I’ve got my first gig of the year coming up in a couple of weeks, so I decided it was time to give my pedalboard a spring refresh to get it gig-ready. Aside from putting some fresh pedals on, I wanted to rearrange my cabling, tidy up my patch cables, and ensure I’ve got everything I need to survive the rigours of playing live on stage.

Thankfully for me, the Amazon Big Spring Sale launched this week, which means plenty of discounts on pedalboard essentials for guitar players. These useful items, often found beyond the musical instruments section of Amazon’s Narnia of domestic goods, are crucial for turning a home pedalboard into a pro-level one, and as well as making things look great, they provide some useful hacks for live playing.

I’ve searched far and wide in the sale, picking out 9 of the most useful items you can add to your pedalboard, with every item costing less than $22 each.

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What is it?

Though it's made waves for its affordable acoustic and electric guitars, Harley Benton has consistently proved it has much to offer when it comes to accessories too. Having previously impressed me with its pedal power supply offerings, it's now time to see what it can offer in terms of forward-thinking pedalboards.

The Spaceship Power 40-B I have here is an ideal example; a lightweight pedalboard that's part of a range housing its own rechargeable power supply. Sizing up around 45 x 30cm, it’s almost the same size as a Pedaltrain Classic Jr and you can fit around 8-10 pedals on there, depending on size.

There are seven isolated outputs with different voltages and currents for powering a multitude of pedals, from analog fuzzes to high-powered digital reverbs. There are also some non-isolated outputs, including some for USB connection – ideal for charging tablets and phones, but most notably a 9V, 3A output for power-hungry multi-effects pedals like the Line 6 HX Stomp.

Included with the pedalboard are a variety of accessories and cables for connecting the power supply to your pedals, a padded gig bag with shoulder strap and mains power supply.

Worthy of note here is its ability to run your entire rig without mains power. The unit has a rechargeable lithium battery, which Harley Benton claims will operate a fully loaded board for around 50 minutes after a 1.7-hour charge.

For decades, players have been purchasing pedalboards and pedalboard power supplies separately. There are many ways of neatly integrating the two – many people attach their PSU to the bottom of their board, either with a purpose-made clip or cable ties. Others have the power brick sat on their board in place of a pedal, or maybe even have it separate from their 'board.

It only makes sense then that manufacturers would figure out a way of incorporating the two things together in one product to save hassle, money and aesthetic. So, does the Spaceship do the job of both things just as well, or is it just a novelty?

Specs

• Price: $155 | £139 | €159 
• Type: Powered pedalboard
• Features: Robust powder-coated aluminium frame, built-in lithium battery, LED monitoring at each output, voltage and current display, gig bag, selection of pedal power cables including 3 x 30 cm, 3 x 60 cm and 3 x 90 cm, 200 x 4.5 cm hook and loop fastener included
• Power: Isolated: 2 x 9 V / 250 mA, 3 x 9 V / 500 mA and 2 x 9/12/18 V / 500 mA. Non-isolated: 1 x 9 V / 3 A, 1 x 24 V / 2 A, 1 x USB-A, 1 x USB-C, total power output must not exceed 31.5W
• Dimensions: 450 x 305 x 75.5
• Weight: 1.67kg / 3lbs 11oz
• Options: 40, 50C, 50M, 60, 60XL
• Contact: Harley Benton

Usability and sounds

Upon getting the Spaceship Power 40-B out of the bag, I'm impressed by the build quality of it. The powder-coated aluminium frame is sturdy and the rubber feet gripped nicely on the tiled floor I have it on.

I also notice that it doesn’t weigh much more than my current, power supply-less board (a Pedaltrain Classic Jr). The scales confirm it too with the PT coming in at 1.36kg and the Spaceship weighing 1.67kg.

I move all my pedals over and actually managed to fit a couple of extra ones on, in total, I have nine pedals on there. For reference, they are: Korg Pitchblack tuner > Magnetic Effects Lonely Robot fuzz > MXR Custom Badass Modified > EHX Soul Food > Orange Kongpressor > EHX Micro Pog > MXR Phase 90 > TC Skysurfer > JHS Colour Box V2.

Fitting the pedals on is easy. The bars of the 'board are already covered with the soft loop side of hook-and-loop and the unit comes with a long strip of the corresponding hook-and-loop adhesive material for you to attach to the bottom of your pedals to secure them in place.

One slight grievance is that the hook-and-loop doesn’t go right to the edges of the board – there’s about a 2cm border on each side, so you miss out on that extra space.

Getting them plugged in is relatively fuss-free. You get nine cables for connecting the board to your pedals – three 30cm, three 60cm and three 90cm. You do have to plug the power cables into the board from the underside of it, but if your pedals are securely fixed in place then that shouldn’t be an issue.

For power, the 'board has seven isolated outputs. Two of them are 9V and 250mA each. Three are 9V and 500mA each and the other two have switchable voltage - 9/12/18V with 500mA each. This means you’ll be able to run some really power-hungry pedals with this pedalboard, including some amp modellers.

The addition of a non-isolated 9V 3000mA output will even allow you to run some high-powered multi-effects pedals.

Underneath each of the power outputs is an indicator LED that lights up when voltage is present. If you overload it or there’s an issue, the light will go off so you’ll quickly be able to identify the problematic output. That said, when the 'board is full of pedals, it’s quite hard to see the lights properly – you have to tip it upside down to get a good look underneath.

Once everything is set up and connected, I plug my Jazzmaster in at one end and hook up my Orange head and cab at the other and I am greeted by beautiful silence. No 60-cycle hum, no mystery buzz; nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

I have had the JHS Colour Box cause some noise with lesser power supplies in the past, but having this on its own isolated output with 500mA of current meant it's comfortably taken care of. Being able to run my Kongpressor at 12V instead of 9 also gives me increased headroom.

Testing this Spaceship Power 40 out makes me realise a couple of things: blasting your favorite guitar through a loud tube amp and a selection of pedals is tremendous fun, and convenience really is king when it comes to wiring up pedalboards. Spending money on a power supply isn’t particularly exciting, but having that power built into a board does tick a few more boxes and makes the purchase seem more worthwhile.

Not only does the board house a power supply, it also has lithium battery built in. I tested it further and didn’t notice any difference in performance with it running off the battery.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t risk going battery-only at a gig, given that it only gives you up to around 50 minutes, but it is nice to have the option for added flexibility. There’s a battery indicator light on the back of the board that has four stages but when you’re playing and operating the Spaceship 40-B you can’t see that, plus even when you can see it, it’s hard to see how many stages are lit.

There’s a small display screen on the back of the board too. This shows what voltage and current is being supplied. I didn’t find this to be a particularly useful feature, but it certainly doesn’t take anything away from the overall positive impression here.

The Spaceship Power 40-B even boasts AC switching so if you’re travelling to countries that run on different voltages, it will detect that and automatically switch.

So, would I take this to gigs and use it with confidence, knowing that my pedals are being powered sufficiently and safely? I absolutely would, yes. It’s great that it comes with a gig bag too. It’s of a decent quality – chunky zips, sturdy accessory pocket, a bit of padding and a rigid bottom.

However, if you’re doing lots of gigging, or if you’re travelling with a van or trailer, it would be prudent to find a more knock-resistant hard case that offers increased protection.

Verdict

Verdict: ★★★★½

This is an excellent pedalboard option for any level of player. Its comprehensive selection of power outputs provides enough juice for all manner of digital and analog pedals; from power-hungry Strymons and the like, to old fuzz boxes.

It also makes for a great choice for guitarists and bassists using hybrid setups containing traditional pedals and amp modellers. For example, you could fit a Line 6 HX Stomp XL along the bottom and have some of your favorite pedals above it, whilst still being able to power it all from the Spaceship 40-B.

The fact that you have multiple 500mA outputs does give some real peace of mind that you can run more than one high-powered pedal without the fear of unwanted noise or hum impacting your tone.

The build quality and usability is impressive, though there a couple of features that could be improved upon. It would have been nice to have the pre-installed hook-and-loop stretch the entire width of the board, and the battery indicator light could be a little easier to read. I’d also be wary of using the board without mains power for more than 30 minutes or so.

MusicRadar verdict: Harley Benton has delivered again with a powered pedalboard that will genuinely save players time and money. You can neatly and safely run a bunch of different pedals without the need for an external power source, plus it really holds its own against the bigger names in this arena.

Hands-on videos

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Chris Buck has become the latest musician to become a victim of gear theft.

The acclaimed guitarist was in the US at NAMM launching his signature Revstar when his car was broken into back in Bristol. The thief made off with a Schmidt Array SA450 pedalboard and two Peli cases – a 1510 and a 1640 filled with accessories. The Peli 1510 case contained guitar cables, capos, guitar straps, two Audix Cab Grabber microphone stands, guitar picks, and a lid organiser.

Buck has taken to Instagram in an attempt to retrieve his gear. He says the 1510 case had two Telefunken stickers on it at the time, but he suggests that they could be “fairly easily removed”.

Meanwhile, Buck’s stolen Peli 1640 case is adorned with a sticker with the words ‘Let’s Get Loud’, a Mythos Pedals sticker, as well as purple tape and ‘heavy’ tape from airport travel. The foam inside the case is moulded to fit a Schmidt Array pedalboard.

Buck posted that he thinks the stolen items are still in the Bristol area, and urges anyone who comes across them, in person, “at a Cash Converters/car boot sale or online”, to contact him at chrisbuckguitar@gmail.com. “If we could make this stuff too hot to handle, that’d be great!” he said. “Very much appreciated.”

The guitarist is in good company at least. Last year saw a number of artists fall victim to gear theft. New Zealand indie band The Beths had instruments and their entire backline – which was rented – stolen whilst on tour in France. Aussie jazz funkers Hiatus Kaiyote had “thousands of dollars” worth of gear snatched from their studio space in Melbourne. Most brazen of all, DJ duo the Menendez Brothers had their record bag stolen right under their noses whilst they were playing at Fabric last summer.

NAMM 2026: What would January be in the guitar calendar without a new release that makes us question everything, that there is a new way of doing things and it might change how guitar players perform for good?

Casio might just have that release, with a gizmo that allows you to control settings on your guitar effects pedals via your guitar strap.

The DN-SE10 Dimension Shifter is a wireless controller that’s integrated in your strap. It’s a world first. Install this and you no longer have to crouch over your pedalboard to adjust parameters – you don’t even need your expression pedal.

“For more than 40 years, Casio has expanded the possibilities of musical creativity through technology,” says Brian Piccolo, senior general manager of sales at Casio’s Electronic Musical Instruments Division. “With Dimension Shifter, we’re giving guitarists an entirely new way to interact with their music, merging the energy of live performance with the precise control of digital effects. It truly transforms how a guitarist commands the stage.”

If this sounds a little familiar then that's because Casio did offer a preview of this tech a couple of years back, when it was going by the working title of Dimension Tripper.

The Dimension Shifter comprises two key devices. One is attached between your strap and electric guitar, and features an in-built spring. Pull downwards on your guitar’s neck, the spring stretches out or compresses, et voila! It’s working just as any other dynamic controller might.

“Whether tilting the neck to swell a delay, raising the body for a filter sweep, or leaning back to unleash distortion, Dimension Shifter opens a new world of expressive, intuitive stage performance,” says Casio. “no hands required.”

The spring has a range of 20mm, and via the push of a button players can calibrate its active range, which gives you a little more control over how the transmitter responds, ruling out accidental adjustments and so forth.

And, unlike, say, the expression pedal, the Dimension Shifter does all this wirelessly, pairing with the receiver (the second of these key devices) over Bluetooth. Just mount the receiver on your pedalboard. It has a TRS switch that is compatible with any effects pedal.

You can even use it alongside an expression pedal, which means you have dynamic control over two effects at once. Just try that doing that with two expression pedals; you’ll end up in traction.

Watch Yvette Young of Covette demo it above. It really looks something. The DN-SE10 Dimension Shifter is available now, priced $299.

For more details, head over to Casio.

With Black Sabbath about to play their last ever show at Villa Park this weekend, Laney Amplification has unveiled a super limited edition replica of Tony Iommi’s signature tube amp head to mark the occasion.

The Black Country Customs TI100 is handmade in the UK, and is an exacting replica of Iommi’s 2012 signature head, complete with the grille plate with crosses backlit in red. Each amp comes with a signed and numbered backplate, plus a certificate of authenticity, limited edition guitar picks and commemorative postcards – and everything you need to nail his electric guitar tone.

A dual-channel amplifier, the TI100 is made for metal guitar, with its Lead channel voiced for down tunings, and does not want for high-gain saturation. But it does a lot more.

The Rhythm channel handles all your cleans, right through to blues guitar crunch. And with an onboard boost section, one per channel, it gives you a footswitchable hotter voice for each channel.

The engineers at Laney’s Black Country Customs workshop configured the boost so that it works just as would in the pedal. When activated, adjust the bright red Boost dials accordingly and they will hit the front end of the guitar amp with some extra decibels.

As Laney's product manager, Simon Fraser Clark explains, when he was co-designing the original TI100 with Iommi, he wanted something different.

“Tony is very much one of these people who hasn’t rested on his laurels,” says Clark. “In 2012, Tony came to us to start talking about his new signature amp, the TI100, and that was used on the 2013 tour, for the album 13, and it was a departure in his sound from pervious tours – he wanted something that was a bit more heavier, had a bit more compression to it, a bit more gain. So that led to the TI100.”

Each channel has its own three-band EQ and controls for Enhance and Presence. The latter is something most players will be familiar with; it allows you to adjust the high-end response of the output section, a little post EQ spritz and polish – it can sometimes give your electric guitar tone the extra sparkle it needs to make harmonics and feedback pop out.

Enhance does something similar for the low end frequencies. Again, it sits in the output stage, and shapes the response. Fully counterclockwise, that response is tight, the kind of tone you might use for contemporary metal styles, full-bore chug and all that animalistic business.

Turn the dial clockwise and it opens up a bit, letting those chords bloom – fine-tuning for doom. It is nice to see independent Enhance and Presence controls for each channel; it is more common to find them as global controls serving both.

Under the hood there is a quartet of 6L6 power tubes, with 8 2AX7 preamp tubes. Altogether you get 100-watts to play with. Laney are only making 50 of these. They come with a protective covering, and all the case candy and extras mentioned above.

But this is an amp that was designed to play. It’s built for the road. Those integrated grab handles are a super practical feature when lugging a 21.5kg amplifier up a flight of stairs.

