been using an Xotic Effects EP Booster. That’s what we hear on 2021’s Deceiver. And there are no complaints to be had about that. It’s a single-knob boost pedal inspired by the preamp in an EP-3 tape echo machine, and as such it has become an industry standard tone-sweetener. Pendergast had plenty of options in the studio, too, and yet none could beat the Behringer.

“We had, probably, at least close to a hundred different drive pedals that we brought to the studio [laughs], and we tried a lot of them,” he says. “This was the first pedal that I tried, because I was like, ‘I think it’s gonna be this.’ And then we were like, ‘There’s no way it’s gonna be that. Let’s try other things.’ And then we were like, ‘Yeah, it's that.’

“It just worked really well for what we were going for on this record. So there’s this cheap-ass plastic fucking fuzz pedal that we’re playing – not in fuzz mode – that is all over the record and I just think it’s hilarious. That is very funny to me.”

Hutcherson used The King In Yellow, a parallel blending overdrive from Lichtlaerm Audio that’s inspired by a Tube Screamer, and the two tones mixed worked gangbusters, each offering a slightly different midrange response.

Hutcherson says there is a lesson to be had in all this, and its one that some in the doom scene needs to learn.

“I mean, gear fetishism exists in every genre,” he says. “But anything remotely doomed related – or adjacent – suffers from it in a particularly nauseating way, where people think, ‘Oh, you have to have a first-generation [Sunn] Model T. You have to have this…’”

This is not how Khemmis got their sound on any of their albums.

“Dude, some of the best tones we got in this band – until we started working with Orange – was with a Carvin X-100B and a dirt pedal in front of it, an amp that you can still get that amp for, like, 400 or 500 bucks,” explains Hutcherson. “Phil and I, at one point, we each had two! We paid 200 bucks per head. They’re incredible amps. They take pedals great. The graphic EQ is the secret.

“But at the end of the day, it’s like there is so much totally fine gear, and you hit the point of diminishing returns so quickly.”

All that time spend gear hunting could be spend practising, or better still jamming, and writing. Hutcherson and Pendergast get it; they understand the gear obsession. C’mon, Hutcherson’s Zoom mise en scène finds him sitting next to a Peavey 6505 (just because he likes having it around) and a holy grail Ampeg V4 head. But you don’t need to go overboard.

“Find gear that opens up creative possibilities for you, rather than chasing some imagined tonal perfection,” says Hutcherson. “I guess, find joy in that hunt for the new exciting piece of gear – to a reasonable extent – but a new pedal won’t make you a better player. It won’t make you a better songwriter.

“The ideal, for me, is to have gear that gets as many roadblocks out of the way between getting the ideas from up here [taps head] and then out my fingertips. Like, whatever that needs to be. It doesn’t have to be the most sought-after whatever. It just needs to be something that you play through and you feel electrified when you play it.”

Khemmis’ self-titled LP is available to preorder via Nuclear Blast, dropping 12 June. You can read more from Pendergast and Hutcherson – including about that gnarly concept – coming soon to MusicRadar.

• Buy the SF300 pedal from Thomann (UK/Europe) - £21.30
• Buy the SF300 pedal from Sweetwater (US) - $28.90

What is it?

When you think of the humble wah pedal, maybe your mind flashes to the late '60s and early '70s, with the guitar heroes of yesteryear adding that trademark wacka-wacka to lead and rhythm parts, but it could be argued that the ‘90s were just as heavy with wah use, with this expressive stomp having something of a renaissance. That percussive quack made way to a weeping lead tone that now had more attitude, more aggression, and a hell of a lot more gain.

From Kirk Hammett’s wah-drenched Black Album leads to Jerry Cantrell’s searing, vocal-like phrasing, Tom Morello’s riotous riffage, and of course, Slash’s sweet harmonic minor licks, the wah pedal was most definitely back in the ‘90s, and it meant business.

​This is where the original Cry Baby 535Q comes in. Dunlop launched this beast in 1994, aiming it squarely at the guitar-slingers who rekindled interest in the Cry Baby, dragging it kicking and screaming into the grunge era. This could be considered the first commercially available 'modded' wah, sporting a frequency selector, a built-in boost, and a custom inductor tuned for a more throaty tone. While the original had four voice modes, by 1999 it had expanded to six, adding two more vintage options to the mix and making it Dunlop’s most versatile wah to date.

It is this 1999 version that Dunlop has decided to relaunch in 2026. Painstakingly recreating the original’s circuit, it even features the proper inductor supplied by the original manufacturer – meaning it should sound like a vintage example.

The only real departure from the original ‘99 model is that you now have on/off LEDs located at the top of the pedal for both the wah and boost, meaning you now know at a glance if you’ve forgotten to turn it off after your solo.

Specs

• Launch price: $229 | £234 | €269
• Type: Wah
• Controls: Boost Gain, Wah Range Selector
• Features: Six wah tones in one pedal, with built-in boost of up to 12dB
• Connectivity: 1/4" input and output
• Bypass: Buffered
• Power: 9V, 12mA
• Dimensions: 11" (L) x 5.1" (W) x 3.5" (H)
• Weight: 4.12 lbs
• Contact: Dunlop

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

If you’ve played any Dunlop wah in recent years, you’ll know exactly what to expect here. This pedal is big, unapologetically hefty, and pretty rock-solid.

I’ve had my fair share of Cry Babys over the years, and honestly, my pedalboard feels a little naked without one. My journey started with the basic, but dependable GCB95, before I graduated to the more versatile 535Q, and eventually, I took the plunge on the Slash signature model. The Slash wah was my go-to for a long time, though its weight and monstrous size eventually wore me down. That’s when I downsized to the Mini 535Q Auto, and I honestly haven’t looked back since.

Coming back to a full-size wah like the BB535 after years of using a mini is a bit of a shock. This thing feels huge on your 'board, and the oversized mode selector knob sticking out certainly doesn’t do it any favours. That said, there’s a reassuring quality to the build. The treadle sweep is beautifully smooth and stable, with just enough resistance to feel precise – it’s even stiff enough to stay put if you want to fumble your way through Money For Nothing. The six-position switch has a tactile and satisfying click, and the mini boost control is easy to access and tweak on the fly.

If I have one gripe with the BB535’s build, it’s the position of the on/off LED lights. They’re tucked away right at the tip of the pedal, ever-so-slightly obscured by the treadle. On paper, this seems logical enough, and it’s hardly the first Cry Baby to put them there, but in practice, your foot can block the view, making it tricky to check your status mid-song.

To be fair, I will concede that there’s not really a perfect place for these indicator LEDs on a classic wah pedal format. Both the Slash and Buddy Guy models have them on the side, which I personally prefer, while Dimebag and Akira Takasaki went for the heel-end placement. No matter where Dunlop puts these lights, someone’s bound to find fault; we all have our opinions after all, and what works for one won’t necessarily work for another. When I use a wah, my toes tend to hang over the edge, so this placement just doesn’t work for me.

Ultimately, though, it doesn’t detract from the BB535’s overall build quality. At the end of the day, this pedal is tightly constructed and expertly put together.

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Wah pedals are pretty simple by nature, and thankfully, the new BB535 is no different. Now, while the unit may be loaded with a wealth of features, most of which are found on other Cry Baby pedals, it still manages to keep a very intuitive layout.

The BB535 offers six distinct wah voicings, courtesy of a chunky side-mounted rotary switch. This is the heart of what makes the BB535 such a versatile beast. With a simple twist, you can jump from a bright, vintage-style quack to a deep, throaty growl and so much more.

Whether you’re chasing the glassy top end of classic funk or the mid-heavy snarl of ‘90s alt-rock, this pedal has you covered. I do wish there were small numbers or markings around the dial so you could see your setting at a glance, though. This would be especially helpful in the heat of a gig. However, the dial is easy to adjust, and thanks to the thick rubber padding of the control, I could even adjust it with my foot, meaning I didn’t have to constantly bend down to make changes.

The footswitch is easy to engage without feeling stiff or unpredictable, and the pedal’s action is smooth across the entire sweep, just how a good wah should feel.

The onboard boost is another highlight. I’ve always loved the boost switch on these pedals. To me, it’s very easy to push on and off, perfectly placed for heel operation, letting you kick in up to +12dB of gain when you need to cut through the mix. Engaging it feels pretty seamless, and the boost circuit, taken from the beloved MXR Micro Amp, sounds transparent and musical, and complements the wah sounds really well.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★★

For this review, I plugged in my trusty Gibson Explorer and ran it into a Jet City JC-100 head with its matching 2x12 cab. That amp’s Soldano-designed circuit seemed like the perfect pairing for this ‘90s throwback stomp. I dialled in a healthy dose of gain, with the mids slightly scooped to give those wah frequencies a little more room to breathe, and set about putting the Cry Baby through its paces.

First things first, this is a wildly versatile pedal. Each position gives you a totally different character, and frankly, it’s hard to find a "bad" setting.

I kicked things off with the boost disengaged, wanting to hear the pedal in its purest form. Even without any extra push, the BB535 delivers a wide range of voices. The first position, which has a frequency range of 444 to 2117 Hz, is all about that classic, percussive ‘wacka-wacka’ sound. It’s funky and pretty expressive, but you do lose a fair bit of your low-end. The second position moves the frequency band down a little, cutting a little of the sharp highs, and introduces more mids, at 385 to 1888 Hz. Notching over to the third position, and we’re into classic Cry Baby territory, at 300 to 1468 Hz. This is the closest setting to the quintessential Cry Baby tone, for me. The sound is nasal, mid-forward, but not too bright, and ideal for classic rock solos and beyond.

The fourth setting quickly became my favourite. At 248 to 1217 Hz, it feels slightly rounder, more vocal-like, and fuller in general. It’s perfect for those Jerry Cantrell detuned riffs, when you don’t want to lose too much bass.

Fifth position is where things start to get really throaty and aggressive, at 214 to 1050 Hz, the highs are noticeably notched out, and the low-mids are fat and full-on; you can really hear that “wow” sound when you sweep through the full range of the treadle. Lastly, we have the sixth position, which at 173 to 847 Hz is the deepest and tubbiest of the six.

What really surprised me was just how musical every mode is. I can genuinely see a use for all of them. There’s a lot of sonic ground covered in this pedal.

With the boost engaged, the pedal takes on a whole new personality. That extra 12dB of gain doesn’t just make you louder, it adds meat and presence, making your solos pop out of the mix without getting brittle or boxy. It’s especially fun with big, saturated amp settings.

Verdict

Dunlop’s BB535 Cry Baby is a love letter to the 90s alt-rock revolution and to the players who brought the wah back to the forefront. As expected from Dunlop, this pedal is hefty, solid, and ready for a lifetime of stomping. The build is robust, with a sweep that feels reassuringly smooth and tactile. Okay, the slightly obscured LEDs are a bit of a bug barer for me, but even that can’t overshadow just how road-ready and well-crafted this thing is.

Six distinct wah voices mean you can cover every classic era of wah from snappy funk and vintage rock to the snarling, mid-heavy tones that defined the ‘90s. Every mode is genuinely usable, and the frequency ranges are voiced so thoughtfully that you’ll struggle to find a setting that doesn’t bring something unique out of your playing, and the addition of a built-in boost is the icing on the cake, giving solos extra muscle.

If you’re after a pedal that delivers classic Cry Baby attitude with plenty of versatility, this is the one.

MusicRadar's verdict: For me, the new BB535 Cry Baby nails that iconic '90s wah attitude with a killer range of tones that will make anyone understand the wah boom of the 90s, but the indicator LEDs, while certainly practical, feel awkwardly placed, especially if you have large feet.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Jim Dunlop USA

Guitar Center

• Best wah pedals: Simply the top wah-wahs for your pedalboard

Thinking your pedalboard needs a refresh ahead of a slew of summer gigs? Well, we've just found the sale for you! Sweetwater has just dropped one of the biggest effects pedal sales of the year. Whether you’re a gigging musician, a bedroom player, or a tone connoisseur, there’s never been a better moment to expand your pedalboard and shape your sound.

Sweetwater’s massive stompbox event sees discounts of up to 35% across a vast selection of pedals, from versatile overdrives and fuzzes to shimmering reverbs, delays, and cutting-edge multi-effects units. There’s something for every player and genre, whether you’re hunting for subtle tone-shaping or outrageous sonic experimentation.

If you’ve been eyeing a Line 6 multi-effects, a DigiTech Drop, or the inspiring tones of Keeley and Electro-Harmonix, this is your chance to save on industry-leading brands. We’ve also spotted deals on boutique brands, so you can discover new sounds without breaking the bank.

But pedals aren’t the only thing on sale. Sweetwater’s Gig Essentials event is perfect for players stocking up ahead of festival season or summer gigs, with up to 30% off on a huge lineup of accessories. Need fresh strings, reliable instrument cables, power supplies, pedalboard tape, or even cases and stands? Now’s the time to grab the gear your live rig depends on.

Okay, with so many pedals on offer, we know it can be overwhelming. So, here are a few of our highlights.

Kicking things off is the awesome UAFX ANTI 1992. Looking for fire-breathing high-gain tones? Well, this is the one for you. The UAFX ANTI 1992 gives you access to a diverse array of sonic-sculpting tools, with multiple cab-speaker combos, live and preset modes, performance-focused channel settings, a 4-cable mode, and beyond. In our review, we said, "The ANTI is the best modelled 5150 emulation we've come across, and it has way more up its sonic sleeve than the original – we're smitten." Save $100 at Sweetwater.

Next is the Maxon AD9Pro Analogue Delay. Revamping one of Maxon’s most cherished designs, the AD9Pro is 100% analog with a quartet of MC4107 bucket brigade integrated circuits, and frankly, it sounds ace! Save a little over $100.

Now, we have to shout out the brilliant DigiTech Drop in the Sweetwater-exclusive white finish. This handy little stomp transforms your tuning with the click of a footswitch, allowing you to explore deeper tones and even cover bass duties with any standard 6-string. This pedal’s nine polyphonic pitch-shifted settings give you the power to drop your tuning from 1–7 semitones, a full octave, or a distinct octave-down setting that blends in your dry signal for enhanced clarity. Save $30 at Sweetwater.

Of course, there is a lot more on offer, so we encourage you to take a look for yourself and see what goodies you can find.

IK Multimedia has unveiled the Tonex One+ and at first blush it just looks like the regular Tonex One, the mini pedal amp modeller that offers top-tier amp and effects tones from the smallest slot on your pedalboard.

But the plus sign is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because the Tonex One+ has had a serious power-up, with full MIDI integration and wireless mobile editing now offering players more control over their electric guitar tone than they ever had before.

The Tonex One really was and is a marvel, in all its guises. The original first blew MusicRadar’s mind in 2024 (“Providing massive amp tones in a tiny pedal enclosure, Tonex One succeeds on every level in providing accurate amp sound in a housing that will fit on the busiest pedalboards,” read our verdict), then there was the Joe Satriani limited edition Tonex One, the Eddie Van Halen-inspired Brown Sound collection, the Tonex One Double Special, which came preloaded with 20 models from a pare of holy grail Dumble tube amps, and one that was specifically designed for bass guitar.

Now this. And for those who found the small buttons a little bit fiddly, who might have been intrigued by the prospect of having, like, your full entire live rig in a pedal that fits into the palm of your hand, then the Tonex One+ is big news.

It comes with full MIDI capability, both TRS ins and outs and USB-C, and it means players can actually automate their sounds and glide through patches via a MIDI controller, accessing to all 20 onboard presets and then having the ability to adjust parameters in real time.

Also, it makes your setup expandable. Connect a pair of Tonex One+ pedals together and you can run a dual amp rig. And two of these together still doesn’t take up that much room on the ‘board.

And now you can leave the laptop at home and use the Tonex App on your phone to edit your sounds and organise presets, download them from the ToneNET platform, et cetera.

Tonex One+ ships with TONEX SE software and the Signature+ Collection comprising 100 Premium Tone Models, all of which were created in the usual fashion using IK Multimedia’s proprietary AI Machine Modeling tech. The pedal ships preloaded with 20 of them.

It also has “studio-grade” EQ, compression, modulation, delay and reverb, and an improved noise gate.

And it ships now, priced $/€249. See IK Multimedia for more details.

SUPERBOOTH 2026: Announced last year, Roland’s Project Lydia – a neural sampling stompbox that enables you to apply the tonal qualities of a trained AI model onto an incoming audio signal – has now reached the second phase of its development, bringing it closer to becoming a fully realised commercial product.

Various changes and improvements have been made since we first got wind of the device, which comes from Roland's Future Design Lab. This innovation wing of the company was founded in 2024 “to help design the future of music creation”.

What musicians want that future to look like is very much open to question so, perhaps wisely, Roland has made the changes to Lydia based on demos, industry showcases and global surveys.

The result is a refined hardware design that promises enhanced flexibility, such as easier Raspberry Pi 5 installation and standalone USB MIDI controller operation. There’s also fully integrated I/O, which does away with the need for an external USB audio interface, and an onboard LCD display for easier navigation and real-time parameter feedback.

User preset memories are now part of the package, so control settings can be stored, and MIDI connectivity has been added for deeper control, automation and integration with other studio and live gear.

We’re still a way off from Lydia being something that you can actually buy, but Roland says that the first prototype generated strong interest, which prompted it to have a good think about where to go next with it.

“From the very first demos with professional audio developers through the overwhelming response from musicians worldwide, it was clear that Project Lydia was resonating,” says Paul McCabe, LA‑based leader of Roland Future Design Lab. “That dialogue directly shaped Phase 2. This version reflects what creators told us they want from AI hardware in real musical contexts, while also bringing forward new ideas from our team.”

Roland’s philosophical argument for using AI in this case is that, rather than replacing musicianship, it augments it, giving people a way of interacting with neural models and developing another avenue of expression. Lydia was conceived with the help of AI music technology company Neutone, and our correspondent’s view of the first prototype was positive, with its ability to turn one sound into another turning out to be a compelling creative proposition

If, as now seems likely, Lydia does end up coming to market, Roland’s hope is that the familiar pedal form factor will help musicians to trust in the new technology, giving them something tangible to cling onto as they experiment with what the AI side of the technology can do. The company also says that Lydia conforms to its ‘seven principles for music creation with AI’, which it laid out in 2024.

Lydia Phase 2 is making its public debut at Superbooth. You can learn more and contribute your own feedback via Roland’s new survey.

When JHS Pedals launched its $99 3 Series in 2020, it was with the intention of stripping down guitar effects pedal design to its essentials, offering top-quality sounds on simple stompbox with just three knobs and maybe a toggle for an alternative mode.

The 3 Series pedals were the essentials, stompboxes for beginners, for anyone on a budget. “A collection of pedals designed to give you affordability and simplicity without compromising quality,” said JHS.

But having covered the ubiquitous overdrive pedal, compressor pedal, reverb and delay pedals, too, the Kansas-based effects company has been gradually adding more exotic fare. Octave reverb, oil can delay, harmonic tremolo, a modded Tube Screamer-style drive pedal…

Where would JHS Pedals take it next? Well, we have the answer to that, with three pedals that cater to players whose tone tastes run to the exotic.

The 3 Series Bit Crusher, Ring Modulator and Glitch Delay are quite the trio. Launched yesterday, they are both a sign of the range’s success, but also, perhaps, that these sounds – hitherto exotic, forever a little weird to the ear – are becoming mainstream. What’s beyond doubt is that these offer us three very different ways of making our electric guitars sound very different.

Take the Bit Crusher. This crushes your bits. It has knobs for doing three different things: reducing the bit depth of your guitar’s signal, reducing its sample rate, and then applying a filter to the results. Adjust the bit depth via the Crush dial.

Fully counterclockwise it presents your signal as is, in 24-bit resolution, but as you turn the dial it goes from pristine to “grainy” and adding texture along the way, towards a “square-wave aggression and gated digital distortion” when dimed. The Sample Rate dial works the other way.

Fully clockwise it gives you a clean 32.768kHz, but dial it back and the signal digitally degrades, yielding some strange sounds along the way, digital artefacts, harmonic overtones, and promising “metallic, ring-mod-like chaos and full digital collapse” by its travel’s end.

The filter can warp this sound further, and there is a toggle switch for changing the filter mode. One is inspired by a vintage Oberheim synthesizer (JHS Pedals recommends this for bass guitar especially), the other is a high-pass and low-pass filter that “evokes the small speaker sound of a handheld game console”.

Is this what some 21st-century players might call an always-on tone sweetener? Could be… Could be indeed.

The Glitch Delay does what the name suggests. You can run it as a regular delay pedal with the Glitch knob fully counterclockwise. But where would be the fun in that. Turn the dial and you get time-based glitching inspired by Line 6’s pedalboard delay classic, the DL-4, and jazz guitar maverick Bill Frisell.