Other nods to pragmatism include an “ultra transparent” effects loop that can accommodate your pedalboard – and/or rack equipment. The loop has an FX Return Gain dial so you can compensate for any change in gain when effects are applied, and you can bypass the loop altogether.

The TI100 ships with an FS4-TI footswitch for changing channels and turning each channel’s boost on and off. Again, this is replete with signature details, with Iommi’s signature and cross logo on the enclosure.

Around the back of the amp there are all the 1/4” speaker outputs you’d need – 4 Ohms, 8 Ohms, 2x 8 Ohms, 16 Ohms, 2 x 16 Ohms… It’s a serious piece of kit, and they’re only making 50 of ‘em. And Sabbath have only one show left, Back To The Beginning, Villa Park, Saturday July 5.

As Laney says, it was Laney in the beginning for Iommi, the LA100BL pressed into service as he inaugurated heavy metal with Black Sabbath’s eponymous anthem, and it has been Laney all the way since.

Priced £2999, the Black Country Customs Tony Iommi TI100 is available now. See Laney Amplification for more details.

If you are looking for a stompbox stock tip, go long on Dirty Boy pedals, because Linkin Park has just revealed that the Ball Buster boost was the secret sauce in their electric guitar tone on comeback LP, From Zero.

This, of course, was the first studio album since the death of frontman Chester Bennington, featuring Emily Armstrong on vocals alongside guitarist/keyboardist and co-producer Mike Shinoda. Collin Brittain co-produced the album with Shinoda, and made his debut on drums for the nü-metal trailblazers, replacing co-founder Rob Bourdon.

All things considered, From Zero was officially a big deal. And Brittain has revealed that biggest deal on the pedalboard – used right across the album – is a boost pedal designed by Alex Saraceno, father of former Poison guitarist Blues Saraceno.

Intended to hit the front-end of a mid-gain guitar amp hard – think Vox AC30, Marshall Plexi, Hiwatt – the Ball Buster is now sadly out of production, and if you own one, you’re probably sitting on quite an asset. Those original stompboxes are worth quite a bit of money. You also own quite a serious pedal.

Dirty Boy is now being operated out of Madrid by Danny Gomez, and Brittain had to text Gomez to tell him the Ball Buster is all over From Zero – it is “especially noticeable on Heavy Is The Crown” – and invited Gomez out to meet the band in Paris, all of whom have been using Dirty Boy for years.

“Dirty Boy pedals are the most musical, unique and dynamic distortion effects I’ve ever used, hands down,” said Brittain. “I use them on almost every single project. I’m so happy Danny is continuing to build on such an iconic legacy.”

This begs the question whether Gomez, who took over the company in 2024, will bring the Ball Buster back. This is a clever boost pedal. It does not just dump a whole ton of gain on your amp – though it sure does that – but it offers some tone-sculpting features, bass and treble controls that really do some heavy lifting, and an H-M-L three-way switch that acts a little like a mastering control.

Saraceno’s original design work is still writ-large in the current Dirty Boy lineup. The Buzzy Boy, Germanium Boy and Afro Fuzz pedals are all Saraceno designs.

The new Dirty Boy Preamp is a Gomez design, but was based on an amp designed by Saraceno Sr. for Saraceno Jr. Expect it to turn up on Shinoda et al’s Linkin Park pedalboards soon. Gomez gave them all one to take home.

You can check out the range at Dirty Boy. Who knows, Gomez might reinstate the Ball Buster.

Darkglass Electronics has just dropped some serious pedalboard firepower for bass guitar players. It’s called the Anagram Bass Workstation, and it is a multi-effects pedal with hexacore DSP tech under the hood and the capability to support NAM and AIDA-X neural models and IRs.

It is also pretty damn stylish, with its road-ready anodized aluminium metal enclosure, its seven-inch hi-def touchscreen, and six high-resolution endless rotary knobs for making exacting adjustments to the many parameters.

The Finnish bass amp and effects specialists has designed the unit to be endlessly customisable, promising ultra-low latency performance with the DSP engine and its operating system processing audio at 32-bit/48kHz, working hand in hand to present players with a bewildering array of effects and how to configure them in real-time.

Perhaps that’s where it gets the name Anagram; it is set up for swapping around sounds in blocks, making it easy to put together some seriously byzantine signal chains.

Players can run 12 blocks in series, 24 in parallel, and as per the current style of tricked-out digital multi-effects – be they for electric guitar or an octave lower – you can run the Anagram in Preset, Scene and Stomp mode.

“Anagram represents the culmination of years of research and development,” says Marcos Barilatti, managing director, Darkglass Electronics. “We set out to create a product that not only pushes the boundaries of bass tone but also inspires musicians to explore new sonic territories.”

The Anagram ships with a whole bunch of preamps and more than 50 onboard effects, including overdrive and distortion, EQ, filters, compression and noise gates, modulation and pitch-shifting, reverb and delay.

The Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) integration extends your amp and effects options considerably, allowing you to choose from "thousands of high-quality amp and effect models, expanding tonal possibilities from analog warmth to futuristic textures".

Apportioning so much of the enclosure’s real estate to the touchscreen is a real statement of intent; this should be a hands-on experience, allowing you to switch between views and control every aspect of your signal chain. But you can also hook it up to the accompanying app to make deeper edits via the Darkglass Suite, where you can manage your speaker cab IRs and neural models.

On the rear of the unit you’ll find a 1/4” instrument input, an effects loop that also facilitates an expression pedal input, MIDI connections, headphones out, USB-C, a pair of 1/4” outputs, and a pair of XLR outputs – the latter featuring an “integrated, software-controlled” ground lift. A 9V DC power adapter and case is included in the price.

Other features include a tuner and global tempo feature for time-based effects, a looper that runs independently of the presets and an onboard mixer that allows you to adjust line levels for headphones, 1/4” outputs and XLRs, and to adjust global EQ.

The Anagram Bass Workstation is priced £899/$1199. See Darkglass Electronics for more details.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors has unveiled the Black Fountain Stereo, a delay pedal emulating the vintage sounds of a mechanical oil can delay in a pedalboard-friendly format.

Actually, forget pedalboard-friendly for a second, because this goes way beyond that. How about simply an oil can delay sound that’s practical for 21st-century guitar players. There’s a lot of functionality here that would have blown Ray Lubow’s mind if you were to show him it back in 1959 when he filed the patent application for his oil can delay. And it expands upon the original mono versions of the Black Fountain that OBNE has released over the years.

At its core, the oil can sound has a certain character to the repeats that sets it apart from its tape, analogue or digital counterparts. It has the warmth of an analogue delay but there’s some inherent modulation with it, and a little grit, too, that works so well with an electric guitar signal. Black Fountain presents players with a lot of ways to shape their repeats.

There are a lot of dials. That is the OBNE way. Little wonder OBNE gets designer Dan Pechacek to “explain it all” in a video whenever they drop a new design.

But here are the essentials. You have two separate controls for the left and right channel delays, Time L and Time R, plus the choice of six rhythmic subdivisions when you hold down the tap tempo footswitch (yes, there’s tap tempo).

Tone dials in the warmth of the repeats. Grit dials in the amount of grit there in the repeats. Rate and Depth are there for adjusting the modulation. Between these you will find some sweet spots for sure.

There’s also a Feedback control, for setting the number of repeats, Dry and Wet controls to adjust how much unprocessed and processed signal is in your sound, and there is also a Space control that might be one of the three mini-dials but seems integral to how this will sound, allowing you to set the Black Fountain up for mono operation, to adjust the stereo width, and to add diffusion once you turn it past noon.

There are two soft-relay footswitches. One turns the pedal on and off and the other is a tap tempo/aux footswitch that, if you hold it down, gives you infinite feedback. A cool feature.

It also operates as a preset switcher. That’s right, we have presets here. We also have full MIDI connectivity, and you can assign any one of these knobs to an external expression pedal.

Black Fountain is not so much a straight-up oil can delay simulator, it’s a full-on workstation. And it comes in three different colourways: Terracotta, Cream and Slate. Feed it 9V DC and a minimum of 350mA from a pedalboard power supply and you’re good to go.

Priced $299, it is available now. See Old Blood Noise Endeavors for more details.

Crazy Tube Circuits has just dropped one of the hottest overdrive pedals of the year. It’s called Venus. It made its public debut at NAMM 2025. It was inspired by the iconic BK Butler Tube Driver, and as such, it really is a crazy tube circuit featuring an actual vacuum tube under the hood.

The BK Butler came as a rack-mounted unit and as a pedal, and was famously played by the likes of Eric Johnson, David Gilmour and Joe Satriani. Venus should get you those tones but in more compact and pedalboard-friendly format, with top-mounted jacks on the Metallic Amber Sand die-cast enclosure.

You don’t need any special power supply either; feed it 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and you are good to go – just make sure it is a high-current output that’s supplying a minimum of 500mA.

The controls setup is, well, much like a guitar amp. There is a three-band EQ. A Fat/Tight push switch adjusts the pedals low-end and lower-mids response, which can come in hand when switching between electric guitars with different types of pickups on them.

Volume adjusts the overall output. Drive dials in how much overdrive and saturation you want, while Bias might be the most interesting control of all, adjusting how much current is passing through the cathode tube. Run it fully clockwise for the smoothest sound. Below noon you can get some gnarly gated sounds. This will be a hard-working drive pedal.

“With ultimate versatility and tone shaping in mind, we set out to recreate a classic tube tone sculpture with modern refinements,” says CTC, “generating anything from a smooth, light tube overdrive, to a high-gain, nasty distortion within the realm of fuzz.”

Finally, there’s a Line Driver push button that makes sure you don’t lose any tone as your guitar’s signal passes through the pedal to the next pedal or your amp.

Note, no matter whether the line driver is active or not, Venus is always in true bypass.

Now, as to the tube itself. Crazy Tube Circuits has chosen an ECC832 for the job, a preamp tube it describes as an “oddball” mix of an ECC83 and an ECC82.

This should get you started, but players are encouraged to to experiment with alternatives. Venus will welcome a wide range of dual triode tubes, such as the ECC83/12AX7, 5751, ECC81/12AT7, 12AY7, and ECC82/12AU7. Judging by the demos, it sounds sweet indeed.

Venus is available now, priced £265/€299. See Crazy Tube Circuits for more details.

Benson Amps has unveiled signature pedal developed with Seattle-based indie-rock stalwart Jessica Dobson that will help you nail her Deep Sea Diver electric guitar tones – and a lot more besides.

The Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo was a lot time coming. It took over three years it took to design this. Dobson says the original idea was simply to pair a vintage fuzz with an vintage-sounding echo, but she and the Benson R&D team went down the rabbit-hole, delivering a pedal that turned out to be a platform for tone adventurists.

“One of my favourite pedal configurations has always been running my echos and delays before my dirt pedals to get unorthodox sounds,” says Dobson. “So, we started there and it morphed into a pedal than became bigger and wider than what we initially had imagined.”

You will be able to dial in that “skronky” gated fuzz sound that is all over the Deep Sea Diver canon. But what seems more likely is that you’ll find some strange tones to call your own. Dobson assures us that her fuzz-echo twofer contains multitudes.

“To call this simply a ‘gated fuzz pedal with an echo feature’ would be an injustice to its essence!” she says. “Beyond the splatty gated sounds, I wanted a fuzz that could get wooly and straight forward, or shake hands with my favourite gauzy My Bloody Valentine textures.

“I wanted it to clean up nice and work as a treble booster for my guitar solos, or sound like a foreign landscape of oscillation and interrupting textures. Simply put, it has become the most interesting and versatile pedal on my ‘board.”

The Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo pairs a three-transistor silicon fuzz circuit, inspired by mk1.5 and mk2 Tone Benders, and an echo circuit designed around the PT2399 CMOS echo/delay processor chip, a digital chip that was given a tweak by Benson so that it plays especially nice with the fuzz circuits

Although the PT2399 might be digital, it can be put to work on a delay with an old-school analogue quality, and that’s what we have here. It has been designed to be placed anywhere in the signal chain.

That footswitch does a lot of work. Hold it down and the pedal will oscillate on command. Players can switch up the order of the fuzz and echo effects by simply holding down the footswitch while powering the pedal up.

Benson recommends the echo into fuzz setting, in which the LED illuminates in orange. The LED is green when the fuzz circuit is before the echo. There are dials for Bias, Gate, Volume, Echo, Feedback and Rate. It takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing 100mA.

Priced £259/$249, the Deep Sea Diver Fuzz-Echo is available now. See Benson Amps for more details.

Harley Benton has unveiled a pair of super-affordable pedalboard power supplies that feature an integrated lithium-ion battery that makes them rechargeable, your pedalboard portable, and could well be a life-saver for buskers or anyone who needs juice for their stompboxes but is not near a mains outlet.

The Thomann-owned budget gear brand is offering these new PowerPlant PowerBanks in two sizes, both with the capacity to serve high-current stompboxes such as feature-packed digital delay pedals and guitar multi-effects pedals.

The PowerPlant ISO-Li05 promises noise-free power from four 9V isolated outputs – two at 300MA, two at 500mA – and one non-isolated. The PowerPlant ISO-Li09 gives you eight isolated outputs and one non-isolated.

The non-isolated outlet on both units has a switchable 9V, 12V, or 18V output offering 2000mA, 1500mA and 1000mA respectively. One of the PowerPlant ISO-Li09’s eight isolated outputs has switchable 9V/12V/18V voltages supplying 500mA, 375mA and 250mA respectively, the other seven comprise five 9V/300mA outlets and two at 9V/500mA.

Each outlet has an LED status lights, taking some of the pain out of pedalboard troubleshooting. There are LEDs along the top of each unit to display the status of the battery.

The power bricks have a low-profile design that should make them easy enough to mount underneath many pedalboards. Both will also charge your smartphone, too, with a handy USB-C output.

Both PowerPlants are served by a 12V/2000mA adapter, which can charge the PowerPlant ISO-Li09 in three-and-a-half hours, and its smaller five-outlet sibling in approximately two hours.

When fully charged, the PowerPlant ISO-Li05 should give you a solid hour of playing time – that is with all outlets in use and the power brick operating at full capacity. The PowerPlant ISO-Li09 will give you around one hour, 45 minutes under similar operating conditions.

These PowerPlants ship with a bunch of cables for feeding your pedals the juice and the wall wart adaptor for charging the units or running them from the mains.

While we all recognise the importance of good, clean power for a reliable, noise-free pedalboard experience, few of us enjoy spending a lot of money on it.

Harley Benton’s ridiculously low pricing should takes some of the pain of out of power procurement. You can pick up the PowerPlant ISO-Li09 for just £99/$128/€118, while the PowerPlant ISO-Li05 is a snip at £75/$97/€89.

These are available now direct from Thomann. You can check out more details at Harley Benton.

The BEAT Tour is a musical high-wire act. Here was Steve Vai, Tool’s Danny Carey and King Crimson alumni Adrian Belew and Tony Levin performing ‘80s-era King Crimson classics Discipline, Beat, and Three Of A Perfect Pair.

Nothing about that is easy. Vai had most of the songs down pat but even he couldn’t get to grips with the Frame By Frame riff at first, and had to reach out to Robert Fripp for advice. Following the tour, Belew had to get surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome – and what does that say about the material?

This was a very special kind of tour with a very special set of demands. Accordingly, it also required a very special rig, and in a video segment for Sweetwater’s YouTube channel, Vai reveals all, offering a guided tour of his epic pedalboard, the dual guitar amp setup that runs behind it, plus the guitar synthesizers needed to present that classic King Crimson material onstage. And, he says, his meticulously put together pedalboard was all the work of his long-serving tech Doug MacArthur.

“I don’t have anything to do with this,” says Vai. “I just say to Doug, ‘I would like that. I would like that. I would like that. And all of this beautiful looming and construction – the colour – he built everything. It is beautiful, but even more so, it’s clean and it works great, and it does everything I need.”

This footage should come with a warning. You will want to rewire your pedalboard after watching this. You might also be in the market for a new pedalboard power supply. Vai gives his CIOKS DC7 the highest commendation.

Of course, most player’s – even those performing live night after night – won’t require a ‘board like this. It’s not that Vai's is necessarily complex; it's that he has some powerful hardware on it.

Many of Vai’s stompboxes are commonly found, such as his trusty Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal and the Xotic EP Booster. Vai admits he was late to the party with the latter.

“This little EP Booster, I have never used it before except for this tour and I am so surprised by how often I’m using it,” he says. “It gives you a boost but it accentuates everything above 4kHz in a way that’s not painful, so that’s nice!”

There’s also an MXR Phase 90, his ever-present DigiTech Whammy, a Universal Audio UAFX Max preamp and dual compressor pedal and most intriguingly a custom-made MXR overdrive pedal that has no name as yet but it is finished in a Vai-friendly shade of green. Could this be a coming signature pedal, a take on his favourite green box, the Tube Screamer, or is it just a custom-job pinch-hitter? Watch this space.

That, however, is that as far as outboard pedals go. You’ll notice there are no notable absentees. There are no Boss digital delay pedals here. Typically, Vai would have two in his setup, each set to a different delay time.

Here, however, his Fractal Axe-Fx III amp modeller is driving the bus as far as effects go, with the centrepiece of MacArthur’s epic ‘board build a Fractal FC-12 MkII foot controller. And it’s really down to Vai’s discretion should he choose to use it and do the switching himself.

“Doug navigates it. He has another pedal like this right over there. And it’s quite a pleasure because throughout the whole show I don’t have to touch it. Doug does it. And there’s like what? 50 switches per song. That’s really nice. That, you can’t buy.”

Compare and contrast this rig with his usual touring setup, or with the stripped-down rig MacArthur put together in 2023 for Vai’s dates with the Metropole Orchestra, and you’ll find a lot of differences. But one thing remains constant. The most important footswitch of them all is the one that turns on Vai’s fan.

Check it out above, as Vai explains why he needs not one or two of his Synergy preamp units but four, all running in tandem with a Roland Jazz Chorus, and why this gig called for two Roland guitar synthesizers and a laptop onstage to program them. You can subscribe to Sweetwater’s YouTube channel here.

Keeley Electronics and US gear retail giant Sweetwater have joined forces for an exclusive guitar effects pedal series that offers overdrive, fuzz and reverb pedals at a most-agreeable $99 price point.

The range comprises the Super Bass Overdrive and Distortion, the Suns Ultravoid Fuzz and Soft Reverb and it is available now.

All three are original designs with some familiar hallmarks. Longtime fans of Robert Keeley’s designs might recognise some of the Suns Ultravoid Fuzz from his Moon Op Amp Fuzz, a fuzz pedal that entered our orbit in 2022 promising rich, saturated Pink Floyd-style fuzz sounds for the David Gilmour obsessives out there.

The Suns Ultravoid Fuzz is like this but with a tweaked lower-end response. Expect a tighter fuzz, “sharper and more focused” with LED clipping that responds to your picking dynamics and yields lots of juicy harmonic content.

One of the themes of this collaboration is simplicity. You’ve got Level, Filter and Fuzz dials, and a footswitch to engage/bypass the effect.

The Super Bass Overdrive and Distortion is an amp-in-a-box overdrive pedal and there are no prizes for guessing which legendary British guitar amp brand inspired it. Once more we have a simple control setup with Level, Tone and Drive dials plus a toggle switch for Open and Closed voicings. “

This supercharged amp-in-a-box pulls no punches in channeling the hallmark haymaker that inspired it,” says Sweetwater, so expect vintage Marshall-inspired tones – Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, EVH et al – from this JFET-driven circuit. This should be one hard-working dirt pedal.

But maybe we have saved the best for last with the Soft Reverb. Again, it’s so simple. Just two dials, Dwell and Level? Brilliant.

And there are three different reverb algorithms to choose between, with a three-way switch offering spring and plate voicings for your everyday reverb needs, and the Soft Focus ‘verb that gives the pedal its name.

You’ve got dreamy shoegaze, old-school spring and the ever useful plate reverb all in one pedal.

Guitarists looking to fill some spaces on their pedalboards would do well do check these out. All three are designed and built in the USA. For more details and specs – and to order – head over to Sweetwater now.

D’Addario has launched the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit, a wireless pedalboard power supply that offers over 10 hours of playing time from a single battery charge.

At the heart of the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit is a rechargeable 10,000mAh Portable Power Cell, a real beast of a battery that can handle all the power needs of an average-sized pedalboard.

Not only can it be used to run your pedalboard wirelessly, you can hook it up to USB-C and use it as a regular power brick. D’Addario promises a low-noise performance, courtesy of its its patent-pending Gateway hub, which applies some advanced noise filtering to make our dreams of ultra-quiet – not to mention consistent – 9V power a reality.

The kit has everything you need to supply outboard power to your pedalboard. Alongside the power cell and the Gateway you have the obligatory hook and loop fastener, and best of all there is D’Addario’s adjustable daisy chain that allows you to adjust the length of the power plugs and cables, measuring them to fit with your pedalboard setup without excess wires everywhere. Neat freaks rejoice.

Being ever-concerned with noise, we would like to hear all this in action to see how it copes with external electrical sources and the noisier pedals on the ‘board.

D’Addario has a solution for the latter; it's XPND Noise Isolator, sold separately for £43/$55 can be placed between the power supply and the problematic pedal, taking the noise out of your signal path with "true galvanic isolation".

Given the modular nature of the XPND accessories eco-system, many of these products can all be used together. D’Addario says the XPND Pedal Power Battery Kit should fit most pedalboards, and it looks easily mountable on your typical rail-style ‘board.

Also available in the XPND range is the XPND DIY Pedal Power Cable Kit (£62/$79), which wireless power or not is a godsend for tidy ‘board setups, allowing you to create custom cable lengths to connect your pedals to your power supply. If you want something adjustable, then the aforementioned daisy chain system is available at £54/$69.

For more details, head over to D’Addario.

Electro-Harmonix has expanded its pedalboard space-saving Pico series with a tiny looper pedal with a big performance. The Pico 360+ offers a maximum loop recording time of six minutes – or 360 seconds, as the name suggests – and a heap of features that bely its modest enclosure.

And this thing really is small. Just look at the picture below of the Pica series lined up alongside each other. All but the most crowded pedalboards would have space for this little guy.

As you’d expect from EHX, the Pico series is accessibly priced at $137 street and is packing a few surprises.

Somehow, the New York-based guitar effects pedal specialist has managed to squeeze four knobs on here, with controls for Loop Level setting the output level of your loops, while Dry Level adjusts the output level of the dry signal coming from your instrument. It should be as easy as pie finding a useable mix between your loop and your guitar’s signal.

The Loop dial, meanwhile, is indented so you can cycle through loops 1 to 11. If the memory slot has a loop the little (everything is little) MEM LED glows orange.

Another cool feature regards overdubs. When the Pico 360+ is in Overdub mode, turn the Overdub dial to control the output volume of previously recorded loops, or even set up the unit as a long echo delay pedal.

But the control was designed for people to get creative with loops beyond laying down a foundational rhythm and playing over it. EHX plants the soundscaping suggestion, so perhaps pair it with some fuzz, delay and reverb and see where that takes you.

There are also some super-practical features, like user-assigned Overdub/Playback order so that you can change the mode after your loop – choose Overdub for layering on more sounds, Playback to use that loop as your accompaniment.

Furthermore, you can smooth out transitions by setting a fade out time for your loops between one and 10 seconds.

This being a mini pedal, the footswitch has to do a lot of work; press it for loop record, playback and overdub; hold it down for undo, redo and erase functions. Another LED at the top of the pedal lets you know whether you are recording, playing or in overdub mode.

In terms of its technical bona fides, you've got quote/unquote high quality, uncompressed audio, with 24-bit A/D/A, 44.1kHz Sample Rate.

The Pico 360+ Looper is powered by a 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply (no room for a battery), will draw 100mA, and it is available now.

For more details, see Electro-Harmonix.

fBehringer has launched another super-affordable clone of a holy grail vintage stompbox, this time recreating the legendary Maestro BB-1 Bass Brassmaster for the princely sum of $69. And this repro, the Bass Brassmaster Fuzz, is a dead ringer for the original fuzz pedal.

Dead ringer? No pun intended. That could describe the effect itself, an octave fuzz, originally voiced for bass guitar but a circuit that does some magical things to electric guitar too. The BB-1 was nasty, weird, brilliant, a threat to your amp’s speaker cone and a radical thing to expose your bass signal to. The Bass Brassmaster Fuzz recreates all this.

Even on paper, the circuit sounds nuts. This is an octave bass fuzz with an onboard dual-voice ring modulator, opening up a full spectrum of harmonically unorthodox overtones.

There pedal has three knobs and two slider switches. The Sensitivity knob dials in how much fuzz is applied to your signal. The Brass knob controls the level of the fuzz. The most important control is the Bass Volume control, because controls the wet/dry blend, allowing you to keep as much of your clean signal as you like, giving you the option of having full-on chaos but clarity too.

The Brass slider switch toggles between two voicings, with the second packing more midrange, which could be in invaluable when trying to make yourself heard in a mix.

The Harmonic switch selects your filter, toggling between high-end harmonic content and low-end. It’s this sort of tweakability that makes it work whether your playing bass or guitar, rhythm or lead.

Behringer is often known for its use of plastic housings but these vintage reproductions have them reverting to heavy duty metal enclosures. The connections can all be found on the top of the unit. The Bass Brassmaster Fuzz takes 9V from a DC pedalboard power supply and is true bypass.

It follows a busy period for Behringer with the company recently launching a the Centaur Overdrive, a $69 clone of the Klon Centaur overdrive, and the ’69 Vibe, a similarly priced clone of the Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe. And it’s not just guitars.

Only yesterday it launched the JT Mini, a $99 analogue synthesizer inspired by the Roland Jupiter-8, and the company has been in bullish form, calling out its critics who have accused it of being “a vaporware company”, in other words announcing products but not releasing them.

It wouldn’t be the first company in recent years to suffer from chip shortages that have affected synth producers worldwide, but Behringer says it is just getting started.

“Behringer – the ‘Vaporware Company’? Maybe. But only if vaporware means delivering more music-making tools than anyone else,” read a statement on Instagram. “Stay tuned. The journey has just begun!"

For more details, head over to Behringer.

EarthQuaker Devices is celebrating 20 trips around the sun with a special VOS reissue of the pedal that started it all, the Hoof Fuzz.

This “hyper-limited edition” follows a similar template to the original fuzz pedal, and features a circuit with a hybrid silicon/germanium design, and if you are into cork-sniffing component tasting notes, that might suggest a fuzz that copes better with fluctuations in temperature (thank you, silicon) and maybe more touch-sensitive and warm (thank you, germanium).

However you slice it, this is going to be one versatile fuzz. Easy to use. One knob for output volume, one for the amount of fuzz in the signal, and one tone control.

There are top-mounted jacks. It’s true bypass with a Soft Relay Switch. It’s your golden ticket in a platinum vein enclosure for “harmonically rich sustain.”

EQD has revised the design of the Hoof fuzz over the years, adding a Tilt dial to help you shape your tone. Here, we revert back to the three-knob design, and Jamie Stillman, EQD founder, president and product designer, promises players the same kind of tones.

“The original Hoof was finely tuned to produce everything from light overdrive to a thick sustaining wall of fuzz with a wide range tone control that featured pre-set mods in lieu of the ‘shift’ control found on later models,” says Stillman. “We always loved this original circuit and we are pleased to bring it back for our 20th Anniversary!”

Same tones, same kind of build. Just like the original, this deluxe reissue has been soldered by hand, featuring all through-hole construction (hey, you could mod this if you were so inclined) and features a the same “super rare military spec germanium transistors” that were used in the first generation of the pedals.

We would always advise any player to keep the original box for any guitar effects pedal purchase. It will help you make your money back – or even turn in a profit – should you want to switch it out of your pedalboard and sell it on.

But that advice counts double with this special reissue, with the 20th Anniversary Edition arriving in a custom wooden box, in a gold satin bag no less, with a metallic sticker, enamel pin, and woven patch inside. It’s a nice package.

But if you want one you had better hurry. They are only making 400 of them, sold exclusively via Reverb, and when they are gone, they’re gone. Right now, at the time of this article hitting the site, only 36 of them are left. Don’t sleep on it.

See the EarthQuaker Devices Reverb store for more details. Priced $229, the Hoof Fuzz 20th Anniversary Edition is available now.