The glitch function plays around with the repeats, at random, bending them, making them warp. Because the glitches arrive are random, think of the Glitch knob as a probability of error knob, with probability increasing to 50 per cent with the dial maxed out. You get generous delay times with this, too, from super-tight 20ms slapback to a looooooong 980ms.

There is a toggle switch for Mix (one setting at 30 per cent, the other at 80), and if all this sounds intimidating then, rest assured, it’s not in practice. “This is an easy to use pedal where no setting sounds bad,” promises JHS.

Finally, we’ve got the 3 Series Ring Modulator, a pedal that offers you two distinct flavours of the effect that helped the Daleks talk in Doctor Who. One is inspired by the Way Huge Ringworm, the other by the Dan Electro Green Ringer, which gives you that octave-up weirdness that has a distinct Jimi Hendrix vibe.

A Tweak knob lets to add an LFO and octave-blend to these modes respectively, while Blend controls your wet/dry mix and Frequency controls the speed of the oscillator.

These 3 Series pedals are available now. See JHS Pedals for more details.

You will have no doubt have seen the Godzilla Stratocasters that Fender Japan unveiled last year, especially the $36,000 Custom Shop monster that comes fitted with a “Roar” button. Well, now meet the Fender Godzilla Distortion pedal – an all-new limited edition gain machine that comes with a wraparound custom art finish.

You could call this a “Roar” box, a fitting tribute to the original superstar Kaiju. There is nothing atomic about its provenance, however – Fender’s guitar effects pedal team has come away from the breadboard with a circuit that’s a little more conventional.

With an op-amp at at the heart of it, this distortion is equipped with an active 2-band EQ, offering 15dB of boost or cut via the Bass and Treble knobs. Your other controls include Volume and Gain.

There is more. Unscrew the baseplate and you’ll find an internal trimmer for adjusting the pedal’s midrange, allowing you to cut them for that modern scooped sound (wait, is that still modern!?), or boost them for a bit more muscle.

All of the above makes it seem not unlike Fender’s Hammertone Distortion pedal, which shared the same EQ stage, the internal trimmer, and control setup, as does the Hammertone Metal pedal.

It would be interesting to run a shoot-out of all three – there’s only one way to find out which one is the most beastly when the Gain dial hits 5 o’clock.

Anyway, tone-wise, this won’t be subtle. Fender promises it will run hot, with “low-noise, heavy-hitting saturation, pumping out powerful gain tones with rich harmonics”.

C’mon, it’s a Godzilla Distortion. We’re not looking for edge-of-breakup; we want the city in ruins, or at least the first three rows of the venue.

Elsewhere, this is a familiar Fender guitar effects pedal, with the Godzilla Distortion sharing that gratifyingly tough Hammertone Series aluminium enclosure, the top-mounted jacks, the F-branded skirted knobs, only its LED illuminates orange, and it lights up inside the gaping maw of the heat-ray breathing beast. Sometimes that is just what your pedalboard needs.

Just feed Godzilla 9V DC from a quality pedalboard power supply, drawing a minimum of and it’ll be happy. If only the real thing were so easily placated.

The Godzilla Distortion is true bypass and available now. It’s technically a limited run but Fender does not say how limited. That said, like the Hello Kitty Fuzz, this collab stompbox is likely to sell like hotcakes among monster freaks and gain heads, so don’t sleep on it. It’s priced £145/$149.

Head over to Fender for more details.

What is it?

DigiTech/DOD discontinued its always affordably priced Bad Monkey drive pedal back in 2015.

But renewed interest in it grew after Josh Scott of JHS Pedals posted a video in 2023 suggesting that the Bad Monkey could ape the sounds of both the Ibanez TS-10 Tube Screamer and the Klon Centaur.

Now, there’s a revamped version, the Badder Monkey, that may just take the edge off that increased demand for vintage units.

Specs

• PRICE: $149 | £129 | €149
• ORIGIN: Indonesia
• TYPE: Overdrive pedal
• FEATURES: True bypass, reversible StagePlate
• CONTROLS: Bananas (Gain), Curiosity (level), Barrel (Blend), Grunt (Low EQ), Screech (Mid/High EQ), Blend Mode toggle switch, Bypass footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
• POWER: 9V battery or 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 25mA
• DIMENSIONS: 70 (w) x 118 (d) x 55mm (h)
• CONTACT: DigiTech

Usability and sounds

While the pedal has the sound of the original Bad Monkey at its heart – with the same overdrive circuit, gain range and EQ frequencies – it also adds two new overdrive signal paths: one more extreme (Badder) and one more subtle (Behaved).

The really clever thing about the pedal, though, is how these three can be used singly or combined.

A continuously variable Barrel knob has three notched detent points (Behaved, Bad and Badder) that select the individual sounds of each circuit, but positions between these detent markers allow blends of any two circuits.

A three-way toggle switch lets you do this, blending with the Bad circuit either in phase or out of phase with the other two circuits, while its third position brings in Troop mode, bypassing the Barrel knob and giving you the three parallel overdrive circuits at the same time, blended evenly together.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

DOD probably could have simply reissued the original pedal and satisfied demand, but this reimagining is by far a better proposition.

.MusicRadar verdict: Because of the many more options onboard than your standard drive pedal, there is a learning curve, but what you’re getting is a versatile workhorse that can be finely dialled in to cover a myriad of needs.

Hands-on videos

DigiTech/DOD

The Studio Rats

Guitar Guitar

• “Surely the most versatile version yet, putting different flavours of gourmet crunch on the menu”: DOD 250 Overdrive/Preamp 50th Anniversary review
• Best overdrive pedals: Find new inspiration with the best drive pedals for guitar
• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Crazy Tube Circuits has launched its much-anticipated Triptychon pedal, an all-in-one gain machine (with some extras) that was teased at NAMM 2026 – and had players drooling at what this thing could do on their pedalboard.

Triptychon is an amp-style overdrive pedal. It’s a fuzz pedal (with four vintage flavours to choose from) – and it has a switchable octave mode and treble booster. In short, it has everything you need to dial in the formative electric guitar tones of the classic rock era.

Say what you like about Crazy Tube Circuits but the guitar effects pedal brand does not do things by halves. Think the Unobtanium Dumble/Klon inspired twofer. Or the Hi Power, a David Gilmour-inspired amp-in-a-box drive with a Coloursound boost housed with a Hiwatt-inspired preamp.

But it might have outdone itself with the Triptychon. It has something for the Jimi Hendrix fan, the Cream fan, the Black Sabbath fan – for anyone whose record collection and tastes in tone were shaped by the recorded output of late ‘60s and early ‘70s rock bands. And there are so many options.

There’s a fuzz inspired by the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face circuit, to which you can transform into an upper-octave, complete with two voicings. Alternatively, there are fuzz circuits in the style of a Vox Tone Bender, a Sola Sound Tone Bender Mk1.5, and a Sola Sound Tone Bender MkII.

Then there is that drive section, too, which is calibrated to sound like a pushed tube amp.

Say that upper octave isn’t what you are looking for. Instead, choose from one of two treble booster voicings, one designed as a treble-forward stiletto to cut through the mix, the other more full, girthy in the midrange.

Okay, there are a lot of knobs to familiarise yourself with. And there are no presets. But we can well imagine the kind of fund this would be.

Under the hood, there’s a custom six metal-can silicon transistor that’s configured in a circuit tweaked to offer the temperature-resistant reliability of a silicon fuzz/drive but with the touch-sensitivity of germanium.

There’s also a switchable anti-buffer circuit to correct impedance and accommodate guitars with active electric guitar pickups, or indeed any buffer-equipped pedal that you place in front of it. It’s also expandable. Crazy Tube Circuits’ XT footswitch (sold separately for €49) allows you to run the drive section independently.

“This allows deeper control over the gain structure, seamless switching between configurations, and greater flexibility without increasing pedalboard complexity,” says CTC.

At £269/€299, it is not cheap. But just think of the possibilities. Just listen to it in the demo videos above. The Triptychon is here.

Head over to Crazy Tube Circuits for more details.

Every small business owner has a horror story to tell you of the early days, when nothing was going quite right, and even when it was it would soon go wrong. Oliver Ackermann, founder of Death By Audio pedals, can relate. He, too, has grasped defeat from the jaws of victory.

His story goes back to the beginnings of the NYC-based guitar effects pedal company, when word of mouth and email was the best way to reach out to new customers, and his reputation was getting around. He had some high-profile clients, not that he knew it at the time.

Speaking to MusicRadar, just after his band, the gnarly noise-rock trio A Place To Bury Strangers released their Rare And Deadly compilation, he recalled a time when he was to deliver a pedal to Guns N’ Roses guitarist Richard Fortus.

Fortus, an inveterate tone-seeker, had got wind that Ackermann was putting together some really out-there circuits, and the GN'R man wanted some of that action on his pedalboard.

“These are musicians who care about their art,” says Ackermann. “They want to have access to whatever possible tools they possibly can get. So, he’s just one of those guys who… I don’t remember if he called me up or emailed me or something and was like, ‘Come on by. I want to get this pedal.’ That was a real interesting story, the first time I met Richard.”

Ackermann put the pedal together. Boxed it up. And set off. He wasn’t exactly sure who he was delivering this pedal to, at least not at first. But it was an important sale. Ackermann needed the money.

“I was real down on my luck with money and everything, and he was gonna buy this pedal that was, like, 150 bucks or something,” he says. “And so I drove my van over to his house.”

It was all going so well, but you know what it’s like in New York; there’s nowhere to park. Jerry Seinfeld had a whole stand-up bit about it.

“I was like, ‘Shit, so I parked in this bus stop,’” says Ackermann. “I go in, and I give him the pedal, and he gives me the $150 cash. I was like, ‘Shit, I gotta go out and get my van ‘cos it’s in a bus stop. I get out, and there’s a ticket for 150 bucks on the thing. And I was like, ‘Damn it! That was just exactly the money that I gave him for the pedal.’”

Like Griffin Dunne in After Hours, this was another fatalistic moment where the city metes out its own brand of cosmic punishment. Dunne’s was more Kafka-esque. Ackermann’s was more Sisyphus, at least financially. But, alas, this story has a happy ending.

“Yeah, he bought a bunch of stuff after that, and I made him some other things and whatnot,” says Ackermann. “But yeah, that was just insane. I didn’t even really know who he was until meeting him! I was like, ‘Oh, this guy, who is this?’ I don't know, maybe he didn’t have his full name in his email or something but I was like, ‘Oh shit. That’s insane!’”

This is often the way of it. Ackermann says there is often a request put in for a pedal, maybe a custom build, maybe something off the shelf, and it’ll be someone big.

“You know that has happened a lot of times where it’s like someone’s contacting us or something and you don’t even realise who they’re buying the pedals for or whatever,” he says. “And I’ve had a bunch of people who’ve contacted us and then made them custom stuff, which is totally mind-blowing, like Trent Reznor. It’s just absolutely insane.”

And, y’know, Lou Reed…

“Lou Reed, totally! I had no idea. Many people were like, ‘Lou Reed told me to get this!’ And I was like, ‘Holy shit! That’s fucking nuts.”

For an independent stompbox company, having Lou Reed’s approval is the kind of thing you might want to put on the box. And yet, well, that’s another mystery. Ackermann just doesn’t know what it is that Reed uses.

“I don’t know. I don't know!” he says, a note of exasperation in his voice. “Yeah, I should definitely have that on the box. Definitely.”

Rare And Deadly is out now via Dedstrange. We'll bring you more from Ackermann soon. In the meantime, you can browse Ackermann’s designs at Death By Audio. And they ship ‘em out now like everyone else. Home delivery just doesn’t pay.

You all know Strymon. It’s one of the market leaders in digital guitar effects pedals, fully featured, MIDI-compatible beasts such as the modern classic Timeline delay pedal and the BigSky reverb pedal. But lately we are seeing another side to the company.

Its adventures in analogue stompbox design are gathering pace with the launch of the Canoga, a two-knob fuzz pedal with a silicon circuit inspired by a vintage Fuzz Face and designed by Strymon CEO and analogue engineer Gregg Stock.

There’s no MIDI here. No presets. Just, y’know, an old-fashioned pedal circuit, and it was borne out of a passion project.

The Canoga was actually of three custom fuzzboxes he breadboarded for recreation purposes. Stock, like Brian Wampler, must similarly be the kind of guy who will put a pedal together just to unwind after a long day as, well, CEO of a pedal company.

The Canoga did the job, taking Stock’s mind off things, and that was that. It was forgotten about, at least until Strymon launched its UltraViolet Uni-Vibe-inspired modulation in 2022, when the idea of a Fuzz Face-style pedal to complement it came up.

A Fuzz Face, a Uni-Vibe-inspired pedal… Just add a Fender Stratocaster for that Jimi Hendrix flavour.

Strymon’s Series A lineup was officially inaugurated in December 2025 with the launch of the MusicRadar-approved Fairfax Class A Output Stage Drive, a pedal inspired by the vintage Garnet Amplifiers’ Herzog tube drive. And now this FuzzFace variant, an even more primordial design, like Stock’s original only “tweaked,” with top-mounted jacks, controls for Drive and Level, but also with more versatility than the super-clean control surface might suggest.

“Full up it works as a fuzz or distortion, but if you back the guitar’s volume down there’s a world of varied tones on tap for all different styles of music,” says Strymon.

As with the original units, you can really this for all things gain, and Strymon promises that the circuit is dynamic and responsive to your playing dynamics and the all-important volume knob on your guitar.

“Canoga works brilliantly plugged into an amp with a bit of hair on the tone already, similar to how Jimi Hendrix and other guitar greats of the ‘60s and ‘70s ran their rigs,” says Strymon. “Additional versatility comes from the interaction between your guitar’s volume knob and the pedal’s input… rolling back the volume on the guitar opens up a new world of semi-clean blues, rock, Americana and pop sounds.”

And that’s pretty much that, folks. No, there’s no USB connections, and no app. Put your smartphone away. This is Strymon producing one of life’s simple pleasures, the two-knob fuzz, and you can pick one up for £/$199.

For more details, head over to Strymon.

Walrus Audio has unveiled the Highpoint, a high-end analogue compressor pedal based around an old-school optical circuit, with added old-school mojo courtesy of the console-style VU meter on the front of the enclosure.

And while the VU meter is both useful and cool – it tells you just how hard the compressor is working – it is but one of many super helpful features on this high-end stompbox. Walrus Audio promises “the depth, warmth, and dimensionality expected from high-end studio hardware”, all in this compact format.

“A comprehensive control set lets you shape your compression exactly to your taste,” says the brand. “True parallel compression via the Blend control allows you to preserve the integrity of your transients while layering in harmonic density and sustain.”

Players are given all the control they need to apply forensic processing to their electric guitar signal. Compressors are never the most sexy pedals on our pedalboards; they just cannot compete with a fully stacked delay pedal. But if you’ve used one you know the value they can have, as this always-on flatterer of your tone, boosting sustain, letting the notes sing that bit more, or simply tidying up busy passages as when pushing the squash on the transients when playing country guitar.

There are dials for Attack, Release, and Ratio. There is a quote/unquote “carefully tuned” Make-Up control to even up the gain and maintain your signal’s authority. The options for configuring the Highpoint makes it a serious candidate for players serious about their compression, and that cohort includes those who want their compressor to be doing the bear minimum, scarcely noticeable, just a stage of refinement on their tone.

If you’re looking for something simple, this probably isn’t it. But that said, the Highpoint is the kind of all-singing, all-dancing solution that once you find the settings that work for you, you might never adjust it again.

And yet, that option is there should you want it. The aforementioned LED VU monitoring is actually configurable, allowing you to visually monitor Input, Output, and Gain Reduction (that’s kind of cool).

Also, this thing can keep your low end clean and tight, with a Hi-Pass filter on the sidechain circuit dialling out all frequencies from 160Hz and below and stopping them from triggering the compressor.

“The result is articulate bass response, preserved punch, and dramatic low-frequency dynamics,” says Walrus – and it works just as well for bass guitar and the 7-string guitar in your life.

The Highpoint is available now, priced $349. For more details, head over to Walrus Audio.

Here is something novel, fresh out of Finland, it’s a web app from Fukkaudio that allows guitarists to dial in electric guitar tones by text prompt.

Fukkaudio describes it as a “guitar amp and effects app that runs directly in your browser – a playable guitar rig in real time”.

Simply plug in your guitar via a guitar audio interface, write in the dialogue box what kind of sound you would like to hear, click ‘Apply’ then Fukkaudio’s proprietary amp modelling tech will do the rest, dialling in the effects and IRs. And you can get really descriptive, asking for longer delays, more gain, more treble… Knock yourself out.

A trio of knobs allow you to tweak the sound further, increasing, say, the intensity of the effects, adjusting the output, giving you one other parameter (e.g. drive) to control. Players can then share their sound, or get serious with it and actually use the sounds to record something. Why not?

Fukkaudio hints that a guitar vst version might be rolled out further down the line but for now, point your browser to Fukkaudio and have at it. The free trial is exactly that, full functionality. Pro price plans are available from €6.90 per month.

This, plus the recent developments in generative AI tone design launched by the likes of Positive Grid and Mooer Audio, points to a brave new world for tone design. Why turn the dials yourself when you can ask the machine to do it for you?

Okay, there are many reasons why you would want full control over all of the parameters but text prompts can be a useful shortcut when practising or spitballing ideas to be refined layer.

Also, the better your prompt, the better the result. Fukkaudio says its web app responds to “vibe” or specifics.

“Be practical (‘tight low end, bright attack’), ask for effects (‘more reverb / delay’, ‘crunch overdrive’, ‘clean with chorus’), or describe direction (‘modern metal’, ‘shoegaze wall’, ‘ambient shimmer’),” it advises. “You can also prompt artists, bands, genres, gear, pickups, or mixing intent – in any language.”

Default prompt suggestions on the Fukkaudio platform read as so: “glassy clean chords,” “tight modern metal rhythm” and “‘80s hard rock soaring lead” – and there is even a ‘Surprise Me’ function for those in the mood to shake the Magic Eight-Ball and play something with a random tone.

If you want to save your favourite sounds, you’ll need to go pro. For best results, use an audio interface with a small buffer size. Check it out over at Fukkaudio.

Catalinbread has launched the CB Paint, a reverb pedal that will be just the ticket for aficionados of cult ‘90s rack-mounted units.

The CB paint is inspired by the Alesis Microverb, a unit that has fans across the musical spectrum, including Neil Young, Daft Punk and Trey Anastasio, and it presents players with eight different modes from the Microverb – and some cool/practical modern updates.

The Microverb kinda got everywhere. Most studios in the late ‘90s would have had one kicking around. Those Alesis reverb rack units would be an essential for the heavy reverb user. It’s the sound you hear all over Interpol’s 2002 long-player, Turn On The Bright Lights (precisely because it excels at dialling in a darker sound).

Catalinbread says the CB Paint blurs “the line between yesterday and yesteryear” and is created in a similar spirit to the Microverb, which, in its own way, was quite a groundbreaking device for digital effects technologies, effectively democratising digital reverb for all.

Sure, the OG vintage Microverb was a relatively compact half-rack unit that could sit on a desktop – but in a compact guitar effects pedal, with six room sizes, a two-pole low-pass filter and the all-essential gated reverb mode, the CB Paint might just be the most convenient solution for any player looking for those electric guitar sounds today.

There are some new features to make it an even more practical proposition for guitar (and bass guitar) players, with the all-important Mix control for dialling in the wet/dry blend. The Onset knob controls the pre-delay response time, i.e. how long it takes for the reverb to start once you play a note.

Fully counterclockwise, the reverb starts immediately, just like your regular email, but as you turn up this dial a lag is introduced, and maxed out it will take 200ms before the reverb tail begins. In Gated and Reverse modes, the Onset dial controls the gate time and the amount of “smearing” respectively.

As for the modes, the aforementioned Gated was cutting-edge at the time of the Microverb’s release, and sounds a bit like a reverb that’s silenced mid-breath.

Think Phil Collen’s drum sound on In The Air Tonight, or in the world of guitar it’s the kind of thing you’d hear on Bruce Springsteen records, in the post-punk of that era – and it is an effect Catalinbread has offered before, notably as a mode in its CBX Gated Reverb. It might sound niche but it can be a very useful always-on reverb mode for adding that box-office studio sheen.

Reverse is a little different to what we might think. It approaches your signal in the same fashion as the original Alesis program, which makes it a little weird. “Rather than read the signal in reverse, the Microverb uses math to reverse the signal by reducing the reverb state’s reflective properties,” explains Catalinbread. “The result is a ‘rushing’ sound that is somewhat unique to the Microverb.”

Elsewhere, modes 1 to 6 are the original room reverbs and range in size from a studio apartment (Mode 1) to storage unit, two-car garage, small venue, large venue and warehouse. These are selected via a pleasingly retro chickenhead dial.

Tone adjusts the low-pass filter and behaves like a regular tone control. And that’s that. Run it on 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and you’re good to go. The CB Paint is available now, priced $209. See Catalinbread for more.

What is it?

Beetronics is known for high-end fuzzes and distortions, but that has changed in recent years.

Following on from their Bee Bee Dee analogue delay pedal, it has developed the Hazee Delay. It's the company's first all-digital pedal, and the first entry in its new Pollinator line.

Specs

Price: $249 | £229 | €269
Type: Digital delay pedal
Made: USA
Controls: Time, Mix, Feedback, Mod, Mode, Footswitch
Features: 4 filtered delays, 4 tremolo delays
Connectivity: Input, Output, Power In
Bypass: Buffered
Power: 9V DC Centre-negative
Dimensions: 84 x 72 x 138 mm
Weight: 0.391 kg
Contact: Beetronics FX

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Like the rest of the Beetronics line-up, the Hazee Delay is housed inside a chunky and aesthetically pleasing enclosure. It's not small by any means, but it has a premium feel, with a tidy front plate on top of its brushed aluminium top.

At the core of the pedal is the Spin Semiconductor FV-1 chip. Though showing its age a little, it was at the heart of the 2010s boutique digital pedal explosion. Think pedals like the EQD Rainbow Machine, Afterneath, or Dr Scientist BitQuest.

In the grander scheme of what you can do with an FV-1, Beetronics is playing it pretty safe. The FV-1 has three controllable parameters per patch, so we can expect the Pollinator series will be the same pedal at its core, just with different sounds. Maybe some of these will be more out-there.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★☆☆

Though the Hazee has eight modes, there are only four controls on the front panel - time, mix, feedback and moo - sorry, 'mod'. Other than the typeface blurring its 'o's and 'd's, everything is clear and intuitive.

The pedal isn't the easiest to dial in. Depending on what you're going for, taming the modulation to a usable point can be tricky, particularly with a drive or fuzz in front. If you like extremes, then you'll find more hits than misses, but otherwise you'll spend a fair bit of time hunting for sweet spots.

My biggest issue with the pedal is that the modulation function uses the same mix control as the delay. This means that there's not much room for subtlety. Even when it sounds good in isolation, I find it hard to see the pedal fitting into a band mix outside of a solo.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★☆☆

The Hazee Delay is a bit of an odd beast. On paper it sounds interesting, but in practice I find it to be a frustrating experience, even though the individual sounds are good.

As I mentioned, the modulation occurs on the signal before it is delayed, rather than operating over the delay line, which makes it hard to control, especially with gain or fuzz in front. The result isn't exactly 'out-there,' it's just 'uncontrollable.' The circuit is also mono, which means players with stereo pedalboards are out of luck.

But I have another issue with the Hazee Delay that is affected by interaction with it.

It's the predictability. With any eight-mode pedal, if the patches are too different from one another, there's brain load for the player to dial in each one, or switch between them. The result is that for some players it's likely to become a one-mode pedal. Which is unfortunate, since they've paid for all eight.

The end result of both of these issues is that I mainly stuck to modes 1, 3 and 5, since I could predict how they would sound and adjust them easily. Those modes are forward with filter, reverse with filter, and reverse octave up with trem.

I thought all of these sounded cool for lead passages and licks, but I'm not sure I would pick the Hazee over my trusty BOSS DD-6 and a standalone stereo modulation. There's a reason that most pedals put modulation on the delay and reverb tails - it's because, 9 times out of 10, that sounds better.

Verdict

The Hazee Delay is an interesting enough experimental digital delay unit. However, the experimental delay market is crowded, full of feature-rich stereo delays at a comparable price point.

Because its sound is so specific and niche, it's hard to see why a player would choose it over a flagship digital delay powerhouse, or alternatively, a separate delay and modulation pedal.

MusicRadar verdict: It's not that surprising that the Hazee Delay is Beetronics' first foray into digital effects. Rather than a pedal with mass-market appeal, it feels more like a DIY creator building something weird for themselves, excited at the new tools they've found.

That may be a good thing – long gone (sadly) are the weird, 'try anything' days of the boutique pedal boom – but that the results should be niche as a result should come as no surprise.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Beetronics

The Studio Rats

John Nathan Cordy

• “At full bore, it’s brilliant fun for doomy metal riffs and speaker-blowing Stooges-style punk”: Beetronics Tuna Can Fuzz Pedal review

Most fuzz pedals are twists on the classics and that is fine. There’s always some way to spritz up the circuits that defined it as one of the most effective – and, okay, oftentimes most divisive – guitar effects pedals of all time. But what about something completely new?

JHS Pedals says it has launched just that in the form of the Coyote. Okay, it’s not technically new. Indeed, it is a clone.

But it is a clone like no other, replicating a cult fuzz that almost none of us will have had a chance to play with, nor to be familiar with its sound; the Moonrock Fuzz, a handmade labour of love by the late North Carolina pedal maker Glenn ("G.S.") Wylie.

The Moonrock Fuzz was housed in aircraft-grade aluminium housing on a steel base, fashioned to look like it came from the moon. Where it came from was Wylie’s imagination and electrical engineering smarts; that’s where the idea to use a transformer came in.

This, says JHS Pedals, is what makes it weird.

“The circuit has a transformer, but it’s not doing what transformers do in other octave fuzzes,” says JHS Pedals. “It’s not creating the octave at all. Glenn put it somewhere else entirely, where it acts more like an inductive element, shaping how the fuzz stage responds and contributing to the swell, fuzz, and octave character of the control. We’ve never seen anyone do this.”

The Moonrock Fuzz was handmade in small quantities. Wylie died in 2014. The Coyote is both a tribute to Wylie’s ingenuity and to the man himself. And there’s a lot to like about this (it’s hard to dislike a two-knob fuzz, especially when one of the knobs effectively cycles through three different and distinct modes).

JHS Pedals knows its audience. It knows its players.

“If you love Hendrix, Jack White, Gary Clark Jr, Beck, Black Keys, or the octave fuzz on John Mayer’s Belief – you already know you want this,” it says, adding that this is for the “fuzz scavenger” who has tried everything else, been around the wholes with the Muff-style variants, the Fuzz Face-alikes, only to return to square one.

The closest comparison to a classic fuzzbox would be the Tone Bender but this, still, is not that. The Coyote is something quite different.

So here we have it, a Volume knob controls overall output, while the Swell/Fuzz/Octave knob cycles through the three voicings.

Swell will present you will something alien, extra-terrestrial as far as electric guitar tones go – “notes bloom in with a gated, reversed-tape quality”– and it’s a really touch-sensitive mode. Set the knob at noon and you get a fuzz sound that’s orbiting Planet Tone Bender.

Next up you enter the octave fuzz mode, “pure Hendrix territory” awaits, which is appropriate. As JHS Pedals notes, Wylie actually met Hendrix back in the day. That's where you'll find the octave-up craziness, harmonic overtones, a little organised chaos.

The Coyote is available now, priced £/$149. Check it out at JHS Pedals.

Electro-Harmonix has teamed up with MixWave to present six of its most-loved classic guitar effects pedals as guitar plugins.

Available now for the introductory price of $109, the EHX Classics Bundle comprises three versions of the ubiquitous Big Muff fuzz pedal, plus the Andy Summers-approved Electric Mistress Flanger/Filter/Matrix, the Deluxe Memory Man Echo/Chorus/Vibrato, and the warbling Come As Your Are electric guitar tones of the EH4800 Small Clone chorus pedal.

You can, of course, buy each of the four plugins (the Muffs are all in one) separately. These are presently being offered at a discount rate of $39 each, regular price $79 for the Muffs, $69 for the rest.

For many players, these sounds will need little introduction. They have been pedalboard staples for decades. But if you’re approaching Electro-Harmonix sounds from the DAW side rather than the hardware side, they might be a unfamiliar, so here’s what you are getting.

The Big Muff plugin bundle features the original Big Muff Pi, the Ram’s Head Big Muff, and the Russian variant. The latter is what you want for “darker, heavier” tones, which is to say that it has a more aggressive character, more low-end oomph.

The Ram’s Head is the Muff many Pink Floyd fans would hear and instantly think of David Gilmour, with its smoother fuzz sound a more gentile proposition. The Big Muff Pi? It’s the Big Muff Pi, so it’ll give you that dreamy saturation, the sustain that has this weird violin quality on single note melodies.

The Deluxe Memory Man plugin keeps the 500ms delay time of the original unit. It is one of the most iconic analogue delay pedals of all time, a BBD-driven unit used by a who’s who of players but notably the Edge, Robert Smith, Ed O’Brien, and so on.

MixWave says this digital version was created using “component-level modeling, faithfully recreating the behaviour of its bucket-brigade delay line, modulation circuitry, and analogue signal path”.

Where the Deluxe Memory Man was, there was often an Electric Mistress, too, providing movement to your tone, that could be subtle, or like a jet, or by using the Filter Matrix you can turn it into a static comb filter and use it to tease out all kinds of captivating textures that can make a single chord something transcendent.

Finally, the Small Clone presents you with the most simple take on chorusing you will find. There is a switch for Depth, and a Rate knob, and yet that is all you need to get going. The circuit does the rest. Simple, but then, in the hands of Kurt Cobain, it helped change popular music for good.

The Electro-Harmonix Classics Bundle is available now, see Electro-Harmonix or MixWave for more.

The combination of reverb and tremolo is nothing new. It was popularised by the runaway success of Fender amps in the early ‘60s.

But Source Audio is betting that players will find something new in the combination once they plug in its new Pathways reverb and tremolo pedal.

This presents the classic sounds as we have heard them before. For those with an ear for vintage electric guitar tones, who might have longed to have owned a Vibroverb in perfect working order, this could be the amp-like secret sauce they have been waiting for, the splash of spring reverb with the heady throb of tremolo.

But then with seven different reverb engines – including one that’s described as “reverb echo” and takes inspiration from analogue and BBD-driven delay pedals – plus a trio of tremolo modes, there is a great plain of tone to explore.

Source Audio says it has taken the reverb/tremolo idea and run with it, promising a “wider range of textures, moving from tight, immediate sounds to expansive ambience”. It is a compact, pedalboard-friendly stompbox for “vintage tones, always-on essentials, and modern soundscapes”.

This being a Source Audio build, we’ve got full stereo operation, MIDI connectivity, and you can save 128 presets all accessible from the pedal or via MIDI.

Deep edits can be performed via the Neuro 3 app. Hook it up to your laptop via USB-C and you’re good to go – that also goes for accessing the presets library that other guitarists, including Source Audio artists, have created.

Players can also avail themselves of an external expression pedal, using it to ramp up the rate of the tremolo, or perhaps increase the size of the reverb, making Pathways a powerful performance tool. It’s pretty cool, and it has a cactus on the enclosure.

The sounds run the gamut from the quotidian to the flat-out exotic. The aforementioned Echo Reverb is not something you find on every reverb pedal, even the digital ones. It can be used for thickening your tone – ideal for wiry single-coil tones – or when you need something with a bit more physicality than a plain old reverb, and has a maximum delay time of 288ms.

The familiar reverbs, well, you know how they’ll sound; there’s Spring, Tank and Plate, and Hall as well, because every player needs the big room style of reverb at one time or another. There is Room reverb too, because every player needs that, and Slap Reverb, a “short, percussive echo” inspired by slapback tape delay.

As for your tremolo, you have Optical, Bias and Harmonic. Together? Well, this sounds nice. It ain’t cheap at £/$349. But Source Audio does not do things by haves. Head over to Source Audio for more details.

Artificial intelligence is generally thought of as a software tool. This is especially true when it comes to its uses in music production. Whether that be as a mixing assistant in a plugin like iZotope’s Ozone or one of Sonible’s Smart products, an in-DAW chatbot such as Safari Audio’s Meaw: Assist, or a contentious generative music platform like Suno, AI tends to stay confined to the intangible digital world. That is, until now.

We’re standing on the precipice of a new era of music production, one that moves neural networks and large language models out of the walled laptop garden and into the real world via hardware devices that we interact with physically.

This is happening most notably in the form of effects pedals, with three high-profile releases from Roland, Polyend and newcomer Groundhog Audio in various stages of completion.

Will putting AI into physical units that we can bodily interact with legitimise this often rage-inducing technology?

AI in music production is controversial, to say the least. While new technology has often been met with no little degree of suspicion by musicians, with the synthesizer famously falling afoul of musician’s unions and samplers causing all kinds of copyright headaches for the music industry in the 1980s, AI feels different.

This could be because the AI takeover is not restricted to the world of music production.

Whereas music unions worried that analogue synths were going to replace musicians, AI actually seems to be doing it.

And not just musicians. Professions across the board are in danger, with a much-touted jobs apocalypse supposedly on its way. It’s no wonder that some people have a Luddite-like knee-jerk reaction to the term ‘AI’ - seeing any implementation of the tech as inherently bad.

Somewhere between AI-utopia and the future envisioned by the Terminator films lay reality and the most probable way forward. It will probably shake down more like the coming of computers did, replacing older jobs and tech but creating new opportunities. For most of us now, we couldn’t imagine making music without a computer or related electronic device. AI may fill a role like this within the next 10 years.

AI doesn’t have to be scary, as the three effects pedals profiled here demonstrate. All have been made with care and concern for human musicians, and are being presented as not replacements to creativity but tools to aid in music creation and production, just like the effects and instruments that we already use. But, does the AI-imbued tech really open any new doors?

Roland Project LYDIA

Roland recently announced its first AI-based commercial product, Melody Flip, but the company has been quietly experimenting with artificial intelligence for a few years now as part of its Roland Future Design Lab R&D department.

One result of this is Project LYDIA, a prototype hardware tabletop effects unit that puts AI inside the kind of stomp box that subsidiary BOSS is well known for.

Developed alongside Tokyo-based AI effects house Neutone, Project LYDIA uses a version of Neutone’s Morpho technology that allows users to apply the tonal qualities of a trained model onto an incoming audio signal, what is known as timbre-transfer.

As a blog post on Roland’s site explains, “Human heartbeats can become kick drums, birdsong and whale calls can become melodies, and your noisy coffee machine can become a breakbeat”. Morpho as it exists now also allows users to import self-created neural network models via the company’s training system, and future iterations of Project LYDIA may also include this.

While Morpho is fun to play with on its own (you can download a free version of the plugin from the Neutone site), having the technology inside a Roland-quality effects box makes it a new experience altogether.

We had the chance to try it out at Roland’s new headquarters in Hamamatsu, Japan, applying various neural models to a T-8 drum machine in real time.

The unexpected novelty of the juxtaposition between the source drums and the results, and the high audio quality, made us yelp with glee - much to the surprise of people trying to carry on a conversation around us. The results were so new, so novel, we wanted to spend hours playing with it. Surely the mark of useful music production technology?

Project LYDIA is just a prototype, what Roland is calling a ‘Technology Preview’. The Roland Future Design Lab doesn’t exist to make products but to figure out what may be possible for future releases. We can say, however, that it would be a shame if this technology didn’t ever come to market.

Being able to apply these unique sound models to an incoming signal live, and via a physical interface, certainly opens up all sorts of new sound-mangling vistas. Imagine playing your guitar live on stage and combining the post-distortion tone with a model trained on drums, or the sound of trains, or even your own voice. The possibilities are limitless.

Groundhog Audio OnePedal

A pedal that makes your guitar sound like a drum may be novel, but it may not always be practical.

For guitarists, trying to nail the tone from a favourite song may be more important. Groundhog Audio a new AI-based guitar effects company, is promising just that with its OnePedal, a hardware device that pairs with an app that aims to recreate the guitar tone of any song you upload to it.

The pedal, which surpassed its Kickstarter campaign goal more than 20 fold, acts as a physical conduit to the app on your phone.

There are stomp controls to advance through song profiles stored in the pedal, a knob to quickly scroll by hand, and a a tone switch to select different tones that may be present in a single song, such as lead, solo, or rhythm ones. The focus is on playing that tone in the moment. At least as far as the physical pedal is concerned.

The app is more powerful, and it’s where the tone creation happens. Either choose one of the reportedly 100,000-plus songs already in the database or upload one of your own.

The AI present in the app will use stem separation technology to isolate the guitar, analyse the sound, and then reconstruct it using an effects chain that you can further customise in terms of effects (chorus, distortion, echo, etc.) and virtual amplifiers and cabinets.

The AI reportedly understands music styles, guitar gear and production techniques, and also allows you to specify things like output and pickup type. Once you have the tone, you can then send it to the OnePedal for offline playing.

Groundhog Audio also recently announced a desktop version of the app that bypasses the pedal and lets you clone tone via your computer. The app is not available yet but will have a subscription payment model (owners of the OnePedal get a lifetime sub).

The OnePedal starts shipping to backers this spring (2026). How well it does what it claims remains to be seen.

Redditors are, unsurprisingly, skeptical. “This would be an impressive accomplishment,” says user LandosMustache, “but it’s akin to programming a full flagship multi-effects processor AND an AI model which can both parse guitar tones and use the multi-effects unit.”

Others point out that coming up with tone on your own is part of the fun, a personal creative journey that shouldn’t be relegated to a machine.

“Learning how all of this works, finding my own sound by looking for something specific or just by luck, it's the biggest part of the fun for me,” says Yan_HL. “I just find it sad to think that anything that will come out of it is already someone else’s sound.”

What is interesting, though, is no one is bemoaning it for being AI. It’s the corner-cutting that is concerning to them. But if users can take what they’ve learned from the tone-matching and apply it to something else, now they’ve learned a new skill.

As Ella Hafermalz, an associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, says in a Guardian article, “(AI) shouldn’t be a prison that holds you in, it should be a stepping stone - a way to get out, and do other things.”

Polyend Endless

Of the three pedals profiled here, the one that you can actually buy right now is Endless from Polyend. The name is apt, as it lets you do lots of things with effects. In fact, anything that you can imagine.

A combination of prompts and stomps, Endless is a hardware effects pedal with an aluminium enclosure, three knobs, and two foot switches. How these function depends on the algorithm that you’ve loaded. The algorithm could be a distortion. It could be a delay, or a looper, or a tremolo. Or something entirely new. Polyend provides a ready-made selection to play with but the real fun is in generating your own effects, either via code (if you have the ability) or text-based prompt.

Enter instructions in plain language in the desktop Playground app, which connects to the pedal via USB. Here you interact with a large language model that dips into Polyend’s collection of code to create what you ask for.

Recently, we tried out Endless alongside Polyend founder Piotr Raczyńsk when he visited us in our video studio, you can read our full exploration here or check out our findings in the below video:

“Playground builds on a large library of DSP algorithms our team has developed over many years,” the company said. “The AI layer interprets your prompt, then combines or adapts these building blocks to produce new effects.”

The AI will speak back, asking how you want to use the knobs and other functions, and will also crucially run tests to make sure your idea works.

As you’re engaging with a commercial AI, these interactions aren’t free and require the use of tokens. Buying the pedal gets you 2000, and you can buy more in batches of the same amount for $19.99. Polyend estimates that most effects will cost between one to five dollars to generate. You can share your effects with the community; downloading these (or Polyend’s) are free to do.

Along with the creativity of playing with effects, making your own is a kind of creativity in itself. While some may say that entering prompts is not creative, you’re still making choices in terms of design and user experience.

Of course, some of the sticky points of AI usage still apply.

All prompts require energy expenditure, and while Polyend itself is “100% energy self-sufficient thanks to solar power and heat pumps,” the LLM, on the other hand, is not.

There is also no mention of the specific AI company currently employed. “We … designed the infrastructure to stay flexible about AI providers, so we can evaluate different models over time and choose the best balance of quality, reliability, and cost as the technology evolves,” says the company.

While one hopes that Polyend is making good choices, if you prefer that your money not go to a specific AI provider because of military contracts, etc., the lack of disclosure makes that difficult to confirm.

Which ever way we cut it, it seems that the AI-incorporating hardware pedal market is certainly going to expand further as the decade progresses. On the strength of this trio of initial offerings, that’s no bad thing in our view.

As all of music technology’s great leaps forward have done, these applications open up new creative avenues we otherwise wouldn’t be able to access.

Time will tell, however, whether the widespread cultural AI-phobia will ward off those who might actually benefit from what these new innovations bring to the table.

What is it?

It doesn't seem so long ago that pedal power supplies with 9V outputs capable of powering effects with 500mA of power draw were an exception rather than a rule. And while many pedals like overdrives are still well under 100mA, the continued rise of amp modeller and multi-effects units has seen things change. While the idea of a do-it-all unit like the Neural Quad Cortex is often the reality for many players, there are those who want to run them alongside their favourite pedals. And not have to use multiple power supplies to do so.