Reverb has crunched the numbers and revealed its top-selling guitar effects pedals of 2024, with podium finishes for amp modellers in all three of its year-end charts, and another strong year for Japanese stompbox giant Boss.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Boss was the biggest selling brand of the year, followed by Electro-Harmonix in second place, and MXR in third. TC Electronic came fourth. Kudos to JHS Pedals for a fifth place finish; the Kansas-based stompbox company’s Hard Drive distortion pedal was the ninth best-selling new pedal of the year.

Boss’s dominance, however, shows no sign of slowing. Last year, the Boss DS-1 Distortion pedal and the BD-2 Blues Driver were placed one and two in the overall best-sellers list, a position the BD-2 has maintained in 2024. As Reverb notes, Boss’s position as a market leader is almost baked into the data by this point – they also make sound investments, for your electric guitar tone and your pocketbook.

“A lesson that many guitarists learn early on is that you simply can't go wrong with a Boss pedal,” says Reverb. “They’re built like small tanks, they sound great, and their used value persists – or even grows – over time, meaning you'll pretty much always get your money back if you decide to sell.”

However, no Boss pedal claimed number one spot. As in previous years, Reverb has split its sales charts into categories. Besides best-selling pedal brand there are charts for best-selling new releases (all the pedals that have been released this year), best-selling used pedal, and best-selling overall pedals, i.e. the ones that shifted the most units.

This year’s best-selling newcomer was not from any of the aforementioned Top Five. It wasn’t an overdrive pedal or a reverb. It was IK Multimedia’s Tonex One, the mini-pedal sized amp modeller that can be your entire rig in a mini pedal.

Reverb says the figures were tight, and the pedal that it beat to number one spot could not be more different, Hologram’s Chroma Console – the $399 multi-effects pedal that defies easy categorisation, drawing inspiration from vintage studio equipment, allowing you to add grit and “instability” of old analogue devices, with 20 effects in total.

The Chroma Console allows them to take their sound to somewhere it has never been before. It is no generic effect.

The Tonex One is similarly radical, presenting all the sounds of the entire IK Multimedia Tonex eco-system into a pedal that’s the size of the Xotic EP Booster, with one large dial, and three mini-dials, and thousands of core tones to work with. Maybe options were what guitarist’s were looking for in 2024.

“The Tonex One is a very miniature pedal that gives you access to 25,000+ virtual effects and amps in the ToneX ecosystem, so perhaps it's not too surprising that it would be such a big hit,” says Reverb. “The fact that it beat out the Chroma Console – which sold in very large numbers and quickly became a fixture in many artists’ rigs this year – is a testament to just how much utility it provides.”

EarthQuaker Devices Dirt Transmitter Legacy Reissue, a limited edition fuzz pedal of 1,000 now sold-out units, came in third. Is that a new pedal? Well, it has been out of production forever and its rare silicon transistors might mean that we won’t see it again until EQD big boss Jamie Stillman can source a new batch.

The best-selling used pedals of 2024 presents us with some familiar facias, with the Line 6 HX Stomp (again, another compact modeller) in number one spot, the aforementioned BD-2 Blues Driver tied in second with the MXR M169 Carbon Copy delay pedal, and the Strymon Iridium in third.

As for best-selling overall – the pedals that moved more units than any other – we have the industry-standard Keeley Compressor in number one spot, which could be a sign that the demand for a top-quality transient tamer is driven by the rising popularity of funk guitar, or über-progressive guitar instrumentalists, or just that remains an unimpeachable choice for your ‘board.

The Boss BD-2 Blues Driver’s second place finish is testament to its versatility, and why, like the compressor pedal, a good low-gain overdrive is an essential on any player’s ‘board, no matter what genre they play. Third place overall goes to the Line 6 HX Stomp.

You can view the full placings over at Reverb. Earlier this week, the internet gear retail giant revealed that John Mayer’s unit-shifting, comment-generation PRS signature guitar, the Silver Sky, has finally been deposed at as the best-selling guitar by the Fender Player Stratocaster.

How times change. To think that once upon a time a guitar multi-effects pedal was the size of a VCR and now this, the Plethora X1, “TonePrint loader” from TC Electronic that offers 14 different effects in a compact stompbox.

And not only is the latest in the Plethora range respectful of pedalboard real estate, it’s also affordable, with a street price of £/$179. This has been the direction of travel for many guitar effects pedal brands, especially as DSP technology grows ever more advanced.

The Plethora X1 looks to do for TC Electronic’s TonePrint eco-system what the Tonex One does for IK Multimedia’s Tonex family of amp modellers, and what the HX One does for Line 6.

It is a little cheaper than the Line 6 HX One but then it doesn’t have amp modelling. It is pricier than the Tonex One. But there is a lot to get stuck into here.

The Plethora X1 can be the shape-shifter your pedalboard is waiting for; the wildcard with 14 user-assignable presets spread across seven TonePrint boards with selectable A and B slots. As such, you can stick it anywhere.

Use it as your reverb pedal at the end of your signal chain. Place it at the start and use TC Electronic’s Hypergravity Compressor pedal to tame your transients.

Think of it as the greatest hits of TC Electronic. Or as TC Electronic puts it: “Think of Plethora X1 as the one pedal that will stand by your side throughout your eternal pedalboard journey, adapting into exactly what you need at any given point.”

All the familiar favourites from TC Electronic are here: there is the Hall of Fame 2 Reverb, Flashback 2 Delay, Helix Phaser, Viscous Vibe, Sub n Up Octaver, Brainwaves Pitch Shifter, Corona Chorus, the aforementioned Hypergravity, Mimiq Doubler, Vortex Flanger, Pipeline Tap Tremolo, Quintessence Harmony, Sentry Noise Gate and Shaker Vibrato.

And with its TonePrint digital architecture, you can download pro player’s settings to the pedal.

The Plethora X1 has a similar chassis to the MusicRadar-approved Hall Of Fame 2 Reverb, with a seven-way rotary dial to cycle through your presets. The three knobs are marked A, B, and C, with their function dependant on whichever effect you have loaded.

This could get confusing but we’ve got a 1” LCD screen to let you know what’s what, and deeper edits can be made via the TonePrint App.

The Plethora X1 is equipped with Bluetooth so you can hook this up to your smartphone/laptop and get busy organising your sounds, creating custom presets, fine-tuning parameters and so forth. Or do it the old-fashioned way via USB.

Last, but but no means least, the Mash footswitch presents players with five different functions. It can be used in the default latching mode, turning the pedal on and off as you would any other.

Or it can be used in momentary mode – only active while you have the footswitch depressed. In A/B mode the footswitch can be used to toggle between two different effects (that could be very handy if this is your designated modulation).

Time-based effects can be controlled by tap-tempo and, as the name, suggests, you can use the Mash footswitch as it was intended, applying different degrees of pressure for more performance-related effects such as delay freezes and pitch-shifting.

The Plethora X1 is out now. See TC Electronic for more details.

Behringer is officially in the zone. Last month alone it unveiled a Tone Bender clone and an audacious replica of the legendary Klon Centaur overdrive pedal, both offering change out of 70 bucks. And now this, the ’69 Vibe, Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe clone that offers those Jimi Hendrix-approved psychedelic tones for just $69.

In sum, for under $200, you could stock your pedalboard with the sounds of three classic stompboxes – and Behringer says it isn’t done yet.

Responding to online critics who have accused the brand of being a “vaporware company” – unveiling products before they are available to buy, ultimately not releasing them at all – Behringer struck a bullish note, arguing that it is “one of the most prolific manufacturers in the industry,” promising more before the year’s out.

“No other company delivers as many innovative and affordable products as we do,” it continued.

Those critics might be responding to its Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble clone. The chorus pedal was teased but has yet to make it to market.

But then there could be a very good reason for that, especially when you consider the case of Behringer's Dual-Phase, its clone of the ‘70s analogue dual phaser from Mu-Tron Bi-Phase that Frank Zappa used to great effect. It was originally introduced as the Bi-Phaser, the name change might have been a way to tip-toe round any IP copyright issues.

The ’69 Vibe certainly delivers on affordability. As for the sound, they're timeless, and date back to when Hendrix was in his pomp and looking for a guitar effects pedal that could emulate the woozy swirl of a rotating speaker.

The Shin-Ei Uni-Vibe did just that, and gave tracks such as Machine Gun the three-dimensional movement he wanted.

It wasn’t just Hendrix who fell under the Uni-Vibe’s spell. Robin Trower created another candidate for the definitive Uni-Vibe track with Bridge Of Sighs. David Gilmour used one, notably on Time and Breathe.

The ’69 Vibe has a familiar look, black enclosure, white text, controls for Volume, Intensity and Speed, one footswitch for engaging the effect and another to toggle between its chorus and vibrato modes. The latter might come in handy for nailing Chris Cornell’s electric guitar tone on Black Hole Sun. And there is an input for attaching an expression pedal so you can control it on the fly.

You will find all the connections on the top of the unit. A pair of 1/4” input/outputs, the input for the pedalboard power supply, and the aforementioned input for the expression pedal.

Behringer suggest placing the '69 Vibe in front of your fuzz pedal, behind it, either side of your drive pedals or straight into a dimed amp a la Jimi. We’d endorse that message.

So there you have it, a £59/$69 Uni-Vibe clone, and once again we have a metal enclosure form Behringer. For more details, head over to Behringer.

What's the most important thing to buy after your guitar in the Cyber Monday music deals? A guitar tuner. Every single time. Because if you're not in tune, you'll never sound good. But why just buy one guitar tuner? For playing at home you'll need a clip-on headstock tuner, and if you're playing shows and jamming with friends a tuner pedal is a must. Luckily, great examples of both have been reduced at Sweetwater right now.

The Boss TU-3 is an industry-standard chromatic guitar tuner pedal – it's the world's best-selling stage tuner, after all. Built like a tank, pros and guitar techs have been relying on it on tour for years. Now it's a generous $30 off for Cyber Monday at Sweetwater.

As a tuner, the TU-3 excels. The LED meter has a high-brightness mode to cope with daylight visibility as well as dark stages, Accu-Pitch to let you know when tuning is complete, support for seven-string guitars and six-string bass, plus flat tuning for up to six semitones below standard pitch.

The Boss TU-3 also has a whole other use: it can supply power for up to seven other 9-volt pedals via daisy chaining.

The TC Electronic PolyTune headstock tuner is something I always keep close by. It's my favourite headstock tuner by far, because its large strobe-style LED display is just so easy to read and use when you need to get back in tune fast.

Sweetwater hasn't just reduced the PolyTune to $39 for Cyber Monday, it's also reduced its UniTune Clip headstock tuner down to an absolute bargain $29. Both are available in black and white colour options too.

The key difference between the UniTune and PolyTune Clip versions is the latter supports polyphonic tuning where you can strum all your strings at once and it will indicate which ones are out of tune.

To be honest, I still check my strings one at a time, so the cheaper chromatic UniTune would be fine for my needs, but consider whether you'll use it.

If you really want to go to town on your pedalboard, I've got just the tuner for you.; the Walrus Audio Canvas Tuner. A stunning 2.4" colour LCD screen with brightness adjustment that allows you to upload any photo or pic you like as a screensaver – yes, even your cat. I did it myself when I reviewed it!

The Canvas Tuner has a lot going for it in the looks department – and you can even change the screen orientation (rotating 90°, 180°, or 270°) to place it sideways or even upside down for the kind of physical flexibility few other tuner pedals can offer.

The downside is it's comparatively juice-hungry for your pedal power supply at 300mA. But in return you get some really cool features: needle and strobe modes, TrueAssist giving fast visual feedback so you can adjust faster, eight different screen colour options if you really want to coordinate your pedalboard. And there's a heap of tuning and bypass modes. It's impressive stuff – even more so with $29.80 off!

• More Sweetwater Cyber Monday deals

As we hurtle onwards with our pick of the best Cyber Monday music deals, I'm reminded of my mother. She always told me to remember two things when I was little; treat people how you'd want to be treated, and never, ever use cheap pedalboard power supplies for expensive effects. She was right about one of those things.

Harley Benton bent the rules again with its PowerPlant range – cheap can equate to high quality. I know because I bought three of power supplies from it. They're still going strong on two of my pedalboards that I've used for gigs and for testing with MusicRadar and Guitar World. These pedal power supplies shouldn't be this cheap in the first place – and now somehow they're even cheaper. The Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO-3AC SAG Modular is just £41! But it won't stay that low.

It's as good as examples I've tried costing over twice the price. And this model is even better spec'd in one way than the ISO-1AC Pro Modular I decided to review after buying it and being so impressed (it got a very rare 5/5 from me). The ISO-3AC SAG in Thomann's Cyber Week sale has 28% off and features a SAG option for voltage reduction to get better tones out of certain distortion and fuzz pedals.

Even without that it's a very capable power supply with four isolated outputs each capable of powering 500mA current draw each – that means things like Universal Audio pedal amps and Strymon delays are a walk in the park for it. A fifth outlet can supply a 12V DC input.

In addition to being built like a tank, using the musicians' favourite IEC ('kettle) leads and being pretty low profile for installing under pedalboards, a huge bonus I found with this Modular series is you can connect two or more together (Thomann even includes the adaptor) as your pedal power needs expand. Which is exactly what I did on my own main Rockboard pedalboard as you can see above. I bought a third to power a mini 'board and it's been great too.

Even buying two of these is a great deal that none of the competition that deals in high mA-capable isolated outputs can match.

And if you do want an extra output and don't need the SAG option on a second supply, you can always spend £9 more and buy the ISO-1AC Pro Modular. Or go all the way and get the 13-output Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO12AC Pro Modular for £109. Again, similar spec'd competition is well over double that price elsewhere.

Check out the full PowerPlant Modular range of pedal power supplies at Thomann.

DOD has unveiled a special 50th anniversary edition of its legendary Overdrive/Preamp 250, featuring switchable clipping, through-hole components, and guitar picks and assorted collectibles inside the box.

If you are lucky enough to grab one, and you will need luck because they are only making 1,974 of these overdrive pedals, definitely keep the box. We can imagine these being very much sought-after in years to come.

But set aside any thoughts of selling this further down the line; DOD has done everything to make this an ever-present on your pedalboard.

Of course, no one needs convincing of the Overdrive/Preamp 250’s charms – it is “America’s Pedal,” the stompbox that made DOD famous, and the number of clones on the market are a testament to its success.

This, however could well be the ultimate variant, offering three-in-one clipping options that offers two distinct flavours of overdrive/distortion plus the option to run the pedal as an op-amp boost to push your guitar amp.