The industry has answered this call, but not to the extent we might expect; power supplies with multiple isolated outputs and at least one with very high current draw headroom for a flagship modeller are still actually quite rare. And this puts the Walrus Audio Canvas Power HP in a rarified group.

The HP part of the name makes the proposition clear: High Power. Part of Walrus Audio's big push in US-made utility pedals with its Canvas range in recent years, the HP is one of a number of power solutions from the company. With one of its four outputs offering up to a whopping 3,000 milliamps (3A) of draw from one, alongside three 500mA outputs, it's a compact solution for anyone looking to create a modeller-based 'board.

While the larger Quad Cortex (and the HeadRush Flex Prime) will use the whole 3A at 12V, the newer mini model is only 1.2A at 12V, while the Fractal AM4 is 1.3A but requires a 1.5A supply. Older units like the Helix Stomp are a minimum of 1A at 9V. The Power HP can comfortably handle these from its higher output without you needing to use a splitter cable to spread the current draw from multiple outputs. But I think the main potential appeal here is really for Quad Cortex users because of that huge 3A capability. This is the only one of the four putputs that is switchable between 9V and 12V to accommodate different modeller needs.

Specs

• Launch price: $229.99 | £225
• Type: Pedalboard power supply
• Connectivity: 3 x isolated 9V outputs with 500 mA, 1 x isolated 9V / 12 V switchable output with 3000 mA (3A), 24V thru, input for included
• Power: External IEC power supply (48W, 24V, DC2A)
• Dimensions: Power HP 13.3 x 5.4 x 2.54 cm for Power HP, Power supply 9.5cm x 4.3cm x 2cm
• Options: Walrus Audio Canvas Power 5, 8 and 15 Link with 500mA outputs for extending Canvas Power supplies. Canvas Power HP+ ($349.99) offers 12 outputs (7 x 9V 500mA and 2 x 9v/12V switchable 3A)
• Contact: Walrus Audio

Build, usability and performance

It's important to note that the Canvas Power HP isn't just one unit – you need the second external power supply 'brick' that's included in the box. This is under 2/3 the size of the Power HP itself and connected via a 2.1mm cable, powered by an IEC mains lead (also included). IEC connections are always preferable in my experience because of the ease of replacement and finding spares at live venues. The recent Lines 6 Helix Stadium models and Fender Tone Master Pro both use IEC connections natively, so can't benefit from the Canvas Power HP.

While it would be good to see this integrated into one unit like the HP Power's closest competitor, the Cioks DC7, that power supply requires a separate $89 device called the Crux on top of the circa $250 DC7 price. This allows the 12V switchable voltage selection the Quad Cortex requires to work from one output. The other option for the DC7 is to aggregate the 12V requirement by combining four ports to power the Quad instead. So it's a case of swings and roundabouts in that regard, with a lower outlay for this Walrus Audio option at the time of writing.

The upside of the separation here is that there's some added flexibility with two smaller components when it comes to placement under (or on) the pedalboard. For, example some pedalboards have an IEC connector built in or available as an additional module, and I think it would be easier to link this separate supply.

Whatever your scenario, Most of us will choose underneath the pedalboard to install this and to free up as much space as possible on top, which unfortunately means less time looking at the Power HP's pleasing combination of lightly textured matte black metal casing with Canvas colour stripes.

While the unit itself is slight, it's sturdy and it comes with a C-ctyle mounting bracket set with threads installed in the case for fixing. You'll still need to attach the power supply by other means, though. I usually opt for 3M Dual Lock for all my pedalboard builds as it's more secure than the ubiquitous adhesive-backed hook-and-loop. It would be great to have a small amount included here, but for this temporary testing I'm using my own cable ties for some pedalboard setups with my Rockboard Quad 4.2 and a cheap Amazon-sourced compact pedalboard I'm really liking of late by a brand called EchoPK. The larger Rockboard features a Quad Cortex, the EchoPK with the mini QC variant, swapping out with the Fractal Audio Systems AM4 too.

Inside the slide-out draw-style box there's a selection of DC cables, and that's something I'd expect with any power supply these days; but the ones here acknowledge the reversed polarity requirements of some modellers and pedals. There's one each of 2.1mm and 2.5mm reversed and normal polarity DC cables, colour-coded with white, red, blue and yellow jacks, as well as three standard black 18" cables. Everything you need to get started.

Some of the pedals I used alongside the modellers include my own 300mA UAFX Astra, Boss DM-101 Delay Machine and a Black edition DigiTech Drop I have in for a Guitar World review, as well as a borrowed 500mA Sheeran looper +. In addition to home use, the most current-hungry Rockboard / Quad setup was put through its paces during a four-hour band rehearsal to see how it faired in a less-than-professional practice space and all the variable power challenges that can bring.

For the setup with the Fractal AM4 I even tried a fourth extra pedal in the form of a TC Electronic PolyTune – using my own splitter cable to share a 500mA output with the Drop.

And… I have nothing negative to report at all. Installing was clean and simple, with the small sizes of the HP Power and its power supply easily slotting into the limited space of the Amazon-bought board. With all the setups I had no issues with unwanted noise or power failure. Like all the best pedal power supplies, the Walrus Audio Canvas HP Power was not seen or heard during playing.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

Pedal power supplies don't exactly set most players' pulses racing when it comes to buying propositions, but when they let you down, the show is over. So investing in quality after you've spent – sometimes – four figures on a pedalboard, modeller and pedals is worthwhile. While the Canvas Power HP might cost more than that overdrive pedal you've had your eye on, the long-term benefits if you do have a modeller as the heart of your 'board, are pretty significant here.

I like the compact size, and appreciate the fact that it's currently the only compact power supply you can count on to power a 3A, 12V amp and effects modeller alongside pedals without buying any extra kit. That alone will be a selling point for Quad Cortex and Headrush Prime owners building a rig. If your modeller is less current-hungry, your options are a bit wider in the market, but will often involve combining 500-600mA outputs to power the device. The Power HP certainly has compactability on its side as well as power scope, but with only three extra 9V 500mA ports you'll need to consider the limitations if you foresee having a growing pedalboard rig.

For me, with my ideal setup of a Quad Cortex, PolyTune (I just prefer it over the Neural's in-built tuner), UAFX Astra and a 120mA Boss XS-1 Poly Shifter, it would be enough for now. And in future I could split an output, providing I wasn't going for a very hungry fifth unit on the 'board.

For future-proofing, Walrus does provide a 24V thru output for additional units if you do ever want to add more pedals to the mix – but you'd need to purchase an additional Link model from the Canvas Power range to do so. It's a good option to have available, though I think the primary appeal here is for compact, modeller-based pedalboards. And for that, the Power HP is mission accomplished.

MusicRadar verdict: The Walrus Canvas Power HP is a leading option in what is currently a limited pool of options for power supplies that can cater for current-hungry modellers alongside pedals. This compact solution is worth a worthy investment for anyone who wants to build a pedalboard around their Quad Cortex, Headrush or Fractal unit.

Hands-on videos

Mark Johnston

The Studio Rats

• Best pedalboards: top choice 'boards for guitarists

Spring has sprung, well, nearly, and Thomann is celebrating the only way they know how, with a massive sale, of course. This Spring Sale sees up to 60% off, with over 700 items included. Whether you’re chasing a new axe, dreaming of a fresh amp, or just looking to finally pull the trigger on that piece of gear you’ve had bookmarked for months, now’s the time to dive in.

If you’ve spent any time browsing Thomann’s site, you already know it’s basically a candy store for tone chasers with thousands of products across every category, at prices that won’t break the bank. I know that with a sale this size, it can be genuinely overwhelming to know where to start, so I’ve done the digging for you.

Now, I’m a massive pedal head. I just love stompboxes, and when a sale drops, it’s usually the thing I try to check out first. I find myself adding to, rearranging and reworking my pedalboard more than any guitarist probably should, but I can’t help it. I find that pedals can be unlimited sources of inspiration, with so many cool new sounds to discover.

I’ve hand-picked eight guitar pedals from across the Thomann sale that caught my eye, ranging from lush reverbs and gnarly drives to studio-grade multi-effects. Whether you’re a bedroom noodler or a gigging road warrior, there’s something in here with your name on it.

Polyend’s latest hardware release, Endless, was one of the most eye-catching announcements at this year’s NAMM show.

Endless is a digital stompbox effect that can be loaded with different processing algorithms in order to produce a near-limitless variety of sounds. What makes it so attention-worthy, however, is the accompanying Playground system, which can turn a user’s text prompts into a completely bespoke DSP effect ready to load into the pedal.

It doesn’t take a deep understanding of technology to figure out that this sort of text-to-code system is likely powered, at least in part, by AI. Interestingly though, its creators are reluctant to use that term. Where other technology companies seem to be competing over who can demonstrate the flashiest, most advanced application of LLMs or machine learning, Polyend’s website includes barely a single mention of AI, a term it describes as ‘radioactive’.

“We hate AI slop,” Polyend founder Piotr Raczyński tells us. “We don't want the fun to be taken out of music making. I think there is a distinct boundary where AI should be involved in creating the tools that inspire you, but it doesn’t take any of the fun from you.”

It’s true that, while the AI-assisted aspect of Endless is its most eye-catching feature, it’s only one aspect of how the system works, and users can make full use of the pedal without interacting with The Playground at all, should they wish.

There are, in fact, three ways to access new effect algorithms. The first and simplest to use is Plates, which is Polyend’s community-focused library of effects. This hosts all of Polyend’s own effects, as well as those created and shared via users (although community submissions will be tested by Polyend before being added to the library).

This ever-growing library is free and fully accessible for all Endless owners, and already features a broad range of creative tools, including reverbs, distortions, loops, granular effects and more.

Those with coding skills of their own can create effects using C++ and Polyend’s open-source SDK.

However, if you have your heart set on a specific bespoke sound and need some help bringing it to life, that’s where The Playground comes in.

“If you don't know how to code but have some idea for an effect, that’s when you can use The Playground,” Raczyński says. “You describe your effect in your own words and kind of talk to the system.”

This kind of ‘vibe coding’ – using a large language model (LLM) to create code based on text prompts – isn’t hugely unusual. As Raczyński explains though, what’s going on behind the scenes of The Playground is a little more complicated than simply outsourcing the work to something like Chat GPT.

The Playground makes use of various AI agents that are doing multiple things simultaneously, deciphering the text inputs, searching through the existing database of effects and running testing so that the end result is something at least reasonably functional.

From a user point of view, based on the initial text input Playground will offer up three potential effect options, each with a description and some suggestions for adjustable parameters to be assigned to the hardware’s knobs and switches. The user can choose one of these to pursue, as well as suggest any changes or updates, at which point the system will begin the process of generating and testing the code.

As Raczyński explains, Playground doesn’t automatically jump straight to creating code from scratch. Initially it will search through the library of algorithms to see if it can piece an effect together from existing code.

“The system goes through the whole vast database of DSP algorithms that we’ve created, over the years producing Tracker and Synth, and the Endless DSP effects,” he tells us. “There is a huge, ever evolving library of effects that we prioritise in the first place.

“The system uses that, but if there is not an effect that it finds in the database it can connect a couple of them together. So if you want, say, an overdrive that goes into reverb then goes into delay, it will try to find those in our system and then stitch them together using LLM models.

“If it is out of the scope of our system, it will generate the DSP code itself from scratch. This is where magic can happen.”

Soft Play

When Raczyński visited us in our studio, we put this system to the test by using The Playground to create a glitchy looper effect (you can see and hear the results in the video above.)

The technology is undeniably impressive, but not without limitations. It’s easy to get a little over ambitious with your prompts, and the Playground system can struggle to keep up.

“You have to be very deliberate about what you actually need,” Raczyński says, “or you can wait for a happy accident to happen.”

Problems can sometimes arise from the limitations of language itself. It can be tempting to try and feed The Playground a lot of adjectives – glitchy, crunchy, warped, ambient – but these are somewhat ill defined concepts, and it’s usually more effective to tell the system exactly what you want it to be doing.

“Imagine you are generating a picture,” Raczyński says. “Sometimes you get what you intended, sometimes it’s bad and you have to reiterate [what you wanted].”

That being said, Endless is also capable of more than you might initially think. As Raczyński demonstrates in our video, the pedal can also be used to generate sounds itself. In our demo, you can hear it being used as a physical modelling synth generating randomised Euclidean sequences.

“What we've discovered is that prompt quality has the biggest influence on the quality,” Raczyński explains. “The idea that we are working on now is that there will be some kind of agent we call a prompt engineer that will convert these simple ideas into proper engineering words, because that helps a lot with the quality.”

By Polyend’s own admission, The Playground – which is still currently in Beta – is an ongoing work in progress, which will only improve as time goes on.

“This is the worst version of The Playground you'll ever see,” Raczyński explains. “LLMs are getting better because there is this huge competition between the big companies, but also we are getting better in understanding what we need to feed it.

“Say we want it to be able to specialise in building loopers, we could build more libraries regarding loopers – and that's what we will do. It will be easier for the LLMs to create the DSP process. It can just take the looper infrastructure and add, say, whatever glitchy stuff you want. It will be nice and quick. As of now, we don't have a looper DSP built in, so it will be done by DSP 100%. Thus we can expect weird things to happen.”

Use of The Playground isn’t free, relying on a system of tokens that users need to pay for. We were pleasantly surprised to see how far a few tokens will get you, however.

“With the device, you are getting 2000 tokens for free, and this should give you about 10 to 15 ready patches,” Raczyński tells us. “All the community patches and our patches are free and will be for free forever.

“If you run out of tokens, you just go to the Playground, hit ‘get tokens’, and the pack of 2000 costs about 20 bucks.

“We are not making any money on the tokens,” Raczyński says. “We are using some external APIs and language models that are coding for this system. And that costs. We are adding just a little bit of markup to have the infrastructure covered as well, because there is a huge infrastructure.”

Polyend also tells us that they hope the token system will become cheaper over time, with the aim that eventually it won’t be needed at all.

The future is Endless

Polyend has some lofty ambitions for the future of Endless and The Playground – ones not limited to the pedal itself.

“My idea wasn't to just ride the wave of AI hype,” Raczyński says. “I kind of see a vision of where we could open up everything we do, and then allow users to use our Playground to generate bits and pieces in a way that’s open ended.

“Imagine a synthesizer, let's say [Polyend] Synth. Just imagine you've got a filter section or oscillator section, and you can say, ‘hey, I want my oscillator to be based on something with a square wave, but FMing’. You know, the sky is the limit.”

The first step in that vision is bringing Endless’s bespoke effects to Polyend’s multi-effect pedal Mess, with a new free firmware update that adds an Endless Player module. This allows users to upload effect algorithms created for Endless (a few small DSP limitations aside) to Mess, to use alongside the pedal’s sequencers and inbuilt effect modules.

Mess owners will have access to the community library of effects, although – for the time being at least – access to Playground will be limited to Endless owners.

It will be interesting to see how quickly Endless and The Playground are adopted by music makers, and what sort of tools the community develops. Even from the initial announcement, the system has seemingly generated a lot of interest, including from some high profile names.

“Two days ago I was trying to create a looper like [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke uses on Bloom,” Raczyński says. “He plays piano and puts it through the modular system. He plays something, loops it, and it slowly evolves into, like, broken cassettes.

“Funnily enough, during production of that, [Radiohead guitarist] Johnny Greenwood wrote me a message to say that he's into the idea [of Endless]. It’s crazy that it happened at exactly the same time.”

Mess is out now priced at $599. Endless is available to preorder priced at $299. Head to the Polyend site for more information.

Mark Morton has got his electric guitar tone down to a fine art. Lamb Of God’s sound is a physical phenomenon, metal guitar set to a groove, all of which is designed and composed to move the crowd, and it does.

Press play on Virginia metal stalwarts’ latest studio longplayer, Into Oblivion, and you’ll hear Gibson Les Pauls – including Morton’s new signature Les Paul Modern Quilt – going into Mesa/Boogie Mark Series tube amps.

Some of the finer points of Morton’s new Gibson signature guitar – namely its custom-wound Jim DeCola high-output humbuckers – were applied to his vintage stock. Morton readily admits that he is not above modding a ‘60s Les Paul in search of tone.

“I have a ’69 Les Paul Custom, and I used that quite a bit on the new record,” he says. “I love those. I’ve had a number of them, and I’ve got one in particular that’s a favourite, and it has the Jim DeCola pickups in it, so I pulled out the T-Tops that came in it originally in ’69, and it’s got the Jim DeCola custom-wound pickups in it.

“That is a mid-1969 custom, ebony fretboard, great guitar! And that one is all over the record. Sepsis is almost entirely that guitar. When you listen to Sepsis, you hear that ‘69 Les Paul quite a bit.”

When he has the guitar, the amp, he doesn’t need much more from his pedalboard. He will run a couple of choice overdrive pedals in front of the amps and that’s that. When we say “choice,” we mean vintage-and-rare grails. “For leads, I used a Boogie Mark IV with the Klon in front of it,” says Morton, smiling. It’s simple, he says.

Nothing too complicated. Nothing that exotic or left-field, all things considered. He is fan of the Tube Screamer. Since its launch in 1979, Susumu Tamura’s O.G. circuit has gone on to become one of the world’s most used, most copied, and occasionally most controversial overdrives of all time.

The Tube Screamer and its clones are so commonplace that it feels ubiquitous. But it’s how Morton uses his that’s the interesting part. He doesn’t use it as a drive per se.

“Yeah, so for my rhythm tracks, I used a Mesa/Boogie Badlander with the first generation Tube Screamer in front of it, with the drive rolled all the way down,” says Morton.

Morton’s logic is that there already is enough saturation going on with his Badlander that all he needs is a tone-sweetener, or rather a shaper. Some players might use a compressor here, or maybe a boost or EQ pedal. But for Morton, the Tube Screamer is the secret to a happier union between amp and guitar.

“It just kind of tightens up that bottom end,” he says, “just a little bit in the gain structure. So the Tube Screamer not adding a lot of gain because it doesn’t need it. It just brought the sag up just a little bit in the bottom end.”

This all makes us think about what Morton told us years ago about what he likes from a tube amp; he calls it the “watermelon thunk,” that slightly giving sound a ripe watermelon makes when you slap it. If you’re not getting exactly what you want from your tube amp, maybe too much sag – that spongy feeling from the dynamic compression – then the Tube Screamer can do the business in reshaping the feel of the amp, giving Morton’s rhythm tone the kinetic energy it requires to articulate a Lamb Of God riff.

Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme does something similar with his Pro Co Rat. Using it effectively as a filter pedal, tuning out the frequencies he doesn’t want and using it to juice his Marshall DSL amps in just the right way.

“When it comes to gear, anyone who has talked to me over the years knows I am boring as fuck. I am a creature of habit,” said Bettencourt, speaking to MusicRadar in 2023. I have my Rat pedal filtering things out. I have the Marshall DSL [JCM] 2000. When people go get a DSL they’re like, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? A fucking DSL. The thing sounds like shit usually.’

“Whatever. A lot of people tell me that. But when you have the treble at two, and you have the midrange at two, and then you have the bass at four and the presence at two, and you turn it way up, that’s what that is. Whatever that is, to me, that is the key to it.”

As for other effects, Morton prefers to leave them out entirely while recording a take. If using the Tube Screamer gives him the feel and the attack that he needs when recording a take, then time-sensitive effects, such as modulation and delay pedals, can get in the way. They can also ruin it.

“Now, there’s some other additional effects, reverbs and delays and stuff like that, but all that comes in post,” says Morton. “It comes in [during] the mix, because it’s much easier to play with that stuff after you’ve printed a take than it is to commit it to a delay setting on a recording, and then find that it’s clashing or was something else, rhythmically or whatever, and then not be able to undo it because you printed it, you know what I mean? So all those kind of effects outside of tonal things, we will do outboard, we’ll do after the fact.”

And that logic holds whether you are recording a demo in your bedroom or tracking, what, your 13th studio album. Recording guitars is like mixing a cocktail; you can always add but you can’t take away.

Into Oblivion is out now via Century Media records.

Sunnier days are finally here, and as the long nights of winter lift, Thomann has delivered musicians a real mood booster with discounts of up to 60% off music gear in its Spring Sale. Covering all types of musicians, whether you’re a guitarist, drummer, singer, or keys player, it’s well worth checking out with over 600 discounted items available.

The sale is running through until the 8th of April, so you have a little bit of time if you need to wait for payday to arrive. With some of these discounts, however, I can’t see them hanging around, as despite the headline being up to 60% off, I’ve seen some items with 70% knocked off the price.

I’ve looked through every single item in the sale and picked out some of my favourites if you want a head start on the very best deals.