The Overdrive/Preamp 250 is not a mini-pedal per se but it is compact, enough to stick in your back pocket – it won’t take up too much real estate on your ‘board.

There’s no need to over-complicate things; the control setup is super-simple, just two dials, one for Gain, one for Level, and a three-way toggle switch for choosing your preferred clipping configuration.

Those Gain and Level controls have been carefully tuned to replicate the same taper as the original units. That’s sure to delight DOD purists.

So too will the silicon diode clipping mode, which offers the same sound as the OG Overdrive/Preamp 250. But the the alternate clipping mode is similarly vintage-inspired, with DOD sourcing some vintage parts for an asymmetric germanium diode clipping mode that offers “even-harmonic” distortion.

The third mode, Lift, is where those clipping diodes are taken out of the equation and the LM741 op-amp is doing all the heavy lifting. Choose this for a clean boost – though if you max it out it will had some dirt too as the op-amp clips. DOD has also added a helpful LED to let you know when the pedal is engaged.

Other anniversary details include a laser-etched badge that takes pride of place on the enclosure. Inside the box you will find an individually numbered certificate of authenticity, picks and a bunch of stickers.

One of the secrets to the Overdrive/Preamp 250’s success is its versatility. It could be a tone-sweetener, your boost for solos, a go-to overdrive or as a distortion pedal at higher gain settings. It’s a hard-working pedal.

There’s also one more thing that the DOD team have considered; this has been designed with the modding community in mind. And so, if you want to tweak this, perhaps swapping out a component, changing a diode, whatever, that should all be doable. The circuit has been hand-wired (in the USA) with through-hole components.

Priced $250, the Overdrive/Preamp 250 50th Anniversary is true bypass and available now. See DigiTech for more details.

Robert Keeley spent something like three years designing the ultimate echo/delay pedal for Andy Timmons and all that R&D time was not wasted. The Keeley Electronics Halo was and remains one of the most expressive stompboxes of recent years.

Timmons rarely has it off and calls it the “ultimate dual echo sound” – and we would not/could not argue with him. And yet, when you have a pedal that is so groundbreaking, with so many features, it can take a bit of time to get used to, maybe even the manual.

That was no dealbreaker. But what if you could have Timmons’ signature sounds via a simplified set of controls? Three knobs and a toggle switch and that’s you?

Well, now you can. The Halo Core is the a stripped-down version of the dual echo that still features the mono or full stereo operability. It still has tap tempo with its own dedicated footswitch.

It still has the switchable trails mode or true bypass, all-wet or all-dry modes, and most importantly you still get that studio-quality modulated dual echo that makes the original so compelling. But this time you just have three knobs and a three-way toggle switch to select your modes.

All this feels a little like a cheat code but whatever makes life easier, we’re fine with that. Timmons has done the hard work. It took him a lifetime of playing to get that sound. Then Keeley Electronics found a pedal to make it happen.

This is designed for you to take out the box, mount on your pedalboard (top-mounted jacks make this easy, too), and dial in the settings you see in the image below, et voila! You’ve got Timmons’ signature sound right there – and you’ve got the means to put your own twist on it.

So them, three knobs: what do they do. Well, the first, and the biggest (this one is over-sized) is for Level, which sets the output level of the delay.

Time adjusts the length of the delay, and you’ve got a huge range here, from a barely perceptible 1ms to 1500ms. FDBK controls feedback, i.e. the number of repeats, while the Mode Switch selects between Timmons’ signature Halo mode, and a 1/4 note mode.

The Tap/Hold footswitch both sets the tap tempo and if you hold it down you can access a redesigned Infinite Hold feature, which is always a very cool option for live performances or those occasions when you want to go full shoegaze with the soundscaping.

But there’s more. It might be simple but the Halo Core does not lack features. With the Tap/Hold footswitch depressed, the aforementioned controls have secondary features. The Time dial now controls a high-pass filter, from 10Hz fully counterclockwise to 8750Hz fully clockwise. The FDBK knob acts as a tone controls, allowing you to darken or brighten your repeats.

Last, but by no means least, the Level knob’s secondary function is manna from heaven for tape echo fans, adding a the compression and gritty saturation that emulates the sound and texture of a mechanical tape echo.

As you turn this saturation up, some low-pass filtering is added to the signal. Very clever. But you don’t need to be clever to use it. What does modulated dual echo sound like? "Notes dance rhythmically, almost creating a reverb diffusion," explains Keeley Electronics. "Those notes are held together with tape-style effects like modulation, saturation and compression. The results are stunning."

And you can check out the results for yourself in the videos above. Available to order now, shipping from 26 November, the Andy Timmons Halo Core is priced $249. See Keeley Electronics for more details.

Walrus Audio has refreshed its Klon-inspired Voyager, with MKII expanding on the transparent drive template with a heap of cool tone-shaping features.

There are all kinds of Klon Centaur clones out there in the wild. You can get faithful replicas of the cult overdrive pedal, affordable alternatives to the prohibitively expensive vintage originals. And you can get pedals like this, hugely tweakable, capable of being used as a standard drive pedal or as a preamp pedal, that draws inspiration from the Klon and then runs with it.

Either way this is designed to be a capable mediator between electric guitar and amplifier. As we have seen with the Era series, Walrus Audio really knows how to put together a tweakable drive and distortion pedal. Voyager MKII is no different.

Like the Eras, we have a rotary switch that allows players to choose from five different clipping options. In position one we have the classic 1N34A germanium diodes setting, offering the same level of compression as the original Voyager.

Position two is a complementary setting, adding a bass boost to this clipping, which sounds like it could be come in handy for those occasions when you want to fatten up the single-coils on your Telecaster.

The third position is described as a less compressed and more dynamic setting, with the pedal’s clipping handled by symmetrical silicon diodes, and more dynamic still we have asymmetric silicon diodes in position four. Finally, you have the asymmetrical silicon diodes with the bass boost.

And there is more. The Voyager MKII has your typical Volume, Tone and Gain controls, all very Centaur-esque, but Walrus Audio has also added a parametric mids EQ stage that can boost or cut 12dB from midrange frequencies between 250Hz and 2kHz. Use the Freq knob to set the centre frequency of the Mid knob, and then have at it.

Best of all, this parametric mids EQ has its own footswitch, so you can kick this in on demand (an obvious occasion might be during a solo to help you punch through the mix but your mileage may vary).

Walrus Audio has also updated the Voyager’s enclosure, relocating the jacks on MKII to the top of the unit, kitting it out with a soft-touch relay switch, and the pedal itself is now true bypass – another point of difference between the Voyager and the Klon.

Voyager MKII is offered in seafoam green and black. Nathan Price illustrated the eponymous satellite on the seafoam green version; Christi Du Toit painted the black version.

The Voyager MKII is made in the USA, takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing 100mA, and is priced £245/$249 street. See Walrus Audio for more details.

With many things in life, it’s best to start out small, and that’s exactly what Olinthus has done as the brand new effects company makes its debut with the world’s smallest stompbox, the appropriately named Cicada.

We might need a citation on that. It is a bold claim. But this is the guitar mini-pedal taken to its logical conclusion – it’s the Tube Screamer clone you can keep in your shirt pocket as though it were a packet of cigarettes, and a lot healthier for you, too.

Heck, it is the Tube Screamer clone you can mount on top of another pedal on your ‘board, bringing an all-new meaning to the idea of stacking pedals.

Available exclusively via Reverb, Olinthus’ design has definitely got the crowded and compact fly-in pedalboard in mind. Even so, the size… Well, even Olinthus admits it’s “ridiculous” all things considered.

"Yes, we’re aware that an overdrive pedal this tiny is a bit ridiculous. But by challenging our notions of what an effects pedal has to be, a new world of possibilities opened up that we never expected,” says the company. “Turns out, making it small also makes it pretty awesome.”

The Cicada (now, that would be a great name for a fuzz pedal) is based on the legendary Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, one of the most successful drive pedals of all time, and also the most cloned. Almost every pedal company has its own take on them.

Some are straight-up clones. Some such as the JHS Pedals Bonsai offer nine different TS-style circuits in one enclosure. Others had features inspired by popular mods, such as the Wampler Moxie, which manages to maximise its mini-pedal form factor by adding a Fat mode toggle switch and a Voice switch.

And of course, there is the original, and just 10 days ago Ibanez unveiled a hand-wired version of its TS808 that tweaked the circuit to give it an extra 6dB of output.

In short, in the TS-style drive pedal business, it pays to have a USP, and Olinthus’ is size. In fact, the Cicada is so small that Olinthus had to rethink the fundamentals of enclosure design, ultimately deciding to do away with your standard 1/4” input/outputs – and the 9V power input while they were at it (there’s definitely no room for a battery here).

That’s why you will find a 3-way TRRS splitter cable inside the box. This will handle all your connections. There is also no room for a footswitch. You engage the effect by pressing down on the bottom edge, as though the whole pedal was a switch.

We’ll need to see just how practical all this is during performance but just check out the demo video to see the size of this thing. It’s tiny. It might well be the wafer-thin mint your Mr Creosote pedalboard has been waiting for…

The Olinthus Cicada is out now, and it is priced $99. See Olinthus for more details, Reverb to order.

When we think of guitar multi-effects in 2024 we tend to think in terms of digital signal processing, amp modelling, IRs, cab sims and all that jazz, but Greg Koch and Jam Pedals have teamed up for a signature unit that takes a different approach, refashioning the Greek stompbox company’s greatest hits into a beast of an integrated pedalboard with everything Koch needs.

They are calling this thing the Koch Ness Monster and there are two versions to check out. You can get the regular unit for £550/$790, which contains the Lucydreamer overdrive, Eureka! fuzz, Harmonius Monk tremolo and the Delay Llama delay pedal, with a signal path running in that order. 

Or you could go the whole hog and drop £1,500/$2,190 on the tricked-out Supreme version, which truly is a greatest hits of Jam Pedals and is described as “Greg’s wildest pedal dreams” – even includes an onboard Wahcko wah pedal, and this is where the signal chain starts.

The Supreme receives your electric guitar signal then sends it through the Wahcko, then through we have the RetroVibe vibrato/chorus pedal, Koch’s signature Gristle King boost/drive, which was originally designed by Tim Jauernig. 

Next up is the it’s the Eureka fuzz pedal circuit, the Lucydreamer overdrive, a send/return for incorporating an external pedalboard/pedals, the Boomster buffer/boost, the Waterfall chorus, the Harmonious Monk, Delay Llama MkII, and the Delay Lama Xtreme. 

Both units are pricey, but they still work out more economically than buying the pedals individually, and there are a few choice features that make these ideal for Koch’s purposes – and anyone else for that matter.

Firstly, you can sync up the tap tempo, allowing the repeats from the Delay Lama Xtreme to be in time with the pulse of the Harmonius Monk tremolo, all with the tap of a single button. 

In addition, the Supreme also offers expression pedal inputs to control the speed of the Retrovibe, the level of the Boomster, the time of the Delay Llama XTREME, and there are a pair of inputs for external tap tempo control and for controlling the Delay Llama XTREME’s presets.

On the Supreme, the Delay Llama XTREME and Harmonius Monk are preloaded with Koch’s presets and you might ask, “Why two delays?” 

Well it’s simple; Koch likes it that way, and uses his Delay Llama MkII as an always-on slapback echo, with more exotic delay pedal operations delegated to its more fully featured XTREME counterpart.

If you don’t need the extra effects and functionality, the regular Koch Ness Monster has you covered with all the essentials. 

“The Koch Ness Monster is a pared-down, throw-and-go, orange-clad warrior of the sonic night. Four delicious flavors of JAM pedal glory to get the job done in the service of rock!” says Koch. 

The Supreme model comes with a custom gig bag, and optional plexiglass guides with labelled controls. Both are available to order now. The regular Koch Ness Monster ships from the end of October, the Supreme from the end of the year. See Jam Pedals for more details. 

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: What is it?

Walrus Audio's original Monument tremolo has a varied feature set for anyone wishing to explore a wide range of tremolo sounds and put them to use on stage. 

The major shift with this expanded version, the Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo, has been adding stereo operation so that, besides standard mono, the new pedal offers stereo in/stereo out and mono in/stereo out with a Pan knob to determine stereo width.

Other changes include additional wave shapes and tap divisions, plus, instead of a switch to select Standard or Harmonic tremolo types, you now get a knob to blend from one type to the other. 

You can also save and recall three onboard presets, and the Tap footswitch now also offers a momentary ramp (up or down) of tremolo speed, similar to that of a rotary speaker.

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: Performance and verdict

For its most classic application, set the pedal for sine wave, adjust your Rate and Depth accordingly, and you’ll be accessing familiar tremolo sounds that work brilliantly in a standard mono chain. Beyond that, there’s plenty more to explore, including the variation offered by other waveforms, whether you plump for a square wave regimented stutter, its more lopsided sawtooth companions, or even the random trem that will have your audience thinking you’ve got a pedal malfunction. Furthermore, the S-B-H knob allows some subtle shadings between its two end stops, gradually separating low and high frequencies as it travels.

The pedal’s crowning glory, however, is that it sounds stunning when used in a stereo role. The Pan knob moves from standard tremolo by offsetting the phase of the right LFO until you get the two LFOs 180-degrees out of phase and a huge stereo spread with a great sense of depth and movement as the tremolo sweeps back and forth across it. While we realise not everyone will have the opportunity to exploit this functionality in a live situation, it’s certainly still available to all for recording.

A pretty comprehensive feature set makes this do-it-all tremolo pedal an extremely practical compact choice for onstage needs thanks to instantly accessible presets and spontaneous changes available via the Tap/Ramp footswitch or a connected external expression pedal. 

MusicRadar verdict: From the subtle to the extreme, Walrus Audio Monumental Stereo Harmonic Tremolo could satisfy all your tremolo needs.

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: Alternatives

Mono

• The original Monument (£199) remains a potent tremolo pedal.
• Jam Pedals’ Harmonious Monk mk2 (£239) includes tap tempo and adjustable ramp.
• Old Blood Noise Endeavors’ Blackcap (£209) combines a traditional analogue tremolo and a harmonic digital tremolo with various routing options.

Stereo

• Electro-Harmonix’s triple-footswitch Super Pulsar (£199) has tap tempo, presets and lots of adjustable parameters.
• Mr Black’s Pana-Trem (£249) is a twin-footswitch true-stereo harmonic tremolo and panner.
• Source Audio’s single-footswitch Vertigo (£195) has three tremolo types.