The first thing to jump out at me was a massive £70 reduction on this Universal Audio UAFX Heavenly Plate pedal. It’s great for guitar players, but as plate reverbs are so common in music production, pretty much any type of musician will be able to find a use for this, whether using it as a hardware send for your snare drums or adding it to a keys setup to lend some sweetness to your stock sounds.

The Zoom LiveTrak L-8 home studio mixer is a brilliant option for musicians who need to sum a selection of synthesizers into a single source, or those who need something robust for the rehearsal room. It’s got a cool £46 off in the sale at the moment, which takes the price down well below £350 - excellent value for 8 channels with assignable sound pads, 7 memories, and battery-powered operation.

Finally, I had to shout out the Soma Warp, which has got a hefty £90 off despite only being relatively recently released. It’s a creative multi-effects unit which can be used on a variety of sources from synths to guitars, and features 15 effects with some less than usual functions that make it a sonic playground for the experimental musician.

What is it?

Those of us who used a Portastudio multi-tracker back in the day might have thought we’d heard the last of it…

But now JHS Pedals has released the 424 Gain Stage, a new preamp/overdrive/distortion pedal that replicates a Tascam 424 MkI Portastudio’s signal path using its original op-amps.

The pedal is said to have been largely driven by artists such as US guitarist/producer Michael Todd Gordon – better known as Mk.gee – who employs a Tascam at the core of his rig. This musician was also name-checked by Eric Clapton, who said “[Mk.gee] has found things to do on the guitar that are like nobody else”.

Specs

• PRICE: $249 | £249 | €289
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Multi-gain stage preamp pedal 
• FEATURES: Buffered bypass, 
• CONTROLS: Volume, Gain 1, Gain 2, Bass, Treble, Ground Lift switch, Bypass footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output, XLR output
• POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied), 50mA
• DIMENSIONS: 66 (w) x 124 (d) x 55mm (h) 
• CONTACT: JHS Pedals

Usability and sounds

Gain 1 sets how much preamplification is added to the signal and is the equivalent of the Trim knob on the input of a 424. The original’s channel fader, providing a second gain stage, is represented by the Gain 2 knob. The signal can be tweaked by Bass and Treble knobs, and exits the pedal via a Volume knob, which equates to a Portastudio’s master fader.

It starts out delivering some clean but warm sounds, and when you experiment with various juxtapositions of the gain knobs you can start to add in grainy lo-fi grit until the whole sound is suffused with it. This can lead to some gnarly clipping distortions commensurate with pushing circuitry to its limits. Turned up full, it’s like a particularly snarky fuzz.

All of this is delivered with a degree of expressive dynamics that can see a cleanish sound transition into distortion with harder picking.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

Useful for flexibility, the 424 Gain Stagel has an output to an amp but also an XLR DI output that can be connected to a mixing desk or audio interface. The basic sound is arrived at via two gain knobs.

Into an amp there’s plenty of output to use the pedal as a conventional boost with tonal options. And there’s a whole area of dirt to be explored by blending your amp sound with the 424’s dirtier tones.

The 424 Gain stage probably exists due to the success of Mk.gee, and anyone wanting to cop some of that flavour will find the pedal useful.

MusicRadar verdict: It’s a somewhat different take on a dirt pedal, and probably not designed for chasing what we generally think of as traditional guitar/amp tone. But it offers an alternative set of flavours and textures and is especially useful for anyone who records DI guitar. More colours in that paintbox is no bad thing.

Hands-on videos

R.J. Ronquillo

60 Cycle Hum

Guitar Guitar

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Although better known for budget guitar pedals, this year the Amazon Spring Sale has delivered a deluge of deals on better-known pedal brands. With up to 26% off Boss guitar pedals, it's a great time to stock up on some super stompboxes for much less.

The deals are only available on a select few pedals, but I spotted a big saving on a Waza Craft Metal Zone, the incredibly versatile DD-8 Digital Delay, and one of my all-time favourite loopers in the RC-600. It's not just pedals either, I also spotted a significant saving on one of the best pairs of guitar amp headphones in the Boss Waza-Air.

Having looked through the whole sale, I figured I'd pick out some of my favourites to help you cut through the noise. Here are 7 of the best deals from the Amazon spring sale:

EarthQuaker Devices has just launched something quite different for your pedalboard consideration… It’s named the Towers Stereo Reverberant Filter, a stompbox that you could refer to as a reverb pedal, but that feels a little insufficient given that this is the kind of effect that transcends the usual food groups of room, hall, plate or spring.

Maybe it’s best to do as EarthQuaker Devices does and consider Towers a “soundscape generator.” Certainly, if you dime the settings on the pedal, it “will sound incomprehensibly huge and haunting” – but, EQD advises, there is gold to be found with subtler settings too.

What you want find is a redo of anything EQG president and chief designer Jamie Stillman has ever made before. This is something all-new he has cooked up.

“I don’t want people to think that we’ve redone the Afterneath, or that we’ve redone the Transmisser, or that we’ve redone the Astral Destiny,” he says, “Towers represents a linear progression of reverbs. It’s not an evolution of or update on any current or legacy device.”

You can run the Towers in three switchable modes. In Manual mode, you are controlling the filter frequencies and stereophonic movement – to change the filter frequency, adjust the Frequency dial. Easy. In Envelope mode, the filter frequency responds to your picking dynamics, so the Frequency dial then acts as a sensitivity control for the envelope filter.

Finally, LFO mode is where the filter frequency is set by “slow-moving” LFO. You can adjust the rate of the LFO by turning the Frequency dial. These will sound particularly heady in stereo rigs. That LFO mode has a slow panning effect to fill the stereo field.

You can also store and recall presets via the 8-way rotary dial.

All this makes for one outré reverb. The Mix dial will be invaluable for controlling the balance so your electric guitar – or bass guitar, keyboards, synthesizer etc – can find its place in the mix.

Where things get really nuts is with the Stretch footswitch, which slows everything down, doubling the length of the reverb, playing around with the spectrum of filter frequencies, and as all this goes on there’s a sort of pitch-bending effect at play. Time and space coming to a halt, or indeed arriving at an altogether more psychedelic pace – a sound so weird and wrong that it’s right.

The Towers is priced at £329/$299. Check out the demo video above. As ever, EQD makes these in the USA. Head over to EarthQuaker Devices to find out more.

Cory Wong isn’t the kind of guitarist that sticks his name on every kind of product he uses just so he can tell people he has a signature version.

Earlier this year at NAMM, the American funk hotshot announced the next iteration of his StingRay II signature guitar, this time as a more affordable version through Sterling By Music Man.

And then there’s the Stratocaster he first released with Fender back in 2021. Beyond that, there’s only one other physical product that you’ll find his name on, and that’s his signature Wong Press wah/volume/expression pedal made by Hotone Audio in China.

“With funk and rock, there’s so much history behind the wah,” Wong tells MusicRadar. “Oddly enough, the first person who made me fall in love with the sound was Dave Navarro. Then I got into Kirk Hammett, Hendrix and all the other rock players from the past, plus all the funk stuff.”

At the end of the day, you can’t really call yourself a funk guitarist if you don’t own a wah pedal. As Wong was developing his sound, he noticed that his favourite players were “using a wah on their rhythms for that percussive thing” in order to help them expand their palette.

“If I’m just chucking along, it takes my tone from being like a shaker to bongos or congas,” he explains. “That’s because I can change the pitch of the accent rather than have everything sound the same. You can do so many different things with a wah.”

So which pedals inspired the Wong Press and how exactly did the Hotone Audio collaboration come about?

“I have a tool bench full of old wahs from the past,” grins Wong. “The one I always liked was the [Fulltone] Clyde, though it’s a bit big. I wanted something that worked as a volume pedal – taking up less space on my board, because I never use volume and wah at the same time.”

There are mini wahs out there, he admits, but none of them felt right because the fulcrum can be “weird and unnatural”, giving unwanted resistance.

He continues: “Hotone make this adjustable volume/wah called the Tone Press at a very affordable price which I loved. But I also wanted an expression function, plus lights to show me what mode I’m in.”

Given his reliance on a Neural DSP Quad Cortex both live and in the studio, it made perfect sense to have a pedal that could control a whole range of parameters within his digital rig. As he goes on to explain “digital effects are a big thing these days, a lot of people use that stuff” so the expression element would be a incredibly valuable function for all kinds of modern players.

He also designed his version to be a little more road-worthy, which is backed up by the fact he’s been touring the world with a Wong Press for the last two years and hasn’t had one break.

“I didn’t do this just to make a product,” he shrugs. “It’s something I wanted and needed.

"I contacted Hotone asking if we could make something with with controls and ruggedness. They were like, ‘We’re getting pretty deep here – why not just develop something together for the market?’ The answer was yes because if mine got stolen or lost, I could easily find a replacement!”

It’s been a fruitful partnership. Wong also has his signature collabs with Wampler, with whom he has a signature compressor pedal with an independent boost (and a host of EQ'ing capabilities), and Jackson Audio. The Optimist sees Jackson Audio combine Klon and Timmy-style drive flavours into one MIDI-controllable overdrive pedal, complete with a a Baxandall-esque 3-band EQ (we can see a theme here with the multi-functioning guitar effects).

But don’t expect a whole range of Cory Wong-branded products to be hitting the shelves anytime soon. There has to be reason behind everything, he smiles, and if there isn’t, he’s happy using the regular version everyone else has access to.

“Anytime I want to work on a signature product, it has to be something that I’m actively looking for that I can’t get out of something I already have,” he concludes. “I’ve been approached by a lot of pedal companies asking me if I would like to put out stuff that doesn’t need to exist. All the sounds I want are already available through things I already have.”

He adds: “I don’t think I can be authentically stoked about stuff when I don’t need it. Sure, I will have more signature stuff come out at some point. We’re guitar players, we always need something else, chasing this thing.

“But as of now, the only thing I plan to do is another colour of the Wong Press. That’s it.”

What is it?

The world of digital modeling has evolved from misunderstood ‘compromise’ to cornerstone, and as we enter the second quarter of the century, the market has never been so well catered for, and, at times, confusing. But, while Line 6, Neural DSP and Fractal battle it out at the top end of the market with enough scientific references to make Einstein ditch his EL34s, Blackstar has its crosshairs trained on the other end of the spectrum.

If you think that quality valve amp emulations and organic-sounding effects are the reserve of deep-pocketed pros possessing a physics degree in order to get a good tone, the UK amp brand is here to attempt to change your mind.

The ID:X Floor series sees Blackstar’s ID:X amps and effects ported into a trio of floor-based units designed to deliver your amp, speaker and effects emulations in a compact and affordable format.

They all feature the same headcount of amps and effects, but the hardware expands as you move up the range. Here, the focus is on the mid-level Floor Two, which gains an expression pedal over the Floor One, while remaining smaller than the Floor Two.

Specs

• Launch price: £219 | $279 | €249
• Type: Amp modeller/multi-effects pedal
• Controls: Voice, Gain, Volume, Bass, Middle, Treble, ISF, Master Volume, Manual switch, FX on/off buttons x4 , Response/Voice controls, Focus rotary controls, Cabrig button, 3 x footswitches
• Features: Expression pedal, tap tempo, tuner
• Connectivity: Input, Amp output, Line Out/headphones, XLR L/R (Cabrig emulated) MIDI in (TRS), line in, USB-C
• Bypass: N/A
• Power: 9V, 500mA
• Dimensions: 215x68x155mm
• Weight: 2.07kg
• Options: N/A
• Contact: Blackstar

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Weighing in at just over two kilos, the ID:X Floor Two feels meaty when first removing it from the box thanks to its all-metal construction. The controls are capped with Blackstar’s regular plastic amp knobs, accompanied by nine soft-touch buttons along with a pair of rotary encoders for editing the effects. The footswitches are metal too, however they are a tad on the flush side - a little extra height would make patch changes and tempo-setting feel a little more definite.

To the back, the input and output sockets all feel solid, with no wobbling or unwanted movement from across the connectivity/control set.

The expression pedal treadle measures 16cm x 7.5cm, which while not full size when compared to say, a Crybaby, it does feel comfortable to us with a good amount of movement without feeling too ‘mini’.

Finally, there’s the 30mmx15 mm OLED display. It’s bright and clear, making up for what it lacks in size with bold output. The only slight issue is that I found using the two encoders beneath the screen often caused me to obscure the display with my hand. Overall, it’s a compact and sturdy unit.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

The ID:X Floor functions in two modes: Preset or Manual. In the former, the pedal offers 99 patches for you to save and recall signal chains from, while in the latter, the pedal operates in a WYSIWYG arrangement, where the sound will reflect the current state of every control.

The Floor Two is laid out in a clean and logical style, with three main sections covering your amp choices, effects selection and power amp/cab settings.The integrated expression pedal is activated with a traditional toe-switch under the treadle and there’s a button next to it for selecting between volume, wah and a custom assignment.

The Voice selector lets you choose one of the ID:X’s 18 amp models - these are arranged into three groups of six, governed by the Voice button to the right-hand side of the pedal. The first comprises models of Blackstar originals, the second group is Blackstar’s Ampton selection, based on classic amps from other brands, and the third is home to a pair of acoustic amps, an acoustic simulator and a trio of bass amps.

In operation, it’s all quite straightforward. You can scroll up and down incrementally through the presets, or hold the footswitch to scroll faster in either direction. Obviously this does require some planning of your patch order if you want to use the Floor 2 live, as unlike the Floor 3, there’s no banking of the presets. I should also note that jumping between presets does result in a noticeable dip while the Floor 2 transitions.

In Manual mode, things are just as simple. Choose your amp, apply effects, pick a power amp flavour (EL84, EL34 or 6L6) and you’re away. The amp-like control layout across the top makes tweaking your core sound familiar, with Gain, Volume, three-band EQ and Blackstar’s patented ISF control all to hand.

Applying effects is easy too, with each of the pedal categories laid out over four buttons: Pre FX, Mod, Delay and Reverb. They’re set in a preset order, so there’s no rearranging, and pressing the button engages the corresponding effect. From here, pressing the selected button again puts it into the ‘focus’ of the screen and two rotary controls for model selection and parameter editing. The screen is small, but works well enough for on-the-fly tweaking, particularly once you’ve got used to the functionality of the two controls. However, for more detailed building of sounds, Blackstar’s free Architect software certainly makes things easier.

So, while navigation is easy, it’s also where my biggest complaint with the Floor Two resides. With the seam between presets, an obvious work around would be to load one patch per-song and switch drives, delays and effects in and out as needed. But the only way to do this out of the box is to take your hands off the guitar and press the buttons. A MIDI footswitch would also solve the issue, but if this is a dealbreaker then you’ll need to look at the ID:X Floor Three, which comes with footswitches for each effects section.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

When it comes to sounds, though, there’s very little to complain about. Blackstar made its bones in the tradition of great-sounding UK valve amps. As such, the ID:X Floor Two punches well and truly above its price tag in the amp department. 18 might not sound like that many by today’s standards, but they’re done very well, and it forces some focus rather than just model-hopping. Everyone is catered for, from low-gain, high-headroom models such as the Clean Bright (Artisan 30) to classic crunch found in models such as the Super Crunch (HT Club 50) and the all-out high gain assault of the OD 1 (Series One 100). The same goes for the Ampton models, which bring the familiar tones of amps including a Fender Twin, Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier, Marshall JCM800 and more .

But it’s not all just about the amp modelling. Blackstar might not be as well known for its effects, but here it shows that it knows exactly what it’s doing in that department.

With over 35 effects split across the four categories, you’ve got pretty much everything you’re likely to need here, with the exception of pitch-based effects.

From overdrive pedals including a Tube Screamer, Klon Centaur, Rat, Big Muff and more in the Pre-FX section, to the deep, widening of modulation and delay pedals (the Analog, Tape Echo and Shimmer are particularly nice) to the full, lush blanketing of the reverbs. These are quality sounds that have a more ‘expensive’ flavour than the price the ID:X is asking.

Verdict

There’s no faulting the quality of the sounds on offer here, particularly given the price tag, and Blackstar has done a great job of supplying plenty of useful presets straight out of the box.

The amps respond with dynamics to pick attack and volume adjustments from the guitar, and sound very, very good for the money.

Likewise, the effects really deliver and the entire Floor Two is easy to use without having to dive too deep into the manual. Having access to Blackstar’s Architect software makes things even more straightforward, but if you’re the type who wants to keep their music-making away from computers, it’s not essential.

The only choice you’ll need to make is likely to come from the application you want to use it for. There’s a variance between the whole ID:X Floor range of £110, with only £50 between the Floor Two and Floor Three.

So, if you’re likely to be using this at home for practice or recording, where jumping between sounds seamlessly is less crucial, the Floor Two bags you the integrated expression pedal and sits in a fairly sweet spot for some high quality modelled amps and effects.

However, if you intend to use this live and need the ability to switch pedals on and off within a patch, the relatively small jump to the Floor Three is probably a no-brainer.

MusicRadar verdict
The ID:X Floor is bursting with great sounds, and the good news is that you don’t have to delve too deep to find them. Menuphobes will love the hands-on feel of the main controls, which make perfect sense if you’re new to using modellers. The foot control limitations scupper its power slightly, but the Floor Three solves this for an extra £50. It’s the modelling unit for those who’d rather play than get bogged down in too many details.

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Blackstar

The Studio Rats

Andertons

• Best multi-fx pedals

What is it?

The rotary speaker has been with us since the 1940s, invented by Donald Leslie as a means of bringing life to the newfangled Hammond electric organ, by making it sound more like the magnificent pipe organs of old.

Harnessing the Doppler effect, by way of amplifying the organ signal through a rotating drum and horn inside a wooden cabinet, the Leslie speaker created a glorious, swirling wash of sound, widely beloved to this day.

Though invented for the organ, the Leslie speaker sound gained a whole new fanbase as the electric guitarists of the 1960s started experimenting with effects – not least when Japanese engineer Fumio Mieda created the Uni-Vibe, a rotary speaker emulator geared specifically toward guitar.

Since then, the difficult job of capturing the vibrant sound of the Leslie speaker, or indeed the idiosyncrasies of the later Uni-Vibe, has occupied the minds of many of the effects industry’s big players.

This is where Italian organ and synth brand Crumar comes in. This pedal, the Burn, is an in-depth Leslie emulation replacing an earlier unit by fellow Italians Genuine Soundware.

The product page for that discontinued pedal still exists, the strapline seeming to confirm that the Burn is named for Deep Purple’s organ-heavy 1974 track.

Rock ’n’ roll credentials, for sure – so of course, we need to find out what it’s like when you pluck it out of the keyboard player's signal chain and plug in a guitar instead.

Specs

• Price: $309 | £227 | €259
• Type: Rotary speaker emulation pedal
• Controls: Balance, Distance, Angle, Speed, Ramp, Reverb, Memphis, Front Stop, Reverb Type. Side-mounted input gain selector.
• Features: Fast/Slow rotary speeds, RGB LEDs, rotary stop mode, Memphis mode (stopping drum rotation for low frequencies), dual-mode reverb.
• Connectivity: 9v DC input, ¼” instrument input, Cat5 connector (for One-Cord connection to compatible Crumar keyboards), 3.5mm headphone output, ¼” Left and Right outputs, USB-C service input, TRS jack for optional footswitch
• Bypass: Buffered
• Power: 9v DC, 300mA
• Dimensions: 118 x 34 x 96 mm
• Weight: 0.4kg
• Contact: Crumar

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

The silver, black and red colour combo looks classy, and the unit is reassuringly sturdy, as you'd expect when spending £200+ on a pedal; a chunky metal case with good hardware and very clear, purposeful printing.

One potential issue: the knobs may fall within nudging distance of your shoes when operating the footswitches. If it's more of a studio tool for you, not such an issue.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★½

Unlike its Genuine Soundware predecessor, the Crumar’s layout is refreshingly upfront - no editor required, everything you need is right there.

We’ve a suite of controls for some quite granular tweaking of the modulation’s finer points, an additional knob for the dual-mode onboard reverb, and two footswitches – one to switch the pedal on and off, the other to select Slow or Fast rotary speed.

Stereo outputs allow you to create the width you need from a rotary sound.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

I plugged the Burn into the clean channel of my Laney VH100R, with my old SG/Les Paul Junior, and from the first press of the footswitch, the signal was enveloped in rich, three-dimensional modulation.

The Fast setting is a pitch-perfect, Hammond organ-esque rotary sound, with minimal tweaking required to perfect the settings.

The Slow setting is relaxed, but effective - akin to a very slow phaser or flanger. A delightful feature is the adjustable Ramp, which controls the speed at which the slow and fast settings change; you can hear the modulation speeding up and slowing down, rather than sounding as though it is simply latching from one digital algorithm to another.

Then, if you hold the footswitch, the spinning stops and you have a subtle, tone-colouring preamp stage without the modulation - this is nice in itself, providing a warm push to the clean channel.

The reverb is excellent too – a pre-effect spring emulation, and a hall reverb which is a subtler post-modulation setting, with a huge amount of each effect available. Bear in mind, though, that the reverb remains active even when the pedal is switched off - if you want it gone, you have to turn the knob down.

I tried a humbucker-equipped Les Paul and my single-coil James Tyler as well as the P-90 of the Junior, and came away thinking that, for the Hammond-alike sounds the Fast setting conjures up, fatter pickups are the order of the day.

But there’s other useful potential to be found with various guitars and, of course, other effects – although I had less success stacking with overdrive or distortion through the front end of the amp.

Running the Burn in the effects loop may be the ticket for those seeking a more distorted organ-esque tone.

Verdict

There are plenty of Uni-Vibe homages out there, but fewer guitar pedals that really nail the original Leslie rotary speaker sound, so it's to Crumar’s credit that the Burn is aimed at guitarists as well as keyboardists.

And it certainly nails the brief, offering that perfect, evocative organ sound as well as slower, gentler revolutions that enrich clean guitar parts with a distinctive flavour that's not quite like any other modulation effect.

The addition of a couple of vibey reverb settings only adds to the appeal. The lesson here - if you've been searching for the right Leslie emulation for guitar, keyboard experts may have the answer.

MusicRadar verdict: With a slew of controls for adjusting sounds to a fine degree, the Burn is a well-built enclosure packed with superb, vibey organ-esque sounds. It's got plenty of utility for fast and slow modulation, as well as hidden talents for tone colouring and reverb.

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The Music Alliance

Woody Piano Shack

• Best multi-effects pedals: Our pick of the best all-in-one guitar FX modellers

IK Multimedia has just expanded its Tonex One amp modelling lineup with a mini pedal that puts 20 models from two classic Dumble tube amps right at your feet – and, for that matter, serves up tones from six Overdrive Specials in the software pack that comes bundles with it.

Limited to 1000 units worldwide, with a warm brown enclosure, the Double Special is the Tonex One for the blues guitar tone connoisseur, the player who enjoys the finer things in life, and, perhaps, like the best of us, the one whose guitar amp budget doesn’t quite stretch to six figures.

The price of Dumble tube amps is beyond the average player – beyond most players – and also could you really justify it even if you had the bread? They need to run loud, free, big lungs. They are the kind of backline option best left to the pros; Joe Bonamassa, Robben Ford, Carlos Santana, John Mayer…

But for €249, a pedalboard-friendly option that gives you instant access to the tones from a 1978 Overdrive Special Export Combo (Serial #0038) and a 1980 Overdrive Special Combo (Serial #0080) nicknamed “The Don” is a very attractive proposition – and it gives you access to a further 40 tones from the pair, plus all the sounds featured from the the four Overdrive Specials in IK Multimedia’s Tonex ODS Legends bundle.

Alternatively, you could just buy the software… The choice is yours. IK Multimedia captured these sounds using a variety of dynamic, ribbon and condenser recording microphones, which were then rendered by its proprietary AI-driven Tonex V2 modelling tech.

Amps were captured with and without the speaker engaged, and in the company of some boutique overdrive pedals, including the similarly grail-worthy Klon Centaur, the JHS Pedals’ modern classic transparent drive pedal, the Morning Glory, and the ubiquitous TS10 Tube Screamer.

And these are two very special Dumble amps. Yes, all were special, but as a pairing, “The Don” and the Export-era ODS present two distinct flavours of what an amplifier built by Howard “Alexander” Dumble could do. They were both 50-watters, 6L6s in the power section. They both have their charms.

As IK Multimedia notes, the Export-era amps were “more immediate and organic, with an open top end, blooming midrange, and a raw, touch-sensitive response that feels highly connected to the player” while “The Don” was more “focused and refined, with tighter low end, quicker transient response, and better note separation at higher gain”.

As avowed Dumble enthusiast Kenny Wayne Shepherd told MusicRadar in 2024, the late Howard “Alexander” Dumble was a “bona-fide” genius. “There is so much about building those amplifiers that was all in his head,” said Shepherd. ““I have watched him take a bag of these little capacitors and measure each one of them and see what the value of it was. I don’t even know how many of them he would toss aside because they didn’t have the right value. Like, he knew.”

Shepherd says amp builders could build boutique clones but they didn’t really capture the essence of what made the amps so special.

Perhaps, then, if you find yourself without an Overdrive Special to hand, digital modelling technology is the best way to savour that Dumble tone. If so, with the Tonex One Double Special Signature Collection out now, IK Multimedia has us covered.

• “A brilliant option if you need quality ‘board-mounted amp tones that don’t take up too much space”: IK Multimedia Tonex One review

Brian Wampler loves a drive pedal. He’s made signature overdrive pedals for the likes of Brent Mason, Tom Quayle and Andy Wood, distortion pedals inspired by YouTube’s – and the Haunted’s – metal guitar tone guru Ola Englund. And he made one of our favourite Klon-inspired drives, like, ever.

But has he just topped the lot of them? Well, maybe, but quite possibly if your tastes in electric guitar were shaped by hot-rodded Plexis and Mesa/Boogie amps, because the Golden Jubilee is both of those vibes in one amp-in-a-box overdrive-cum-distortion.

It looks the part. It looks expensive, all sparkle metallic green with gold anodized knobs. And the Golden Jubilee passes the first test of any guitar effects pedal inspired by an actual guitar amplifier – the controls are simple, no fuss.

There are two channels, each with their own footswitch, both of which can be active at the same time, and you can switch the order so that the overdrive channel feeds into the distortion and vice-versa.

Each channel has a set of dials for Level, Gain and Tone – and a toggle-switch for Character. This operates as a Bright switch on the distortion side, and a gain boost on the overdrive side.

And there you go, have at it. Overdrive is… well, in Wampler’s words, it is “that saturated, muscular British crunch that’s all over the records you love”.

Engage the overdrive for the “tight, percussive chug” for palm-muted riffs, or for juicy harmonics. The distortion of the side is inspired by mid ‘80s Mesa amps, that high-end tube amp saturation that somehow remains articulate enough to give you note separation even when it you’re diming the gain.

It’s effectively two dirt pedals in one, or maybe three if you decide to run both overdrive and distortion at the same time, with Wampler promising a “massive, exceptionally full tone – perfect for high-energy solos, fast shred runs, and smooth, fusion-style legato playing”.

The pedal might be inspired by two styles of tube amp but it was explicitly designed to complement the amp in your life, real or digitally modelled.

Run it into a clean channel of a tube amp and it can handle all your gain needs. Run it with an amp modeller and Wampler says it will give it some “ life, warmth, and dimension”.

You can run it at 9V or 19V from a pedalboard power supply. Each Golden Jubilee is made in the USA and covered by a five-year limited warranty. They are priced £/$239.

Head over to Wampler Pedals to find out more.

For what seems like forever the Neural DSP Quad Cortex has been number on in our best amp modeller buyer’s guide – but could all this change with the arrival of the Line 6 Helix Stadium Floor?

This more compact sibling of the MusicRadar-approved Helix Stadium XL Floor, the Stadium Floor shares the same expansive 8” touchscreen and a user experience that is incredibly intuitive, and boasts the same state-of-the-art DSP, with its an all-new Agoura modelling technology presenting us with the next generation of electric guitar tones from Line 6.

It, too, has the Showcase feature that is going to be a game-changer for gigging musicians, allowing players to automate their entire live show (not just the presets in your set, switching between guitar amps, but synthesizers, stagelights, slideshows…).

Even in our digitally transformed gear eco-system, Showcase feels like a radical proposition. And, as Eric Klein, Line 6’s chief product design architect, this is the Stadium unit that you can throw into a backpack.

“Helix Stadium Floor gives players the same powerful DSP, entirely new Agoura modelling methodology, Showcase automation capabilities, and other tone-crafting and performance tools found in our flagship Helix Stadium XL Floor processor,” says Klein. “Except in a notably smaller and lighter chassis that is compact enough to fit in most backpacks.”

Okay, the Stadium would need to shrink some more to beat the Quad Cortex Mini on portability – the latter offers the full-fat QC performance, complete with the 7” touchscreen, in a glass-topped unit just 228mm × 118mm × 65mm, weighing 1.5kg (the Stadium Floor weighs 3.4kg and measures 408mm x 241mm x 82mm), But still, this is the conversation players will be having.

As Klein mentions, the Stadium has the same firepower as its larger sibling. It might lack an expression pedal but it has got an abundance of connections, and similarly can be hooked up to your DAW and used as a studio-quality USB guitar audio interface.

The Augora modelling tech used to create its sounds takes a component-by-component level approach to recreating the sounds of a hardware amp or guitar effect.

“Our powerful new platform isn’t just for more stuff; it was mission critical to help us deliver the single biggest leap Line 6 has made in its near 30 year history of modelling amps,” said Klein, when the Helix Stadium platform was first announced in summer 2025. “We call it Augora. But Augora isn’t HX on steroids. It is an entirely new subcomponent behavioural modelling methodology.

“There’s all-new tube emulation where we actually measure detailed parameters of the actual tubes used in these amps – voltages, currents, capacitance and more.”

Some features are not ready yet. The Proxy amp and effects capture feature will be arriving in a future firmware update (Showcase wasn’t ready upon the Stadium XL’s launch).

But from the Hype control, the wi-fi, the Bluetooth, the capability to import up to eight stem files, mute on and play over the others in the track, plus your Helix/HX presets can be used here… Well, this is a formidable platform.

You can read MusicRadar’s review of the Line 6 Helix Stadium XL here. You can now officially buy the Helix Stadium Floor for £1,549/$1,799. And see what we thought of the recent competition. Our Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini review is right here.

For more details, head over to Line 6.

What is it?

Few amp modeller lineups have impacted the wider guitar world more than the Line 6 Helix family. First launched in 2015 and subsequently expanded to include pedals of all shapes and sizes – with numerous firmware updates to boot – Line 6’s flagship all-in-one-rig solutions have become some of the most-used and well-loved options on the market to date.

Line 6 has helped pioneer and innovate the space. Lest we forget the POD, which spurned on an entire genre and helped catapult the modeller movement into the stratosphere? In fact, if you had to pick, it’d probably be Line 6 and Neural DSP who are the biggest players in the game today.

However, when Neural DSP brought its touchscreen-equipped Quad Cortex to market in 2020 – and with more competition from the likes of the Fender Tone Master Pro and IK Multimedia coming out of the woodwork – the onus seemed to be on Line 6 to keep up to date with emerging trends and technological developments. Sure, the firmware updates were nice, but a top-to-bottom refresh seemed necessary to stay in the race.

The rollout has been a bit of a shaky one in terms of features, but now the Stadium XL is out in the wild – and it even has a few firmware updates under its belt already. The original is a tough act to follow, but Line 6 has pulled no punches with its follow-up.

There's new Agoura modelling tech, an 8” touchscreen, overhauled UI, a new ‘Hype’ control, intuitive new ways to interact with digital tones, a mountain of DSP, plenty of connectivity options, a built-in expression pedal… the list goes on. But what does all of that mean in practice, and is the Helix Stadium really that much of a step up from what was already an exceptional platform?

Specs

• Launch price: $2,199 | £1,980 | €2,299
• Type: Amp modeller multi-effects floorboard
• Features: 12 footswitches, built-in expression pedal, 8” touchscreen, customizable scribble strips, Agoura amp modelling, Helix effects, Stomp/Snapshot/Preset modes, Showcase.
• Connectivity: Bluetooth, MIDI, WiFi, 2x ¼” control outputs, 2x ¼” instrument inputs, XLR input, four effects loops (or two stereo effects loops), stereo XLR output, stereo ¼” output, ¼” headphone output, Nexus link, S/PDIF in and out, Micro SD slot, MIDI in and out, USB C, USB A
• Power: IEC, 9V DC, 3A
• Dimensions: 19.4”x10.1”x3.6”/493x257x92mm
• Weight: 11.5lbs/5.25kg
• Contact: Line 6

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

This thing just screams ‘robust’, and having come straight in from reviewing the glass-heavy Neural DSP Quad Cortex mini, it feels reassuring to come to something that’s a bit more industrial in its design. The black brushed chassis looks impervious to any on-stage mishaps that might come its way.

I’ve never gigged a larger Helix myself, just the HX Stomp, but I’ve shared stages with those who have and am constantly crossing paths with them in a live environment. And there’s a reason for that - they are proper workhorses that are tried, tested and trusted. The Helix Stadium XL, unsurprisingly, looks equally so, and while it’s not overly heavy per se, it does have a nice heft that makes it feel even more reliable.

An improved footswitch count finds 12 capacitive touch footswitches lined up next to a sturdy expression pedal that will take plenty of testing rocks, while the 8” touchscreen feels remarkably shatterproof.

The raised edges to separate the rows of footswitches – which all have their own scribble strips – is a nice touch, as is the allen key nut used to tighten or loosen the expression pedal resistance. In that regard, there are no loose switches or wobbly controls. Everything is rock solid – the least you'd expect from a nearly-£2k pedal, of course.

On the back, there are plenty of well-appointed I/Os, including four mono effects loops (two stereo), XLR and ¼” stereo out. MIDI in and out, and both USB-C and USB-A, as well as a ¼” headphone out and a Micro SD slot. It’s powered via a rugged IEC socket, which adds to the sturdy and industrial vibe this pedal gives off.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★★

I could waste plenty of words talking about the ins and outs of the Helix Stadium XL’s usability (don’t worry, I’ll drill into the details in a minute) but the long and short of it is quite simple: this is the most user-friendly modeller I’ve experienced.

A lot of that is down to the 8” touchscreen – which, it should be pointed out, is larger than the screens found on the Tone Master Pro and Quad Cortex. But it’s not just the size that counts; it’s what it offers and how it feels under the fingers.

The screen is incredibly responsive and accurately calibrated – no unnecessarily heavy-handed taps are needed to scroll or select – and it has a premium satin-y sheen that ultimately feels more robust than the sleek screens of the QC or TMP. It makes it really easy to drag and drop amp and effects blocks, and the almost-matte-like effect means even the sweatiest of fingers won’t grip, smudge or stick to the screen. It’s a small design choice, but one I’d wager was wholly deliberate – and it definitely adds to the usability.

That seems to be the theme here: lots of small, extremely well thought-out design choices that all add up to deliver a really intuitive experience. I’ve plugged into a few modellers that have left me at sea with their functionality, but I had no such issues with the Helix Stadium XL. Part of that might have been down to my familiarity with the HX Stomp, but I think it’s mostly because of the impressive UI utilized here.

Those small functions include having a full-on keyboard view when naming scribble strips, presets or snapshots. Elsewhere, when selecting amps and effects, you get visual renders of each model while scrolling through the banks (similar to the Tone Master Pro). Assigning these using the capacitive footswitches speeds the preset-making process up. The ability to fully customise footswitch functions is great, and easy to do. The tiered layout means you don’t have to worry about accidental switch stomps. There's no real learning curve here. I reckon a monkey could operate this.

But the thing I’m most interested in with the Helix Stadium XL is the potentially game-changing Showcase feature. Along with the overhauled Agoura amp modelling and fancy new UI, this was by far the biggest selling point of the new unit. It wasn’t available at launch despite Line 6 making a big deal about it (the roll-out for this thing is another conversation altogether) but it was later introduced as part of one of the company’s many Helix updates.

Effectively, Showcase can control your entire live set – like, literally, the whole thing – directly from the unit itself. It can run up to eight stereo track stems with a multi-track mixer for levels, sync effect changes to tempo and tracks, and control MIDI commands to trigger an array of any changes your live show might require. That means sound, lighting, slideshows, synths… you name it.

The ability to control your live show from your amp modeller is a huge deal, and while I was worried this was simply ‘features for features’ sake’ in a bid to outmuscle Neural DSP and Fender on the spec sheet, I have since become something of a Showcase convert.

The applications are exciting and the potential is impressive, not just for live performing guitarists but for those looking to level up at-home playing, solo jamming and rehearsals. What’s more, it's easy to operate, and while the thought of controlling a live show from your modeller sounds daunting, it’s anything but.

Tracks can be dropped-and-dragged into your modeller through HX Edit – which can now be linked wirelessly over a shared WiFi connection – and saved through the MicroSD card slot on the rear. Then, you can organise whole songs – heck, even sets – with a multi-track monitor for sorting levels.

Of course, there is a limit to Showcase, and for more expansive, complex sets that require more tracks, the Helix Stadium XL won’t quite cut it (side note: realistically, how often would you need more than eight tracks?). Would I try to control a live show myself? Yes, I would.

But even in the comfort of the testing room, the Helix Stadium XL is still the most usable modeller I’ve gotten my hands on to date. It’s a ‘best of all worlds’-style approach that has been refined into Line 6’s own style.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

I have to give Line 6 credit here. It could have easily updated its existing HX amp modelling tech and focussed solely on improving the UI of the older Helix family, but it didn’t do that – instead, it built a new software from the ground up, which it’s anointed ‘Agoura’.

On paper, Agoura promises more dynamic, more authentic, more tangible playing, and in the conversations I’ve had with Line 6 over the past few months, the emphasis has been on ‘connection’. In other words, Agoura helps you feel the note better. It’s meant to respond to your playing, and your touch, better than old HX amps would.

So, does it? Well, yes, it does. Quite noticeably. There’s a lot to like here about Agoura. My usual litmus test with modellers usually involves trying to dial in a responsive clean amp that pushes and bites like a valve amp would (it’s easier to feel convinced when there are layers of gain and dirt involved) and I have to say the new US Luxe Black and US Double Black models are the amps I’ve always wanted in a Helix.

They are excellent clean amps that (when tailored appropriately) largely don’t fizz or poke out when you dig in with your pick. They are both bouncy and responsive and a notable upgrade to the edge-of-break-up, clean amps of the old Helix pedals.

The Princeton model I used to use in the HX Stomp has been drastically upgraded, with the whole cohort of Fender-style amps capable of some really nice tones that do the ‘edge of break up’ thing very well. The Plexi-style Marshall-y amps are also great, with a satisfying, springy depth that feels really nice under the fingers.

Effects stack really well, too, and thanks to the sheer processing power of this thing you can get creative with your signal chains far easier than before. Re-routing for stereo or multiple signal paths is a doddle, and the sound quality never really falters, regardless of how many blocks you’ve thrown in. Of course, there is a DSP limit, but for most use cases the Helix Stadium XL will serve you fine.

But that doesn’t mean Agoura is the best amp modeling tech I’ve played and it’s by no means perfect straight out of the box. The stock presets are by and large all really good, naturally, but when it comes to starting from scratch it takes a bit of effort to find a sweet spot.

Fortunately, Line 6 has added some tools to help speed up the process. With Focus mode, the visuals of the touchscreen – which displays a render of the selected amp and effects models – can be used to ‘drag’ your tone across five tonal reference points.

This changes a multitude of parameters simultaneously in real time, and saves the tedious effort of going through one by one. To that end, all the parameters responded nicely to each other, giving it a more holistic ‘traditional’ feel.

There's also a new 'Hype' control, which looks to bridge the gap between 'authentic' tube amp emulations and more processed, ultra-refined digital recreations. Is this feature needed? I'm not sure. There will probably be plenty out there who use it, but I didn't find it particularly inspiring, nor did I feel it had an overly significant impact on tone.

Also, I still found myself erring towards putting in my JHS Morning Glory V4 into the effects loop and using that as an ‘always on’ analogue softener to give the Agoura amps even more of an authentic feel. Not a deal breaker by any means (I do this with the Nano Cortex I’ve been gigging for two years) but something to be wary of.

As for effects... well, as the old saying goes, ‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it’ and there certainly wasn’t anything broken with Line 6 Helix effects, which have been transported from the old unit into the Helix Stadium XL wholesale. That means all the delays, reverb, modulations and drives that made my HX Stomp such a huge part of my pedalboard are all here.

The Line 6 drives sometimes get a bad rap, but I’m fond of them, especially the Klon-aping Minotaur, OCD-style Compulsive Drive, and King of Tone-inspired Tone Sovereign. The fuzz models leave a little to be desired, but I find most digital emulations do, so the Arbitrator Fuzz and Bighorn Fuzz models – while nothing to write home about – do the job just fine.

However, when Proxy (Line 6’s answer to Neural DSP Capture) arrives, the first thing I’d be doing is Proxy-ing my analogue gain stages and putting them into the Stadium. Depending on how effective the tech is, of course, but I’d have more faith in the models I’ve done myself of my go-to drive and compression pedals in getting the job done.

The real MVPs of the Helix effects lineup though are the reverbs, delays and modulations. Currently, I run an HX Stomp that uses a bunch of these, including Reverse Delay, Glitz, Adriatic Swell, Optical Trem, 70s Chorus and more. These, paired with the improved Agoura amp models, are all very pleasing on the ear.