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: The web says

"The Monumental is not cheap, but it should do just about everything that you’d want a tremolo pedal to do... Monumentally flexible and practical."
Guitar World

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: Hands-on demos

Walrus Audio

Michael W. Westbrook

TheGuitarGeek

John Nathan Cordy

Walrus Audio Monumental Harmonic Stereo Tremolo: Specifications

• ORIGIN: USA 
• TYPE: Tremolo pedal
• FEATURES: True bypass, 3 onboard presets. Tap tempo, Ramp function, available in orange/copper or black 
• CONTROLS: Volume, Shape (Sine, Square, Saw, Ramp, Bumps and Random), Pan, Rate, Depth, S-B-H switch (Standard/Both/Harmonic), division button (quarter, quarter triplet, 8th, 8th triplet, 16th), internal dip switches for Tap/Exp, Tap/Ramp footswitch, Bypass footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Standard inputs Mono + Stereo, standard outputs Mono + Stereo, Tap/Expression pedal input
• POWER: 9V adaptor (not supplied) 100mA
• DIMENSIONS: 122 (d) x 72 (w) x 67mm (h)
• CONTACT: Walrus Audio

Sonicake has just dropped its new flagship amp modeller and is offering it for a bargain price of 299 bucks.

At this price we might expect the Matribox Pro II to be lacking features. But the vital statistics say otherwise. Under the hood you’ve got 63 different guitar amp models and there are more than 93 guitar effects pedal simulations. That’s a lot of sounds.

Oh, maybe there there will be no IR support? There is, with the Matribox Pro II shipping with 61 onboard cab sims and space for 20 of your own third-party IRs.

There is even a colour touchscreen to take the heavy lifting out of signal chain design, and six footswitches with two customisable footswitch modes to set the unit up just how you like it.

We have become accustomed to this surfeit of features on amp modellers but every now and again it is worth taking stock and reflecting upon how digital technology has transformed electric guitar tone.

Ever since the amp modeller and guitar multi-effects pedal rose to prominence the raw economics of the guitar rig was laid bare; here were these compact units packing dozens of amps, dozens of effects, and if you were to have bought these sounds the old-school analogue way it would have set you back thousands. It was an open-and-shut case for monetary rationality; all these sounds for less!

But the modern-day guitarist cannot live on tone options alone. We need functionality and usability, and on that score the Matribox Pro II presents us with six footswitches with two customisable modes. There is an onboard expression pedal with an input for adding an external control pedal or switch. 

You can also integrate your pedalboard via the stereo effects loop, which is very 2024. What is even more 2024 is the capability to stream your audio in stereo, with an on-the-go function that connects directly with your smart mobile device (iOS/Android). 

As is often the case with these digital modellers, the user experience of the accompanying app will be all important in performing deeper edits and keeping your myriad tone options in good order.

There are plenty of connections here, with MIDI, USB for recording, and a pair of balanced XLR outputs for sending your signal direct to PA, DAW or the FRFR speaker in your life. And can you even call yourself an amp modeller if you don’t have a headphones output for silent practice? Yes, there is one here, too. And there is an aux in.

Priced £/$299, the Matribox Pro II is available now. For more details, head over to Sonicake.

In this, the golden age of guitar effects pedals, our pedalboards are expanding, and that can be an issue for live performance, where, unless you are Taylor Swift or Metallica, stage space is at a premium. D’Addario might just have the answer, with the XNPD Pedalboard Mic Stand promising to “reclaim your performance space”.

We are suckers for a clever accessory and besides being a market leader in acoustic and electric guitar strings, D’Addario has quite the side-hustle going on with its accessories line, what with its Satch co-designed Auto Lock Swivel Strap putting an end to twisted guitar straps on models with rear-mounted strap buttons like the Gibson SG. And now this.

Yes, pedalboard real estate comes similarly at a premium. But D’Addario’s mic stand is a relatively small sacrifice, with a footprint similar to a standard-sized effects pedal. 

It was designed to integrate seamlessly with the D’Addario XNPD Pedalboard but the NYC company says it will fit any rail-style ‘board, which is to say it will fit most player’s setups. Note, it isn’t suitable for single-rail pedalboards, but two rails deep and over and you’re good to go. That Pedaltrain Novo 24 spaceship you’ve got there is not going to tip over with this. 

D’Addario says is a lightweight design and portable, too, which is part of the whole selling point; you don’t have to take a tripod stand with you or those big round-based efforts.

Simply clamp the stand to your pedalboard – maybe taking the opportunity to swap out that crazy modulated delay pedal out that everyone in the band keeps complaining about – attach the telescopic stand, adjust it for your ideal performance position and stick your preferred live vocal microphone on it. 

“Say goodbye to awkward placement and bulky tripods,” says D’Addario, “it’s time to reclaim your performance space.” Well, that’s the idea, and it could come in handy. 

Who knows, it might even resolve those intra-band tensions about the size of your pedalboard and just how much room you need to do your thing. It could save the band! Well, if so, the £93.50 (what’s that, $119?) would be well spent. See D’Addario for more.

Harley Benton has just the thing for all those guitar players out there whose pedalboards have gotten so big that they’re pulling enough juice to sink the national grid. It’s called the PowerPlant ISO-12AC Pro Modular, and as pedalboard power supplies go, this thing is a real beast.

The PowerPlant ISO-12AC Pro Modular is the flagship from the budget-friendly brand’s range, and it is as whopper, packing 12 isolated outputs, each offering noise-free power for the guitar effects pedals in your life. 

Yes, of course, we all know that buying power is one of the most boring things for the stompbox collector – especially when that money could be spent on that fresh fuzz pedal with NOS germanium transistors, right? 

But it’s like Brian Wampler told us, it’s also one of the most important elements of a happy pedalboard life, and it will save you time and stress further down the line. And at least with this Harley Benton mothership, you’re not depleting your rainy day BigSky budget too much – £109 for 12 outputs is tempting, and you’ve got a 30-day money back guarantee if you’re not happy, plus a three-year warranty.

You’ve also got all kinds of options for the pedals in your collection, and a lot of features too. There is LED monitoring of each output, so you can see if there is a problem. 

The unit has universal input voltage, switching from 100 to 240V, so you can throw this in your flight case when touring. The power supply enclosure is aluminium, and inside the box you’ll find all the connections you need.

This is 2024 and the PowerPlant ISO-12AC Pro Modular knows it – you’ll find USB-A and USB-C ports for charging your smart devices. 

Now for the power. This is why we're here. There is something for all pedals here, including those power-hungry digital effects. The PowerPlant ISO-12AC Pro Modular has four 9V DC outputs offering a maximum current of 250mA, another four with a maximum current draw of 500mA, and then another four isolated outputs switchable for 9, 12, and 18V DC (maximum current draw respectively 500mA, 375mA, 250mA).

There is also a wildcard in the form of a non-isolated high-current 9V/3A DC outlet for really power-hungry units such as amp modellers and multi-effects pedals. The modular AC design also allows you to connect these together. 

The PowerPlant ISO-12AC Pro Modular is priced £109 / $137 approx and is available exclusively through Thomann. More details on the current range can be found at Harley Benton.

Line 6 HX One: What is it?

Line 6 wasn’t just ahead when it came to modelling innovation in the late '90s, when the competition inevitably arrived, the company managed to do something with its Helix hardware that none of them quite managed to match; it created a wider appeal.

With the arrival of the HX Stomp, investing in a digital amp modeller and multi-effects unit no longer meant going big with a floorboard. It wasn’t necessarily even about replacing things anymore; the Stomp could live alongside your pedals or amp if you wanted. Moreover, the asking price opened pro-level modelling to new players – with long-term firmware updates from Line 6 that set a standard for the industry.

But while we wait for the inevitable Helix 2, Line 6 wants to widen the potential appeal of its tech further. Its scaling down some more – two footswitches on a pedal that’s aimed at bringing Helix to any pedalboard. It can even be fuelled by your 'board's power supply. But just how scaled down is the HX One in terms of usability?

There are no amp models included here; it’s effects only. A mini Helix HX Effects? Not really. There are over 270 HX effects included here but you can only use one at a time – not even a chain of two within the pedal. Isn’t that a bit limiting? This is where I’d beg to differ – Line 6 is thinking about winning new fans again here.

Line 6 HX One: Performance and verdict

It feels that this is aimed squarely at those of us who aren’t interested in building patches and just want a great selection of effects to choose from. Maybe a harmonic tremolo sound to use on one song, or even a looper for another part – and an otherworldy filter elsewhere. The HX One not the smallest pedal in the world but it could actually be a huge space saver for those who need to dip in and out of the wonderful, and sometimes weird, effects world. It's kind of like Line 6’s equivalent of Eventide’s H9.

Line 6 actually went in this direction before with the session player favourite M9 and somewhat underrated M5 Stompbox Modeller well over a decade ago. It's worth noting that even now, Line 6's effects on those units are considered studio-worthy by players including Tim Pierce and Tom Bukovac.

The HX One is significantly smaller than those pedals; shallower than a Boss compact pedal at 119mm, and about 1.5 times wide. It will fit nicely onto most 'boards – and could be appealing for minimal setups looking for Swiss Army Knife versatility.

With stereo and midi in / out, plus Line 6 FS 3 and 4 expression pedal in, the boxes for today's rig connectivity needs are assured. But that screen is very… minimal, isn’t it?

It makes the most of its dimensions to work very well; pressing the effects knob in the centre down takes you through the effects categories. Once you’ve scrolled to the effect type you want, release the knob and you can then scroll through the different effects for the time by turning the same knob. The three controls above then change the parameters as shown on the screen. The page left and right buttons will then bring up additional parameters.

Then there are two ways to save; either save it as a preset slot, or press the left and right buttons together so your settings become the default sound for that effect in future. I.E. You don’t want to commit to a preset slot, but would like to be more in your preferred sonic ballpark as a user default when you bring up that effect again. With no signal chains to build within the HX One, it’s quick to use and intuitive, even if you’re new to the series. I'm not the biggest fan of scrolling through parameters, especially when I have a guitar strapped on me, but I was actually surprised how fast the HX One felt like a familiar part of my pedalboard because of the control and menu design.

All the effects from the rest of the Helix range are present – listed above. They represent proven and constantly expanding used by pros including Bumblefoot to Kurt Ballou, Dustin Kensrue, Stephen Carpenter and Graham Coxon. From Klon, Tube Screamer and Rat-type overdrives to lush Line 6-designed sounds like the Ganymede reverb and Sweep Echo, there are all the classics and well beyond delivered here. Nobody should be found wanting and it’ll get effects updates with firmware going forward.

The big question here is with so many effects you can bring into the chain in one pedal, how do you solve the obvious conundrums of dialling them up quickly in a set and slotting them into the right place in your signal chain if you’re not a MIDI user? For example, you probably won’t want the Bucket Brigade delay in the place in your chain as a fuzz.

For the first, you’d be wise to order your presets logically to dial them up and down in a gig set scenario. Physically, pedal order is an obvious challenge and FX send and return comes into play with the four-cable method. Here, whenever you switch to a drive preset HX One will put it at the front of your amp, with a time-based effect it will place the effect after the amp. As part of a whole pedalboard that cable method not exactly a neat solution but it’s hard to see how Line 6 could have made this any better with regards to realistic options. Personally I'd be happy finding an ideal spot for it on my 'board for the most potential uses; for me that would be the modulation territory.

After exploring the sounds, the Flux / Tap control on the second footswitch reveals itself as a real asset that enhances creativity. It’s kind of an onboard expression device to some degree, allowing you to automate different parameters between two set values. For example, press the switch to ramp up an overdrive's gain or delay feedback. It's inspiring in the way it can musically create dramatic moments and emphasis. A nice bonus here from Line 6 for sure.

So is the onboard chromatic tuner – another potential space saver for players. Just press both footswitches together for two seconds to activate. Then press either footswitch or the home button to exit tuner mode.

If the $299/£299 seems steep to you for a single pedal investment, consider how weighty the quality and quantity are. It’s a chameleon for your pedalboard with a huge range of sounds to explore. And considering the next pedal in the affordability scale is the HX Stomp is $699, the price for the HX One feels right.

Another impressive Helix chapter to widen the appeal – we already know the sounds and range of effects are excellent but this brings Line 6’s flagship sounds to new players who aren’t interested in making the full step into a modelling rig

MusicRadar verdict: A new way to fit Helix effects into more rigs, the HX One puts a huge array of classic and creative sounds at your feet. If your struggle for pedal space is real, this could open up a solution and new inspiring sonic possibilities.

Line 6 HX One: Hands-on videos

Tim Pierce 

Corey Congilio

Mike Cole 

Line 6 HX One: Specifications

• Controls: 3 x parameter rotary knobs, Page left and right buttons, home/save button, Effect select pushable rotary control, effect on/off footswitch, Tap tempo/Flux footswitch
• Features: 273 effects including Switch and Shuffling looper), stereo in/out, MIDI in / out/thru, USB for firmware updates, chromatic tuner
• Bypass: Choice of Buffered or True
• Power: 9.6VDC-500mA adapter (included)
• Dimensions: (W x D x H): 96 x 125 x 62 mm
• Current Draw: 500mA
• CONTACT: Line 6

There’s no saving Brian Wampler. He’s a pedalboard obsessive. But that is okay; that is his job. That’s his hobby, too, and besides, it’s too late to change him now. But with that obsession comes a lot of knowledge and a lot of insight to share.

So when the man behind Wampler Pedals checked with MusicRadar to talk about guitar effects pedals, the crazy culture surrounding stompboxes today, and to share his story in how a love for electric guitar tone turned him from hobbyist to one of the most respected names in effects design, we put him on the spot...

What if we’re putting together a ‘board? What would be his five pedalboard essentials?

“I’ll do it from the fly,” he said. "I am sure after we get done here I’ll probably think of something else.”

For that something else, you would do well to subscribe to the Wampler Pedals YouTube channel, which is a invaluable source of wisdom for any player, novice and expert alike and also if you’re stuck on where to take your tone to next and are in need of a little inspiration.

So here goes, on the fly, unprompted, here are Brian Wampler’s pedalboard essentials.

1. You need a good tuner on your ‘board

“The first thing, I am a big stickler on a really good tuner. I don’t like headstock tuners. No disrespect to Boss, I don’t like those kind of tuners. I like a good strobe tuner, so I use a Sonic Research because it is so accurate. But that may just be a me thing. If the guitar is out of tune, even when I’m playing it, it just drives me absolutely crazy. It drives me absolutely crazy.”