Are new and improved effects on the cards for the Helix Stadium family? It seems a shame in retrospect not to pair the new amps with new effects, but, again, the Helix effects are held in high regard. It will be interesting to see how the sonic palette expands in the future, though...

Verdict

Is this the best amp modeller out there on the market? It’s hard to say, because there are a number of elements to the answer. While the stock tones may not be quite enough to take the lead in the race, it certainly is the easiest to use and, dare I say, the most enjoyable. It’s also got some unique features you won’t find anywhere else, and has the potential to become an indispensable foundation for you and your band’s shows.

It might not be a ‘plug and play’ world beater straight out of the box that perhaps I was expecting it to be, but with a little time it quickly becomes a formidable and outstandingly powerful foundation for your rig. Agoura is definitely a step up and Line 6 has crafted a modeler experience that is a notable and worthy upgrade to the widely acclaimed and hugely beloved Helix family.

Not only that, it will be a regular recipient of Line 6’s free firmware updates, which, if history has taught us anything, are a huge reason to enter the Line 6 ranks. Proxy is coming. Who knows what else will come in the future?

Do you sacrifice perhaps the immediate and accessible tones of the Quad Cortex or Tone Master Pro for a functionality that blows the competition out the water? Ultimately, it all comes down to player preference. I’ve played at an actual stadium and would feel fairly confident with using the Stadium XL there.

MusicRadar verdict: While the stock tones may not be quite enough to take the lead in the race, it certainly is the easiest to use and, dare I say, the most enjoyable. It’s also got some unique features you won’t find anywhere else, and has the potential to become an indispensable foundation for you and your band’s shows. In sheer muscle power, the Helix Stadium is the standout candidate for me.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Guitar World

Line 6

Steve Sterlacci

Just a few weeks after unveiling its clone of the Lovetone Meatball envelope filter pedal, Behringer is plundering the boutique pedal manufacturer's vaults once again with a recreation of the Ring Stinger, a quirky ring mod/fuzz pedal released in the '90s that promises to "spice up your tone".

Behringer's take on the Ring Stinger combines the metallic, discordant sounds of ring modulation with a punchy octave fuzz circuit, resulting in a creatively experimental pedal that opens up "an entirely new soundscape" for "guitarists, synth players, bassists, harpists, electric violinists and everything in between".

Ring Stinger's onboard VCO offers a choice of four waveforms with which to craft the unearthly tones of its ring modulator, alongside controls for Depth, VCO Frequency and Timbre for further tone-shaping. These are joined by controls for LFO Rate and Waveform, a Drive control for introducing distortion, a Blend control for dialling in the dry/wet mix, and footswitches for engaging the Octave pitch-shifter and LFO.

There's a healthy amount of ins and outs onboard, with expression pedal/CV inputs for both LFO Depth and VCO Frequency, and a Carrier input for routing in external signals that replace the VCO – this gives you the opportunity to get pretty creative with your sound design, ring modulating your guitar against a synth, drum machine, or anything else that you please. You also get a VCO Output too, in case you want to route the internal oscillator elsewhere.

A favourite of Johnny Marr, Billy Corgan and Kurt Vile, Ring Stinger has also been known to reside on Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien's pedalboard, and is responsible for taking Thom Yorke's vocals to another dimension on the title track of the band's 2000 album Kid A, as we found out in our 2019 interview with Lovetone designer Dan Coggins.

“I was chatting to Ed O’Brien at a Johnny Marr gig and he was thanking me for the Lovetone stuff, and I was telling him I loved what Radiohead did with the Meatball and Doppelganger on OK Computer," Coggins said. "He said the Ring Stinger was used for vocals on Kid A, which made me laugh - it’s such a bizarre track, so it’s fitting they used the most bizarre pedal we ever made."

Priced at £99/$119, Behringer's Ring Stinger is now available for pre-order.

Find out more on Behringer's website.

Behringer Ring Stinger

• Ring Modulation: core feature that creates metallic and harmonic overtones through signal manipulation
• Pitch Shifting: allows for real-time control of pitch modulation, producing unique and experimental tones
• Expression Pedal Compatibility: enables dynamic control of various parameters, adding expressiveness
• Low-Frequency Oscillator (LFO): provides rhythmic modulation patterns for dynamic soundscapes
• Harmonic Generation: generates harmonics and sidebands for complex and evolving textures
• Filter Section: incorporates filters to shape and sculpt the modulated signal
• Mix Control: balances the dry and modulated signals for precise tonal blending
• Waveform Selection: offers different modulation waveform options for versatility
• Frequency Control: adjusts the frequency range of the ring modulation effect
• Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (VCO): adds a VCO for even more control over pitch and modulation
• Assignable Parameters: allows users to assign expression control to various parameters
• True Bypass: maintains the integrity of the dry signal when the effect is disengaged
• Vintage Aesthetic: features a distinctive, retro design that stands out on pedalboards
• Powered Options: works with a standard DC power supply

Name: What is it?

There’s nothing quite like the impressive sight of a huge pedalboard hosting an over-the-top collection of carefully curated pedals running into a high-end guitar amp. This indulgence is fun and often worth it, but awkward in a number of ways. Digital amp modelling from the likes of Line 6’s Helix Stadium and Neural DSP’s Quad Cortex provides a way to achieve the functionality of these rigs whilst saving space and doing away with the complicated cable routing and the effort of moving around hefty tube amps.

Digital modelling has doubled down on this practicality by turning progressively more miniature over the last few years, as shown by the likes of the Helix HX Stomp, Fractal AM4, and Neural DSP Nano Cortex. The latest addition to this space-saving trend is the product I have in front of me for review - the Neural DSP Quad Cortex mini.

Usually, these smaller offerings would also be diminished when it comes to raw power compared to the flagship products. For example, the HX Stomp can only run eight effects blocks compared to the Helix’s 32, and the Nano Cortex operates as a capture-only device.

This is where the Quad Cortex mini differs, as within its small chassis resides the full power of Neural’s flagship Quad Cortex, with firmware that can do everything the bigger model can.

Space is saved with just the four footswitches compared to the 11 on its bigger brother, and a slightly reduced I/O, of which we have one quarter-inch jack input, one combo input, an effects loop (one x stereo or two mono), one expression pedal input, two XLR outputs, two quarter-inch outputs, MIDI in and out over mini-jack TRS sockets, one capture output, a mini-jack headphone socket and USB-C connectivity.

All this means that it’s quite a different proposition compared to other compact modellers, as it is much closer in function to its bigger brother, but also closer in price. This makes identifying the mini’s place within the modelling world an interesting task. Let’s find out where it sits, if indeed there is a place for it at all.

Specs

• Launch price: £1129 | $1399 | €1290
• Type: Amp modeller and multi-effects
• Features: Amp and cab modelling, multi-effects, Neural Capture V1/V2, creates Neural Captures, 7" touch screen, four dual-function footswitches
• Connectivity: USB-C, Wi-Fi
• I/O: one ¼” input, one combo input, one ¼” TRS effects loop (one x stereo or two mono), one expression pedal input, two XLR outputs, two ¼” outputs, ⅛” MIDI in and out, one capture ¼” out, ⅛” headphone out
• Power: 12V, 1.2A, centre-negative
• Dimensions: 228 x 118 x 65cm / 8.9” x 4.6” x 2.5”
• Weight: 1.5kg (3.3lbs)
• Contact: Neural DSP

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★½

Weighing in at around 1.5kg, it feels fairly hefty to hold for its 228mm×118mm×65mm dimensions. With an anodised aluminium body, it will withstand all the usual abuse of a gigging life, but the top is almost entirely made of glass.

This is mainly to accommodate the seven-inch screen, which is the same size of screen featured on the Quad Cortex. We have four footswitches atop the glass, so it’s fair to question whether it can take being stomped on at hundreds of gigs. In my hands, the glass feels like it has an industrial thickness to it, so personally, I am confident that it is strong enough to withstand significant abuse. Really, what we need is to have someone purposefully try to break it and see what happens, but obviously, we can’t do that.

The screen itself is bright enough that it won't get lost under stage lights, and those footswitches are Neural’s tried, tested, and ingenious dual-function footswitches that also turn so that they work as encoders.

When Neural launched the original Quad Cortex with these dual-function footswitches, some called into question their longevity given their spinning nature. Years later, these have shown themselves to be reliable components. Side note, Neural’s form here is worth bearing in mind for those (understandably) questioning the glass top.

The look of the unit is dominated by that screen, which encompasses the vast majority of the real estate on the top panel. This has already been a little divisive, with some who disapprove likening the aesthetic to that of a car infotainment system.

It takes a little getting used to as its appearance is rather unique for a guitar product, but its black, silver, and grey colour scheme results in what I think is a classy, minimalist feel. However, I understand that this is not for everybody.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★☆

Having spent a lot of time with the Quad Cortex, I have always found the touchscreen to be a convenient place to do almost all the preset building/editing from. The benefit of the mini featuring the same screen is that this functionality translates to the smaller device.

That’s not to say that it is perfect, as, just like the bigger Quad, there are a few functions that aren't obvious from the display. For example, there is no visual indication that gesturing upward brings in Gig View, gesturing down reveals the I/O settings, or that holding parameters assigns their changes to certain scenes (I’ll come back to scenes later).

These are operations that are pretty commonplace in the world of touchscreens, so if you have some prior experience with this type of tech, you could probably figure out the mini without touching the manual. If, however, you are brand new to this - perhaps this is your first modeller with touchscreen menus - a little reading will be required.

The touchscreen isn’t the most responsive on the mini, which is also a common criticism levelled at the Quad Cortex. While it is noticeable, it is far from a deal breaker and doesn’t cause any problems in use. It would just be nice if it were a little smoother.

Adding blocks is easy, with the four available paths clearly displayed on the screen. The icons that represent each effect type make sense, but will take a little extra memorising for those who are not au fait with the audio world. For example, the compression block is represented by a sine wave with arrows indicating that it is being squashed.

We have the familiar Cortex modes - Stomp, Preset, and Scenes, which affect how the footswitches behave. Stomp mode makes the mini akin to a pedalboard, with each footswitch bypassing the individual effect that it is assigned to. Preset mode loads an entirely different rig on every footswitch, and Scene mode allows each footswitch to bypass and adjust multiple parameters within a preset.

Switching from one preset to another will create a gap in audio, so this is where Scene mode is useful. It allows for many things within a preset to be changed at once, without that gap or pedalboard-associated tap dancing. This is where most will live when it comes to playing live.

These modes can be switched between by using the screen or tapping footswitches B and D together, which is helpfully indicated on the top panel. Similarly, Footswitch A and C give you access to a tuner. Tapping two switches at once is always a little awkward, but a sensible compromise for space-saving compact modellers.

As I mentioned earlier, the footswitches themselves also work as encoders. Here lies the biggest highlight for me, and something which I reckon is an improvement over the original Quad. After selecting a block to edit, its parameters are clearly displayed at the bottom of the screen. Turning footswitch C (bottom left) scrolls through the parameters, and turning footswitch D (bottom right) edits them.

This feels very intuitive. On the bigger Quad, eight of the footswitches are assigned to the parameters on screen, but they don’t always line up well. The mini’s Etch-A-Sketch style editing is therefore easier to use.

The four-footswitch limit is obviously a little limiting when playing live. Each preset can support eight scenes or stomps, but only four are available for immediate access. Getting to the second set of four requires the holding of footswitch B. Holding buttons down is far from ideal in the middle of a song, so you will need to arrange your footswitch assignments or presets strategically if you use more than four core sounds during a gig.

These limitations are bypassed in a studio setting, where gapless preset switching is not all that important. Here, the Quad can connect via USB-C and operate as an audio interface, allowing for monitoring of the guitar sound directly from the mini and therefore eliminating any latency concerns, as well as simultaneously recording that effected signal and a dry D.I for re-amping with the mini later should you change your mind on the tone.

Combine that with the small footprint and sheer power behind the unit, and this is potentially a perfect studio companion for many a guitar player.

Handily, the mini Cortex also boasts built-in WiFi, allowing for easy updating of firmware, as well as compatibility with the Cortex Control app on Windows and macOS. The app's highly visual, drag and drop interface makes editing presets as well as downloading third-party presets and IR’s a breeze.

It’s worth noting that there is no Bluetooth here, which would be handy as it would allow the use of the Cortex Cloud mobile app. However, if you mainly use the mini as a studio tool, the desktop app will have you covered.

Compact modellers and capture devices are often compromised when it comes to usability due to squeezing so much into something so small. The Quad Cortex mini’s seven-inch screen means it does not suffer from this drawback to nearly the same extent. In my opinion, despite a few limitations, this makes it the easiest modeller/capture device to use when it comes to those compact, space-saving units.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

A great user experience means absolutely nothing if the mini doesn’t have tones to match. This, however, is where Neural’s approach of zero compromise when it comes to processing power pays dividends. In other words, the mini is the Quad Cortex in a smaller box, with all the well-documented, stellar tones of the flagship product.

Having played the likes of the Helix Stadium, Fractal AM4, Fender Tone Master Pro, UA amp pedals, IK Multimedia ToneX products, and more, I can say that the Quad Cortex has the edge when it comes to sounds straight out of the box.

For example, the very first preset named Brit 2203 utilises a model of a Marshall JCM800 to kick out that roaring Marshall drive sound with plenty of lows and high-end bite. On the other end of things, the US Twin Vibrato preset emulates the Vibrato channel of a Fender Twin Reverb with that scooped mid feel for addictive shimmering cleans.

On most amp models and cabinet emulations from Neural’s competitors, I find myself introducing a high cut to get rid of some digital-sounding high end, sometimes going as low as 5-6khz (note, a “cut” is a roll off of frequencies above a set number, not a hard “shelf”). On the Quad Cortex mini, I don’t feel the need to do this. That high-end I would usually look to dial out, just isn’t a problem here. This is partly why it sounds so good out of the box.

This doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for a bit of tweaking. A favourite model of mine is the Friedman 100 rhythm (Friedman BE-100) that excels at the chunky, driven thing, but is a little muddy on its own if you don’t tweak those lower frequencies. It’s the same with the EVH 101 IIIS Red, which is a perfect example of the high-gain goddess available, but it can get a little loose in the low end.

So, particularly as you increase the gain, you may want to tighten up those low frequencies a little. However, I’d expect to be making similar sorts of adjustments on real-life amps; therefore, this is not necessarily a bad thing. If anything, it’s part of what makes the Quad’s models feel amp-like.

Also vital to this feel is the way the models clean up with the volume control and react to picking dynamics, even when running in the land of high gain like the aforementioned EVH 101 IIIS. On both my Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul Classic, it reacted exactly like an amp should.

Modelling is not the only trick up the sleeves of the Cortex range, however, as the units are also capable of running and creating Neural Captures. Recently updated to version two of this technology, we have plenty to play with as Neural provides a host of factory captures with version 4.0 of the CorOS. A highlight for me is the Dumble Captures.

With 30 versions of this amp to choose from, there are plenty of options that range from that roaring, mid-forward Dumble drive to the sparkling clean. The transients on the Dumble Captures don’t come through quite as harshly when compared to the Dumble ODS model, meaning it’s a much more forgiving experience to play, and still cleans up remarkably well on the volume control.

With this way of doing things, you are somewhat at the mercy of the person doing the capturing, as you have little tweaking available after the fact. Just Gain, Bass, Mid, and Treble with a more limited range than you will find on an amp model. However, the Factory Captures here prove that the technology works and does an impressive job.

The drives, however, don't quite live up to the sound of the rest of the unit. The Green 808 (Ibanez Tube Screamer TS808), for example, has the recognisable mid-hump of the real thing, but lacks that cushiony, compressed feel. Similarly, Fuzz Faces are known for their ability to clean up well, but the equivalent model in the Quad - the Facial Fuzz - gets quite muddy when I dial back the volume control on my guitars, and generally sounds thinner next to my Fuzz Face mini.

It’s not all bad, though. The Rodent Drive (Pro Co Rat) is a full and gnarly saturation that is a ton of fun for Blur-inspired riffage, and the Obsessive Drive (Fulltone OCD) is a Marshally overdrive, boasting the full and fat sound of the pedal that it’s inspired by.

Things are back to Neural’s usual high bar with the delays, of which we have nine, or 15 if you count the Stereo duplicates of the mono versions. So it’s not a huge amount of choice compared to other modellers (for example, the Fractal AM4 has 27), but there is everything in here that you will need, from simple analogue delays to trippy reversed repeats.

I like my delays to be relatively dark so as not get in the way of the original signal, meaning that it’s no surprise that I find the Analogue Delay to be my favourite. It boasts those warm repeats I am after, whilst staying tweakable with Mix, Feedback, High Pass, Low Pass, Delay Time, Mod Rate, and Depth controls.

For something designed to be a little more forward in the mix, the Digital Delay is a good choice. With repeats that remain a little clearer than the Analogue Delay and retain the same tweakability, it’s perfect for some dotted eighth acrobatics.

Getting into the more outlandish sounds like the Reverse Delay, it easily exudes that wooshy, trippy feel present in some of that Hendrix style weirdness. With extra controls to adjust the way it plays back the reversed version of your signal.

Reverb features the usual suspects like Room, Hall, Plate, and Spring, as well as some more out-there tones like Blossom.

They all wrap the sound in a lovely space, which is just plain addictive. Spring, for example, kicks out some great surfy drippiness, and Hall is a subtler verb adding just a little space. Both are highly tweakable with the usual and reverb type-specific controls. Hall, for example, has the usual Mix, Decay Time, High and Low Pass, and the Spring has Mix, Damping, Tone, and Boing for the drip. It's very easy to immediately land on usable and highly rewarding sounds.

My favourite reverb is Cave, which has a subtle sort of shimmer on top of a verb that sounds a little hall-like. In other words, it’s a shimmer reverb for those who don't like shimmer reverbs.

And of course, we all need some modulation in our lives, and the mini has plenty to fulfil anybody’s needs. The Chorus Engine, for example, is fantastic for that 80s magic. Like the reverbs, it’s highly tweakable with Mix, Rate, Delay, Depth, Morph, Random, Voice, and Tone controls. My favourite setting is a fairly bright chorus (tone up) with some lush chords.

Another winner in my book is the MX Phase 95, which is based on the MXR Phase 45 and Phase 90 pedals. For Van Halen fans, it’s perfect at serving up those high-gain tones that need a little movement, but also features additional controls that allow for syncing the effect to tempo.

There are more outlandish effects in here, too, exemplified by the likes of the Freeze effect. Here, the player strikes a note which is then held by the effect and can be adjusted with Attack, Release, Dry Gain, Freeze Gain, and a High and Low Pass. On top of this, you can then noodle away to your heart's content. It’s endless fun, and a genuinely usable creative tool.

As someone who is often emulating keyboard parts in bands, the Rotary effect is a great addition. However, it is lacking a bit of beef as it sounds a little thin compared to some of the other rotary effects from competition like Line 6 and Fractal.

Something that the Quad Cortex mini (and bigger Quad) does better than other modellers is in the Synth sound. It works as an oscillator built for single note playing with an arpeggiator and filter. The result is a warm, super-compressed, fat-sounding synth that can be tweaked to get wild.

The one drawback to the synth is that it is incredibly sensitive, picking up even the tiniest pick scratches against the strings as you pluck and end notes. This resulted in some unwanted squeaks interrupting lead lines, as the sensitivity doesn't go low enough to avoid this. The only way around this is to pick with a flatter angle on the pick or use fingers.

Compressors and gates may not be quite as exciting, but they are both essential to great guitar tone and are well served in the Cortex lineup. The Opto Comp, for example, has the usual Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, Makeup, and Mix, and manages to do everything from extreme squahiness to a subtle reduction of audio peaks, without colouring the tone too much.

In short, there is a lot on offer in the mini. The last thing that deserves a mention is the Transpose function. In single note playing, it tracks well throughout its two octave range (one octave either way). On more sophisticated chords, you are good to around four semitones in either direction before you get any unwanted warbling. Impressive.

Verdict

The mini, then, is an interesting unit. It boasts the full power of the bigger Quad Cortex, but also a price that reflects this, too. Making it a significantly bigger investment, and therefore a different proposition when compared to other compact modellers/capture devices.

Firstly, in live use, the compact size means a compromise in the number of footswitches, limiting the number of sounds immediately available while playing.

A way around this is to use some external effects or something like a MIDI switcher. For example, when I’m running a compact modeller/capture device like the Fractal AM4, ToneX Pedal, or Nano Cortex live, I will often have an Ibanez Tube Screamer, Way Huge Blue Hippo Chorus, Dunlop Crybaby Mini Wah, and Hotone Ampero Switch running alongside.

The result is an expansion of the sounds available at my feet, whilst allowing me to take advantage of the great tones within those modelling/capture devices and pedals that I love using. Furthermore, this usually leaves a good chunk of change compared to the price of the flagship units.

However, the cost of the mini is so close to the bigger Quad Cortex that this doesn’t work here, as there’s not much scope for adding extra devices before you’d be better off getting the original Quad. And if you are only using it as a pedal platform - as a lot of people do with this type of small modeller - you’re not getting the full benefit of the processing power you are paying for.

However, if you are someone who only uses a few sounds live, but those sounds are in-depth, perhaps requiring running multiple amps and cabinets, the power of the Quad mini allows you to do this without the DSP worries of other compact digital units.

And, when it comes to studio work, the mini really shines. It’s all the power of the Quad Cortex, in a tiny package that can sit on a desk and act as the ultimate interface for the guitarist.

MusicRadar verdict: Make no mistake, the Quad Cortex mini is everything the Quad Cortex is, just in a smaller box, boasting all the usability and stellar tones that made the original Cortex so popular. In most, but not all cases, the full-size Quad Cortex may still be the best way to utilise all that power live, but as a studio tool, its small, desk-friendly footprint makes the Quad Cortex mini near unbeatable.

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What is it?

When two Ohio-based guitar companies get together, good things tend to happen. Case in point: the ZEQD-Pre is a collaboration between EarthQuaker Devices and Dr Z Amplification, aiming to bring genuine tube tone to your pedalboard in a surprisingly versatile package. This stomp is the latest bit of guitar gear that’s taking aim at the slew of digital devices that seem to have become part and parcel of being a guitarist in 2026.

“We’ve been longtime fans of his amps,” EarthQuaker founder Jamie Stillman tells us at the company’s NAMM 2026 booth. “We’ve worked together in the past on an overdrive and developing some foot switches for his amplifiers, and we thought it would be super cool to work on a tube-based pedal to get the tone of a Dr Z amp.”

The result is something a bit different from your typical preamp pedal. Built around an EF86 tube, this stomp promises the high headroom and pristine cleans Dr Z is known for. “The EF 86 tube is a really interesting one because it’s kind of a hi-fi tube with a really wide frequency response and a big output,” Stillman explains. The ZEQD-Pre is an all-analog design that can serve as a clean boost, a direct recording solution, a headphone practice amp, or all three at once. All pretty impressive considering there isn’t a lick of digital trickery in sight.

At its core, the pedal is refreshingly straightforward, with very little in the way of dials or switches. There’s a passive three-band EQ, volume control, and a boost switch that bypasses the EQ entirely to really let the tube do its thing. “You get the same tone of the guitar and the amplifier. It’s just bigger, just like a more three-dimensional sound,” says Stillman.

Now, where things get interesting is the I/O. With a standard output for your amp, a balanced XLR for direct recording or going ampless on stage, and a headphone jack with built-in analog cabinet simulation, the ZEQD-Pre is ready for just about any scenario you can throw at it. Even better, all outputs work simultaneously, making it a genuinely useful studio tool.

Whether you’re looking to add some tube warmth to your rig, simplify your backline, or just practice quietly without losing that amp-like feel, this collaboration between two well-respected builders promises to be the solution.

Specs

• Price: $399 | £399 | €499
• Type: All-analog tube preamp pedal
• Controls: Level, Boost, Bass, Middle, Treble, Activate footswitch, Boost footswitch, Ground Lift, Cab Sim
• Features: EF86 pentode tube, passive 3-band EQ, analog cabinet simulation, true bypass switching, 9V to 200V internal power conversion, Ground Lift switch
• Connectivity: Input (1/4"), Output (1/4"), Balanced XLR DI output, TRS 1/4" headphone output,
• Power: 9V DC (center negative), 500mA minimum, 2.1mm barrel connector
• Dimensions: 149 x 100 x 70 mm (5.88" x 3.94" x 2.75") with knobs
• Weight: 1.255 lbs (569g)
• Contact: EarthQuaker Devices

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★★

Like anything from Ohio pedal titans EarthQuaker Devices, the ZEQD-Pre feels robust and rugged; there’s a real heft to this unit that I certainly appreciate. Sure, it’s no mini enclosure, but it’s still smaller than a vintage Big Muff, and you need that real estate to pack in all the technological wizardry happening under the hood.

Design-wise, this thing looks killer. That EF86 tube poking out of the center lets you know the stomp means business, and the oversized Boost and Level knobs make tweaking on the fly a breeze – there’s no squinting at tiny controls mid-set here.

Worried about blowing a tube? Well, you can relax, EarthQuaker’s got you covered. The tube is user-replaceable: just twist off that silver tube shield in the center and swap it out. One important note, though, stick with EF86 tubes only. Don’t get any wild ideas about jamming a 12AX7 in there.

​Now, for you gearheads wondering about power, yes, the ZEQD-Pre runs on standard 9V DC, and no, that’s not a problem. Internally, the pedal converts your typical 9V pedal power supply to 200V to ensure proper tube operation. This is what helps the ZEQD-Pre deliver spectacularly high headroom and full-frequency response without adding another bulky power supply to your already crowded 'board.

Usability

Usability rating: ★★★★★

Right, first things first, this unit is ridiculously easy to use. No digital menus to navigate, no hidden functions requiring a PhD to unlock, just grab your favourite guitar, plug in, and you’re off to the races. Whether you’re setting up for practice, tracking in the studio, or heading to a gig, the EQD ZEQD-Pre adapts without any fuss.

Personally, I’ve been using it as a practice tool, and it’s been a total game-changer. I plug in my slightly oversized gigging pedalboard, connect some headphones, and suddenly I’ve got silent practice sessions that actually sound and feel like playing through an amp – and a boutique one at that!

Normally, when I want to practice silently, I don’t head over to my combo; I tend to fire up my PC, load up Pro Tools and a half-decent amp sim plugin, and practice that way. Now, this approach certainly works, but I’d prefer to use my pedals, and if I’m honest, I do miss the responsive feel of a tube amp under my fingers. The ZEQD-Pre more than addresses this issue, and in fact, it’s really shaken up my practice routine.

Moving past at-home practice, this new ED pedal proves that it is more than capable of living a double life. The beauty of this setup is its versatility. One minute you’re woodshedding at home, the next you’re in the studio running that same signal straight into the interface via XLR, then you're hitting the stage for a three-hour set with the exact same setup. No reconfiguring, no menu diving, just grab and go.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

Big, loud, and pristine, that's what's on offer with the ZEQD-Pre. The EF86 tube is often described as hi-fi, and honestly, that's the perfect way to describe what's coming out of this thing. As Dr Z himself puts it, “You hit this pedal on, and your amp just becomes huge,” and he's not kidding. There's a three-dimensional quality to the sound, a sense of space and clarity that makes everything feel more present and alive.

For my testing, I started with a Fender Telecaster running straight into my audio interface and into Pro Tools, using the onboard cab sim. Right out of the gate, the tone was bright, immediate, and crystal clear, maybe a little too clear. I found myself rolling off a bit of the high-end on the Treble control because it got a touch biting for my ears, especially with the Tele's natural snarl. But once I dialed it back, things started to sit a little better.

Next up, I plugged it into my beloved Vox AC30 to see how it behaved as a more traditional pedal in front of an amp. This is where things got really interesting. The ZEQD-Pre didn't just boost my favorite amp, it transformed it. Suddenly, the AC30 had more character, more width, and this gorgeous sense of dimension I wasn't getting before. It's like the pedal opened up the amp, and I was genuinely surprised with how much it changed the overall tone of this trusty combo. I could swear the amp felt more dynamic under my fingers.

Finally, I went back to using it as a headphone amp, dropping it at the end of my pedalboard. This is honestly where the ZEQD-Pre earns its keep for me. Being able to run my entire live rig at home through headphones, with all my dirt, modulation, and fuzz pedals responding as they would through a real amp, is an absolute revelation. No more compromising on tone just because it's 11 PM and the neighbors are asleep.

For me, this pedal more than delivers that touch sensitivity I was looking for. The extended frequency response of the pedal means harmonic richness without sacrificing definition, giving you that full-spectrum clarity from deep lows to sparkling highs that Dr Z amps are famous for.

Now, here's the thing, it might be too clean for some players. Yes, this pedal is able to provide broken-up, crunchy overdrive into the right amp by slamming the output volume, but it’s really not an overdrive pedal as such, so you won’t get full-on thick saturation; it's just not that kind of beast. I think this pedal is best as a hi-fi clean platform to run pedals into, adding that tube magic to whatever's already happening in your chain.

The Boost function is interesting, but I’d say it comes with a caveat. When you engage it, the tone controls are bypassed completely, delivering a full-range boost rather than just a volume jump. It offers a massive output designed to push an amp hard when required, and while that's useful in certain situations, I personally prefer to sculpt my boost, cutting some low end and pushing the mids for solos. The full-frequency approach here feels a bit too thumpy and unfocused for my tastes when I'm trying to cut through a crowded mix. That said, if you're after that ‘everything gets bigger’ vibe, this boost will absolutely deliver.

Verdict

The collaboration between EarthQuaker Devices and Dr Z Amplification has resulted in something genuinely special. This isn't just another amp-in-a-box trying to mimic a specific vintage tone, it's a legitimate tube preamplifier that brings authentic analog warmth to whatever you throw at it. Whether you're recording direct, running ampless on stage, or simply practicing through headphones at midnight, the ZEQD-Pre handles it all with remarkable ease.

The simplicity is refreshing. In an era where most gear requires firmware updates and menu diving, having a pedal that's just plug-and-play is liberating. Sure, the boost might not suit everyone's taste, and players chasing filthy breakup should probably look elsewhere, but if you want pristine, responsive, hi-fi clean tones that make your existing rig sound more dimensional and alive, this Ohio-born collaboration absolutely nails it. So, if your tone is in desperate need of a house call, I’d say EarthQuaker Devices is here to give your sound a clean bill of health.

MusicRadar verdict: Simple to use, built like a tank, and, thankfully, with the tone to boot, both Dr Z and EarthQuaker Devices should be very proud indeed of this fantastic little pedal. I can easily see this stomp becoming the beating heart of the rig of guitarists tired of the digital age.

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What is it?

Polyend is well known for its range of Tracker boxes, plus a strong line-up of synthesizers and grooveboxes all featuring the ubiquitous grid-based button interface that we have all become well accustomed to. However, more recently, it has entered the stomp-box arena with an analogue compressor, Press; the drum machine called Step; and the effects-laden Mess, which is reviewed here.

It’s worth stating from the start, however, that whilst all these boxes are floor-based in format, they are clearly aimed at the desk of synthesists and other users as much as the floorboard of devoted shredders.

The clue to Mess’s name and primary purpose comes from the acronym of ‘Multi-Effect Step Sequencer’, but delve deeper and you’ll find four independent effect processors, each linked to its own 16-step sequencer featuring a range of step probability options.

A single effect block can employ one of over 120 algorithms (in 11 categories), configured for serial, parallel or dual parallel configurations.

The unit features stereo inputs and outputs and can handle both high-impedance (hi-z) guitar and line-level inputs.

On the back, you’ll also find USB and MIDI connectivity - the latter accessible via 3.5mm socket adapters. There is also a microSD card slot for loading and saving presets, updating firmware, a configurable expression pedal input, and the all-important DC power socket. A power adapter is not provided; however, any polarity and voltage between 9V and 18V will work.

The top panel includes a very nice colour OLED screen, which interacts with the track, sequencer step, and other programming controls.

In physical terms, the Mess feels very well-made and exudes a classy air, both in terms of its appearance and feel.

Performance

Taking the plunge with Mess is pretty straightforward. To ease the process, Polyend provides a nicely laid-out ‘Getting Started’ and effects guide. Between them, it was possible to get straight into a solid session of audio mangling. First impressions were strong, with each twist of the Preset knob introducing another interesting effect.

The one oddity, from our perspective, was the control layout, which allocates the four available parameters on each page to rotary encoders on the far left and right, despite the screen displaying them in a slightly different manner. It’s a small thing, but it threw us off each time we used the unit.

The knobs in the middle are conventional pots for Input level and Mix. Unlike other controls, there is no screen-based visual feedback on their settings. Each effect gets its own (stored) Mix parameter, but not the overall mix balance control here. It would also have been helpful to have some indication of input level, if only to optimise gain through the digital effect and avoid occasional distortion.

There are too many effects to fully describe each one here, but they fall broadly into Panning, Shaper, Filter, Pitch Shifter, ‘Spectralizer’, Micro Looper (time/buffer repeat), Reverb, Delay, Modulation, Granular Burst and Particle Sampler types. They can be used conventionally, but can also be programmed to change in time with the programmed tempo (internal or external), via LFO, tempo sync, or by adjusting parameters for one or more steps.

It was relatively easy to get the hang of the programming system after spending some one-on-one quality time, although sequenced changes can get lost if you switch effect types (on purpose or in error).

The effects themselves are very good. The reverbs are lush and beautiful when required, and there are weird and wonderful modulated, glitched and swarm-like gems scattered throughout the 120+ algorithms. The best bit is remembering that you can have four at the same time!

Verdict

The Mess comes bundled with loads of presets, and covers a wide enough territory that even if you don’t get heavily into the minutiae of per-step programming tweaks, it will conjure up a plentiful supply of sonic joy.

In fact, even without engaging the sequencer, it makes for a very good multi-effects box. If you do delve deeper, though, do expect to get lost (in a creative way) amongst its myriad effects options.

The Mess is not a cheap unit, but its build quality, flexibility and sonic prowess go a long way in justifying its chosen price point. It was great to try out something a bit different and not just another iteration of well-worn effects territory.

Whether you’re a guitarist, synthesist or any other musician or producer looking for something a bit different, and that is just as at home on stage or in the studio, the Mess might be what you’re after.

Hands-on demos

Polyend

Alternatives

Specifications

NAMM 2026: Welcome to our roundup of the best guitar gear to hit the hallowed halls of the Anaheim Convention Centre, featuring the likes of Neural DSP, Gibson, Taylor Guitars, Yamaha, and many more.

All the big-hitters return for the annual North American Music Merchants Show, which feels like it's getting back to its best, with plenty of new gear for us all to salivate over.

We deployed our very own guitar-nut, Rob Laing, to scour the halls and floors for all the latest finery the guitar industry has to offer. In our best efforts to try and distil his thoughts and experiences into one easy-to-read format, we bring you our best guitar gear of NAMM 2026.

For more NAMM news, insights and oddities, head over to our rolling live blog.

NAMM 2026 guitar gear highlights

Neural DSP Quad Cortex Mini

Neural DSP has taken its smash-hit Quad Cortex amp modeller and shrunk it by more than 50 per cent, and despite all this the unit is for all intents and purposes unchanged.

None of the processing power of the original unit has been lost in this downsizing project. The 7” touchscreen remains in place, dominating the enclosure a little like a smartphone, and you still have the four stainless steel rotary footswitches, plus a heap of connections around the back.

In so many ways, it really is the same MusicRadar-approved Quad Cortex, using the same Neural Capture tech (V1 and V2), the same access to the ridiculous number of guitar amp and guitar effects pedal captures in the library, compatibility with the same Archetype guitar plugin suites, it is just that it is really small. How small? It weighs in at 1.5kg. It measures 8.9” x 4.6” x 2.5”.

You can check out more on the Quad Cortex Mini in our first look video over on YouTube

Blackstar ID: X floor modellers

Is any amp brand as busy as the Brits at Blackstar? Turning up to this year's show with the mighty little Beam Mini practice amp, its first FRFR cabs with the Artist FRs, TV-10 tube amps and... modelling pedals?

Yes indeed - three affordable options with sleek metal chassis that really impressed us. The new ID: X Floor One, Two and Three range are lean into physical controls rather than screen real estate and we like that being reflected on the value front with prices starting at under $200.

There are six models of tried and true Blackstar amps, like the St James, alongside six of the Ampton classic-influenced choices. There are also three bass amps, two acoustic voices, and an acoustic simulator to widen your horizons. Players can also select virtual valve responses between EL84, EL34, or 6L6 with the IR side covered by the company's excellent CabRig editing.

Oh, there are effects too, of course, with 35, and an expression pedal for the Floor Two and Three. Blackstar continues to impress us with its willingness to confidently enter new spaces.

Mentha Works Monk Echo

Monk Echo by Mentha Works was spotted on day one of the show, and we already had an inkling that this was going to be a very strong candidate for our favourite new pedal of NAMM 2026.

The company is formed by some of the key people behind Gamechanger Audio and has all the hallmarks of that esoteric vibe brought into the industry from the Latvian firm.

Monk Echo is a delay and reverb pedal that features unique vowel voicing, called the Monk Voice, which enables you sculpt your reverbs with the character of the human voice. You'll also find responsive modulation, granular pitch-shifting, and distortion via a special degradation effect.

The effects unit is already sold out with all preorders from the initial backers being honoured, so we hope that we get to see this time machine in full production very soon.

Gibson Atomic Age concept

In the corner of Gibon's invitation-only room of Custom Shop delights at NAMM, sat something very different - a brand new guitar design. The offset Atomic Age.

For now it's a concept guitar, and not a production model, but we're told the reaction from dealers has been so enthusiastic, it's making the prospect of a production model more likely. We like the shape and would be really interested to see it with different finish options one day. Big fans of the single G logo on the headstock, too, while there's an unexpected raised Gibson logo on the pickguard.

From the design mind of Custom Shop Product Engineer Darron Dubose, the Atomic Age features a solid Korina body with unusual contouring. The pickups (the neck humbucker is a split coil) are accented with a bowtie-style surround. The Atomic Age has string-through construction too, and it's great to see Gibson trying new things here with a surprising preview. Let's hope it's not the last we see of the Atomic Age.

Epiphone Futura

Even without a full stand that's open to the public at the NAMM Show, Gibson and Epiphone have still made a massive splash here with a host of new models the public can see.

Value and specs are levelling up for core models, and the Futura Epiphones enter new territory with stainless steel frets. But on the Gibson acoustic side, we were also blown away by the super light and super resonant Century Collection, celebrating 100 years of its flat-tops.

There are also stunning signatures for Michael Schenker, late legend Mick Ronson and a new version of the Alex Lifeson Epiphone ES-355 that's creating a lot of excitement.

JBL BandBox

JBL has dropped its BandBox Solo and Trio speakers which feature modelling as well a stem separation feature.

At the heart of JBL's BandBox is Stem AI: an intelligent vocal and instrument separation technology that lets you isolate or remove vocals, guitar, or drums from any track in real-time.

This technology makes it easy to turn any track into a custom backing mix, whether you’re trying to learn a solo, jam with friends or improvise over songs.

The stem separation works really well, with only a short delay to compensate for the processing. It was demoed on the JBL booth running Spotify via Bluetooth, with the stems dropped out of the mix with relative ease.

We didn't have much time to check out the modelling side of the BandBox range, so we can't give our opinions on that side of things just yet, but stem separation feels like it could be the next must-have feature in guitar gear of this ilk.

Also worth checking out…

Eastman Guitar

We need to give a shout-out to Eastman Guitars with its new Fullertone shape - the Offset '62. The best Fullertone so far, aesthetically? We think so. Typically for Eastman, this £899 model felt premium in our hands, with satin Gold and Dakota Red finishes - though we're interested to see what more colours may follow in the future.

Spec includes Tonerider soapbar humbuckers, roasted black limba body and the Fullertone's two-bolt long tenon design that you can really feel helps the guitar resonate, even acoustically. The tremolo is a Goldo DG and we're loving the anodised backplates and pickguard. There's only one thing for it - we need to get one in for review and investigate further!

Chris Buck signature Yamaha Revstar

It's been in the works for a while, but Chris Buck finally has a Yamaha Guitars signature Revstar to demo for us on a very busy NAMM Show stand.

The RS02CB Honey Gold is based on his trusted custom shop model. Chris worked with Yamaha to voice the P-90s here with a lower output for a more detailed response at lower volumes.

A chambered body helps lighten the load and the neck is carbon-reinforced to provide stability in changing environments, which is just as well, because Chris's band Cardinal Black are touring far and wide, including playing two gigs at the gear show.

Taylor Guitars

Resetting an acoustic guitar neck to help lower or raise its string action and improve playability is a tricky job for experts only - until now. We met Taylor Guitars CEO and design mastermind Andy Powers to see how you can do it in a few seconds on the company's new Next Generation models. It's another showcase of Andy's vision for constantly evolving the company's designs to help players play better.

The new Action Control Neck for the Next Generation 300, 400 and 800 series Grand Auditorium guitars features a long tenon and this shimless adjustability, alongside scalloped V-class bracing for enhanced resonance as well as warmth. There's also the new Claria pickup system. Next generation indeed!