2. Invest in top-quality isolated power supply

“Good power. Good power is absolutely key, and especially now you see on Amazon all these cheaper power supplies they say are all isolated – half the time they are actually not what we would consider truly isolated.

“I use a lot of the Voodoo Lab stuff. I use the TrueTone – I forget the exact name of the model but it’s their big brick. It’s fantastic. No noise. I never have any problems with it. It always works. I can throw it around, probably run it over with a car and it will still work. That’s usually what I recommend.”

“And it’s a little more expensive. I get it. It’s not fun paying a couple of hundred bucks for a power supply but it is going to last you forever and you are just not going to have any problems with your pedals.

“You want more than what you need. A lot of people will think, ‘Well, I’ll just daisy chain it.’ But the problem with that is, let’s say you have a 100mA output, and you have five pedals on that daisy chain and they’re all consuming 50mA, well now you don’t have enough current to supply those pedals, and so some pedals will still work, they just won’t work as well, or they’ll be really noisy. And so, there we go back again: you need good power! You need good, clean power!”

3. Use soldered cables

“Another thing, and this is going to be sacrilegious! [Laughs] I’m not a big fan of solderless cables. I like good soldered cables. I’ve just always had problems with solderless cables, and at the worst time! Like, right in the middle of a gig, at the solo to Free Bird, and a cable starts going out on me! So that would be a big one.”

4. Go big or go home

“Buy a bigger ‘board than you are going to need because you are going to buy more pedals. That is always a problem. ‘Oh, y’know, I’ve only got this small pedalboard, and I don’t have space for another…’ Well, buy the biggest that you can manage and then you will always have empty space!”

5. A buffer can help (especially with larger 'boards)

“Oh, I did think of something else. Buffers. You need a good buffer. Doesn’t really matter what kind specifically but if you have all true bypass pedals you are going to lose some high-end for sure. 

“There are different types of buffers but, the Boss style, for example, has like a transistor, a very simple buffer – which is not bad! – but when you start adding those up, let’s say you have 10 of those, and in a Boss pedal there could be two or three different buffers in that pedal, basically what happens is your entire signal level gets lowered just because it’s not exactly one-to-one, and so that can be a problem. 

“If I’m using a lot of Boss stuff, I usually boost up on the back end, just a couple of dB to bring that level back up.”

Where should we position a buffer?

“Unless I am running a fuzz, I put it as close to the guitar as I can get. I know some will argue about having two, maybe one the beginning, one at the end, a lot of that depends on what other pedals you are using, because many pedals – especially now, the ones that have been designed in the past 10 or 15 years – they are already buffered, so when you turn them on their are already buffering the signal, so even if that’s a delay pedal, for example, you are still getting a pretty low output impedance, which is what a buffer does.

“And so I tend to not really worry too much about the end of the ‘board, more about the beginning of the ‘board – unless I am using something that I know is going to be a bad output impedance. 

“For example, some of those fuzzes just have a very high output impedance which tends to take some high-end off – which warms the sound up! But it’s just my neuroticism, I suppose. I’m like, ‘If I wanted to warm the sound up I would just turn the tone knob down!’  I want a good strong signal signal to send to that amp.”

Brent Mason is one of the most experienced and respected guitarists on the planet, so picking his brains can unlock a treasure trove of experience. Fellow Nashville session ace Tom Bukovac did just that for viewers of his YouTube channel when he was recording with Mason and fellow luminary Bryan Sutton.

They gave up some of their lunch hour to talk favourite licks and moments from their sizeable back catalogues, but things took an interesting turn when Bukovac walked over to show us what effects pedals Mason was using near the end of the video.

Mason has a utilitarian approach to pedals that's usually the sign of someone who spends more time playing than talking about gear (guilty as charged here). Alongside choices including a TC Electronic Flashback X4 delay, E-HX Memory Man, Wampler Ego compressor and Mason's signature Wampler Hot Wired overdrive pedal, the guitarist wanted to give a special mention to a stompbox that's probably not found enough on contemporary pedalboards;  an equalizer.

"I always put in on a 'board and I never really thought about it, but ever since I started using stompboxes I've always had that in there," he says of his Boss GE-7. It's an antiquated pedal but I really need [it]."

"It's so guitar-friendly," Mason adds. "It's not complicated." 

Boss still sells the GE-7 seven-band EQ for under $120. And while an EQ pedal isn't going to excite players like a new overdrive or reverb pedal, it could turn out to be one of the best gear investments investment you'll ever make. 

Its versatility is key for a mid-forward instrument where the ability to cut through and sit in a mix is crucial. We can't assume the combination of our other pedals, pickups and amp will always do that as well as it might. 

The sliders allow you to dial things in fast – Sterephonics Adam Zindani even uses a Boss EQ as his boost – ranging from 100Hz to 6.4kHz with a boost/cut of +/- 15dB per band. Great for adjusting for using two or three different guitars with your setup too. 

For live performers without the benefit of a sound engineer who understands their needs, it's the closest thing to having your own mixing desk on a pedalboard too! 

Check out the Boss GE-7 at Sweetwater and Thomann. 

• Brent Mason on the story behind his famous triple-pickup Telecaster: "Being kinda broke... I couldn't afford two or three guitars at the same time"

We recently talked about how a studio-style compression pedal can be a great always-on tone enhancer for guitarists, and it's like Electro Harmonix was reading our minds as its new Pico Platform Compressor / Limiter could deliver just that, and in a compact package.

Following on from the company's enticing new Pico POG, the Platform promises "subtle tone polishing to super squashed sustain" like its original big brother, and along with Attack and Sustain controls, its Blend knob should certainly help with the former to dial between a balance of compressed and clean signal. 

It could be great for bass too, as Gigolo Aunts and Afghan Whigs guitarist Jon Skibic demonstrates in the demo above with an excerpt from David Bowie's China Girl. 

The transparent Pico Platform streamlines the comp section of the full-sized Stereo Platform and offers two switchable modes to choose between Hard Knee and Soft Knee styles of compression. With the latter the compressor's gain reduction kicks in gradually after the signal has exceeded the set threshold for a subtler response. Hard Knee is a more pronounced effect. 

We're really interested to see what else lies ahead for the Pico range – mini versions of the Holy Grail reverb, Small Stone phaser or Soul Food klon-style drive perhaps? 

The Pico Platform is available for $139 from Sweetwater. More info at Elecro-Harmonix. 

Harley Benton has rolled out the Spaceship Power series, a range of pedalboards that gives guitar effects pedal addicts pretty much everything they need. The ‘boards comes in six different sizes, each with padded carry cases and mounting accessories included.

The lineup also includes the Spaceship PowerBar, a pedalboard power supply designed for the Harley Benton Spaceship line. It is easily mounted to your existing Spaceship ‘board to offer the same features and functionality as the Spaceship Power models. And these ‘boards have a lot of practical features to them.

The range comprises the generously proportioned Spaceship Power 80-B, 60XL-B, and 60-B, the compact 50C-B and 50M-B, and the 40-B somewhere in the middle. 

The ‘boards are constructed from lightweight powder-coated aluminium frames and have an integrated power supply that can be run from the power adaptor or from its rechargeable lithium-ion battery – making it a handy choice for buskers with a ‘board. 

There is LED monitoring on each of the pedalboards’ outputs, and with switchable (100V-240V) AC power you can run these travel-friendly ‘boards anywhere in the world.

Fully loaded, you will get just over an hour’s playing time with the 80-B, 60XL-B,  and 60-B, and these all come with 11 individually isolated (four at 9V/250mA, three at 9V/500mA, and four at 9/12/18V/500mA) and 4 non-isolated outputs, with enough juice on-tap to power current-hungry digital effects. 

The smaller 50C-B, 50M-B, and 40-B models should give you 50 minutes from a full charge, and have seven isolated inputs (two at 9V/250mA, three at 9V/500mA, and two at 9/12/18V - 500mA) and four non-isolated. Again, these will cover your power-hungry digital effects like your multi-function programmable reverb and delay pedals.

Inside the case, you’ll have all the cables and connections to get started, with hexagon wrenches, hook-and-loop straps, battery clips, power adapter and plug. On the rear of the power supplies you will find USB-A and USB-C connections for charging tablets, phones, and other mobile devices. Maybe it'll even charge your electric toothbrush to help you freshen up before the show.

At the top end of the scale, the Spaceship Power 80-B measures (HxWxD) 89.5mm x 800mm x 390mm and weighs 3.23kg, and the 60XL-B measures 89.5mm x 600mm x 390mm, weighing in at 2.59kg. The most compact, the 50C-B, measures 45mm x 500mm x 135mm and weighs just over a kilo. 

All are available from Thomann now, and are priced as follows: Power 80-B £206; 60XL-B £171; 40-B £137; 50M-B £128; 50C-B £120. The Spaceship PowerBars are priced from £102 to £128. 

For more details and pics, head over to Harley Benton. In other Harley Benton news, the brand recently unveiled a new demo video for its classy 25th Anniversary Series of electric guitars and bass guitars. 

Resplendent in the Firemist finish, they were put through their paces by Funky Times. Check it out below.

Many players spend a lifetime curating the ultimate collection of stompboxes with hopes of achieving the greatest electric guitar tone of all time. The only problem is they are most likely making a few key mistakes that are not only holding them back from attaining their sonic goal but also costing them precious time and money. So, if you've put together a pedalboard but are still struggling to nail the sound in your head, let me walk you through the most common blunders I see guitarists make when it comes to their effects. 

I'm very aware that guitar tone is completely subjective, and there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to putting together a pedalboard - if it sounds good, then job's a good 'un. That said, there are a few common practices that, when followed, will typically yield the best results. 

Before writing for MusicRadar, I worked in a busy city centre music store, selling guitars, pedals and just about everything else music-related. So, as you can imagine, I've seen my fair share of pedalboards - and pedalboard problems. I'm also a very active member of my local gigging circuit, and I can't resist chatting with other players about their boards. 

So, below are 10 pedalboard mistakes that I've seen repeatedly on my travels - and that includes 'boards of varying sizes and styles. So, regardless if you have a fully-loaded space-ship control panel or a humble three-stomp floorboard, these are errors you really should be avoiding if you want the best tone possible. 

1. No room to grow

As guitarists, we like to collect things. Whether it's six strings, amps, guitar straps or effects pedals, we'll rarely stop at just one or two. So with that in mind, it's worth doing a little forward planning when purchasing your next pedalboard. 

It may be tempting to measure your current setup and simply buy a 'board that will fit it perfectly, resulting in a nice and neat floorboard - the problem comes when you inevitably add yet another overdrive pedal to your collection. This will result in you needing to ditch your current 'board in favour of an upgrade. 

So, for that reason, I recommend going for a slightly larger pedalboard than you think you need - that way, you have plenty of room to expand. 

2. Poor cable management

We can all agree that the pedals are the most exciting part of building a 'board, the cabling not so much. Now, while we all spend a lot of time - and money - making sure we have the right pedals in the correct order, we tend to neglect the cables that link it all together. 

Not only is it important to buy good quality and reliable guitar cables, but it's also essential you run the appropriate length of cable needed to reach each pedal comfortably. 

You want to make sure the cables aren't too short, causing strain on the connectors and not so long that you end out with an excessive amount of cabling under your 'board that will result in extra noise and signal loss.  

3. Ignoring pedal order and signal flow

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I don't subscribe to the notion of there being just one way to order a pedalboard. In fact, I love to experiment with pedal placement to see what cool sounds I can come up with. 

The mistake here isn't that most players place their pedals in the wrong order but rather they don't think about the order at all and just haphazardly chain their effects together and hope for the best.

The order in which pedals are connected drastically affects the overall tone, so having a clear idea of the sound you want will inform the best order for your pedals.

4. Not caring about power 

We all know that each stompbox has specific power requirements and not paying attention to this can damage the pedal. That said, that's not the only reason you should be concerned about which power supply you are using. 

While it may be tempting to opt for a cheaper power supply for your board - especially if you've just spent all your cash on pedals - you could be doing your effects a disservice and adding a lot of unwanted noise to your setup. 

That's why I always recommend an isolated power supply - in other words, one where each output powers one pedal only and the power lines do not cross. Not only will this ensure all of your pedals get a consistent amount of current, but it will also help get rid of unwanted noise. 

Learn more: Guitar effect pedal power supplies: what you need to know.

5. Maxing out the gain

Most players will have a few gain pedals on their 'board. From a main overdrive and boost to fuzz and distortion, these days, it's rare to have only one source of gain on your 'board. So, with that in mind, it's important to make sure your pedals play nicely together. 

Stacking gain pedals can lead to some brilliant and harmonically rich sounds and is the secret to a lot of the pro-guitar sounds you hear live or on records. 

The mistake I see more often than not is players maxing out the gain of their first drive pedal, meaning when they stomp on their boost or another drive, their tone falls apart, resulting in a thin and scratchy sound. This is due to a lack of headroom. So I suggest turning the gain down on all your pedals and allowing the combined stomps to deliver the amount of gain you need. 

6. Using too many pedals

It's so tempting to have a vast collection of pedals - I'm certainly guilty of this - but in reality, additional pedals won't result in a better or more exciting tone. 

An excessive amount of pedals on one board can not only introduce noise but can also complicate your setup, resulting in you spending more time tap-dancing than actually playing the guitar. 

In my view, it's more important to prioritise essential pedals and avoid overcrowding your pedalboard with redundant effects. This will result in a cleaner-sounding rig and should make your life easier when you are playing live.

7. Neglecting pedalboard ergonomics

I've covered the order in which pedals are placed in terms of signal flow, but there's actually more to building the ultimate pedalboard than that. It's crucial all your pedals are accessible and that the stomps that are frequently turned off and on during a set are easy to get to, and that buttons aren't too close together. 

Placing frequently used pedals within easy reach and considering the size and shape of the pedals for comfortable foot control is incredibly important, and you should spend a fair amount of time working out the optimal placement to ensure your performances go without a hitch. 

8. Not using a buffer

In recent years, it seems every pedal boasts that it's true bypass like it's a badge of honour, but an entire pedalboard of true bypass pedals will likely cause some tonal problems. 

If you have a large 'board, then the long cable runs and numerous pedals can introduce signal loss and high-frequency roll-off - not ideal if you're trying to achieve the greatest guitar tone of all time. 

Adding a buffer pedal at the beginning or end of the signal chain can help maintain the integrity of the guitar's signal and prevent tonal degradation. 

Want to know more? Check out our guide to true bypass vs pedal buffers.  

9. Not utilizing your effects loop

If you are a fan of super lush delays and spacious reverbs but you aren't using your amp's effects loop, then you may not be getting the best out of your pedals. 

It's not exactly wrong to plug all your pedals directly into the front end of your amp, but particularly if you use a fair amount of gain with your time-based effects, then the effects loop can help you gain better control of your ambient effects and stop them washing out your entire sound. 

An effects loop essentially allows you to insert your pedals in between the preamp and power section of your amplifier, meaning your delays and reverbs won't get muddied up by the excessive amount of gain hitting the front end of your cranked tube amp. 

 Learn more: how does the guitar effects loop work? 

10. Forgetting backup plans

We all know that things will go wrong at gigs. Whether it's problems with the monitor mix or your drummer having one too many and transforming your lo-fi indie band into a thrashcore group for one night only, you are guaranteed that things will go awry at some point - and of course, this extends to your pedals. 

So with that in mind, having a backup plan is crucial. While I can't help with your drummer's tempo-keeping, I can recommend that you always carry spare cables, batteries and even a few essential pedals to ensure if something on your board goes down, your performance can carry on. 

Looking for even more stompbox advice? Our buyer's guides are here to help

• Find your perfect tone with the best multi-effects pedals
• Get pedal loopy with the best looper pedals
• Add one of the best guitar tuners to your board
• Give your tone a shake-up with the best tremolo pedals
• These are the best guitar effects pedals in all categories
• On a tight budget? Here are the best cheap guitar pedals

Norway's Årabrot sprawls the shadows between stomping rock riffs and brooding Nordic noir, but when we meet guitarist / vocalist and founder Kjetil Nernes we find a pedalboard without excess and full of potential. It combines his bass and guitar rig with every component utilised for maximum efficiency as the band take their experimental sound around the world. 

"I'm playing an Electrical Guitar Company baritone and basically the idea is I have a guitar rig and I have a bass rig combined," Kjetil tell us. Let's take a closer look. 

Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner 

"I'm also using this as a splitter. So one side goes out to the bass rig and then the other one is the guitar rig." 

Fulltone OCD

"This is a pedal I've used for so many years. I play HiWatt amplifiers and for me at least, the Electrical Guitar Company guitar into the OCD, into the HiWatt is basically what makes my sound. That's the main sound and it works really well.

"I've tried a bunch of other pedals but I always come back to the good old OCD. I think this probably is the fourth one because [pedals] break down and there's always something. Also I've heard some people say the earlier versions are different and better than the new versions. But honestly I can't tell any difference – they're all good aren't they."

• The FX files: Fulltone OCD

Gamechanger Audio Plasma distortion 

For some songs I need that extra: you go from loud to even louder. Or from ugly to even uglier. Welcome, Mr Plasma from Gamechanger Audio. This is a really interesting pedal. It has this Xenon filling that somehow charges it. 

"There are certain sections where I play a solo, or whatever you would call it, and that's when I kick in this guy. Also there's a couple of other song that just need that extra grit and this is a phenomenal pedal. It's crazy – that's what it is, and you can get a lot of very cool sounding grit out of it."

Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine 

"This is the only effect pedal that I'm using, and I'm using it as a sort of reverb really. There's a lot of sonic stuff you can do with it; you can freeze the tone, all kinds of latching but I'm keeping it quite simple. It creates this lush kind of reverby sound that I'm using for certain sections. 

"So there's a couple of bit where I'm using this guy but mostly it's all amplification and the OCD. So that's the guitar side…"

Electro-Harmonix Bass Big Muff Pi

"I set it to a normal setting and what I do, to put it simply, is run it to the bass side for the verse and then kick it in on the guitar side for the chorus. That's usually how it works and the setting for it is also quite simple. 

"Through the set there are a couple of songs that need a little more dirt and then I open up the tone and the sustain.

"I try to keep it as simple as possible because I'm also singing. I found out if I have more pedals than four or three or one I start to forget words and I need to remember those words!"

Pedalboard tour with Maybeshewill's Robin Southby and John Helps

Metal mainstays Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth, nu-metal titans Korn, Slipknot and Limp Bizkit, and beyond to modern metal pioneers Malevolence, Spiritbox and Sleep Token, all share one massive thing in common; a killer guitar tone that will melt your face off if you get too close. This high-gain, brutal tone is something many guitarists are chasing, but there is a small problem - this sound does not come cheap. All the top artists in this field rely on a slew of effects pedals to achieve this hellraising sound, and it can get pricey pretty quickly.

Here at MusicRadar, we've set ourselves a challenge. We wanted to put together a giggable, impressive-sounding metal pedalboard that could easily go toe to toe with a professional 'board for under $500/£450. 

We wanted to prove just how far modern pedals have come, particularly the bottom end of the market. We strongly believe that the golden age of effects wasn't in the '70s, with the birth of the compact pedal, but today! In reality, pedal technology has never been better and guitarists have never had so much choice. 

So, what better way to demonstrate how good budget pedals are right now than tackling one of the most challenging sounds to nail; metal. As well as showcasing our favourite inexpensive pedals in each of our chosen categories, we've also made sure to include a money-no-object alternative for those who aren't all too concerned about the budget and just want the gnarliest tone possible, no matter the cost.

Metal pedalboard essentials

Obviously, before we can assemble the ultimate metal pedalboard, we must first decide what the most important stompboxes are to bring the doom. At the top of the list is, of course, a high-gain distortion pedal. This pedal will provide the bedrock of our tone, so it's critical that we choose a stomp that's not only affordable but versatile enough to cover a wide range of sub-genres and playing styles. Next is the boost. Every guitarist needs a way to elevate their tone for a solo or lead break, but it can be tricky for metal players to find a boost that plays well with an already gained-up amp - so whatever boost we choose must be able to handle a high-gain tone. 

With that in mind, a noise gate is a must for a furiously filthy 'board such as this one. With so much gain dialled in, it won't be long before the hum and squeals become unbearable, so a powerful noise gate should keep that in check. 

Moving on, we get to the more fun end of the pedalboard, the effects. Now, while it's true that some metallers don't use that many effects, there are still a few that can be found on most heavy pedalboards. A good, versatile delay is a welcomed addition to any rig, so we needed to add one here. Whether it's to add dimension to lead lines or enrich clean parts, delay pedals can transform a guitar part. Finally, we needed a modulation of some kind. While we could've chosen a phaser, flanger, or tremolo, and either of them would've been a viable choice, we instead opted for chorus. Favoured by the likes of Zakk Wylde, Alexi Laiho and countless others, this is an extreme music staple and most definitely needs to be on our affordable metal pedalboard. 

Distortion

The TC Electronic Fangs has a very simple mission statement - to deliver high-gain thrash tones to the masses, and we are happy to report that it certainly achieves its goal. There is so much gain on tap from this plucky distortion pedal that you really need to hear it to believe it. The Fangs will happily cover a wide spread of metal sub-genres, from thrash to doom, death metal and metalcore, to name a few. 

The secret weapon of the Fangs is the switch located in the centre of the pedal, which allows users to choose between Raw, Fat or Scoop mode. This convenient control gives you advanced command over the mid frequencies, and as you know, that's an incredibly influential frequency range for metal guitar. 

Raw mode is ideal for those seeking classic '80s metal, Fat will bring the house down with a thick and powerful tone, while Scoop mode harkens back to the distinctive tones found in nu-metal. 

Okay, we've covered an impressive, affordable distortion pedal, but the KHDK Dark Blood is impressive for a totally different reason - this pedal is brutal-sounding! Brought to you by Metallica's Kirk Hammett and his pedal-making business partner, David Karon, this is a beautifully crafted stompbox that's unequivocally not hardwired to self-destruct but rather stand the test of time and deliver a bone-crushing tone that will leave your audience stunned. 

With an onboard noise gate, the background noise is kept to a minimum, meaning you can crank the gain without fear. Better yet, the Doom knob can be used to dial in a monstrous amount of low-end, which results in a meaty tone that is full, thick and heavy! 

The tone is further tweakable, thanks to the Hi/Lo switch. We found that the Lo setting is ideal for rhythm, while the Hi mode is more suited to solos and lead breaks. For us, this is a super versatile pedal that more than delivers the tone you'd expect from something bearing the Hammett name. 

Read our full KHDK Dark Blood review

Boost

The humble Ibanez Tube Screamer has been a metal pedalboard mainstay for decades and you may be shocked to discover that it's actually a very inexpensive pedal to purchase. Technically an overdrive and not a stand-alone boost, the Tube Screamer is beloved by guitarists who prefer the more extreme end of the music spectrum as well as blues aficionados. 

Famed for the way it tightens the low-end frequencies, some guitarists choose to always have the Tube Screamer on to sweeten their distortion tone. Others use the mean green tone machine's pronounced mid-range to their advantage as a boost for solos. 

However you use the Ibanez Tube Screamer, one thing we can all agree on is that this is a must-have pedal for any metal pedalboard. 

This boutique-level boost from Walrus Audio is a somewhat unique take on a simple unit designed to make your guitar louder. Featuring two independent boost circuits running in parallel, this pedal is extremely versatile and has plenty of volume on tap - perfect for making sure your sweep-picking is heard over the thunderous double kick and down-tuned bass guitar. 

The bright boost is a JFET circuit that delivers a high headroom jolt of volume that's clean and clear, with an abundance of high-end sparkle. The other boost circuit is a mid-boost that drives the midrange frequencies - which can be targeted at 1kHz or 800Hz via the toggle switch - meaning you'll most certainly be heard. 

Better yet, the Emissary also features a momentary function for a quick burst of boost for short sections. Simply press and hold to temporarily activate the effect and release your foot when you want to return to your normal tone. 

Noise Gate

Yes, we get it, the noise gate isn't exactly a sexy guitar pedal, but let's face it when you play with this much gain, you need one. Luckily, they don't need to cost the earth - especially if you turn to Behringer. 

The Behringer NR300 is a pretty basic affair, but to be honest, that suits us. Featuring just a duo of controls - Threshold and Decay - you can dial in the perfect setting in seconds. What's more, you can even change the NR300 to be a dedicated mute switch at the flick of a switch. 

So, if you're looking for a basic noise gate that will shun your unwanted hum and noise to the depth of hell - but is also easy on the wallet - then the Behringer NR300 is the pedal for you.  

Brent Hinds, Misha Mansoor, Tosin Abasi, Devin Townsend, Willie Adler, Zacky Vengeance, Christian Martucci, Scott Ian, and Dominic Landolina are just a few of the names that call on the noise-reduction powers of the ISP Decimator. 

There's a reason all these metal heavy-hitters depend on this pedal - it's simple, solid and works perfectly every single time. With just a solitary threshold control, this pedal couldn't be easier to dial in - simply set the threshold to the optimal level for you and forget about it. 

Yes, this pedal is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer, but this is a professional-grade noise gate for those serious about their tone. 

Delay

Delay is the perfect effect to add a little pizazz to certain guitar parts, be that depth to a solo or a rhythmic flare to riffs. Now, when we want an affordable delay unit that retains the quality of the pricier pedals, we always turn to the Danish stompbox masters, TC Electronic. 

Now, when scrolling through the extensive TC catalogue, we weren't exactly short of options when it comes to high-quality delay pedals. The ever-popular Flashback, Echobrain and Alter Ego were all considered, but in the end, we decided to opt for the stunning clarity of the Prophet delay. 

For us, the TC Prophet gave us the modern, bright, crystal-clear delay we were looking for. An added bonus was the onboard 3-position switch, which allows you to instantly set the maximum length of the delay time - 200, 500 or 1300 ms - meaning you spend more time riffing than faffing with your pedal. 

Everyone from James Hetfield and bandmate Kirk Hammett to Tony Iommi, Adam Jones, Mick Thomson, John 5, and many, many more have used the original Line 6 DL4 in a live or studio setting - making this one of the most widely used delay pedals in the metal world. 

So, you can imagine how excited the guitar community was when Line 6 announced they were making the long-awaited sequel to this much-loved delay. The new unit kept the features that made players fall for the original DL4 but shrunk down the massive enclosure into a more pedalboard-friendly format while adding a few valuable extras. 

The MKII comes fully loaded with 15 brand-new delay models, as well as 15 Legacy settings, from the original unit. So no matter the sound you're looking for, you'll find it here.

Chorus

Chorus isn't just for recreating the lush, clean guitar sounds of '80s pop or alternative; it can also enrich the heavier side of tone as well. Whether used to beef up cleaner parts or to mimic the sound of two guitars, the chorus is a valuable addition to any metal pedalboard. 

When trying to pick an affordable chorus pedal, there was only going to be one option that got a slot on our hypothetical 'board, the outstanding Electro-Harmonix Neo Clone - even if this pedal was twice the price, it would still make the grade for us. 

This simple pedal houses the same bucket brigade chip as its big brother, the Small Clone, and just like its brethren, it's also a true analogue circuit. With a single Rate control and a switch for the depth, this pedal is simple, robust and sounds incredible.

Okay, if the Neo Clone kept things simple, then the Visitor goes in the opposite direction, bringing a trio of modulation to the table and a wealth of controls. 

Something special happens when you run two modulation pedals together, and that's exactly what Old Blood Noise Endeavors are trying to recreate in a single unit. On the surface, the Visitor seems like a fairly standard modulation pedal, with the option to choose between tremolo, chorus and phaser, but things get very interesting once you engage one of the parallel secondary modulation options. 

This pedal will happily do simple chorusing and wide phaser sweeps, but it can also take your tone into dark, scary new territories, so you may want to be careful with this one. 

Pedalboard & Power

Okay, to finish off this behemoth of a metal pedalboard, you're going to need power. Obviously, there are many well-made and robust pedal power supplies out there, but for our purposes, the T-Rex Fuel Tank Junior 5-Way Pedal Power Supply is easily one of the best around. The aptly named Fuel Tank has just the right amount of juice to power all five of our pedals, supplying a quintet of 9V fully isolated outputs that are both clean and quiet - perfect. 

For the pedalboard itself, we've opted for the On-Stage GPB2000. This compact pedalboard is specifically designed to take five standard-sized pedals - ideal for this build - and even comes with its own padded carry bag. Made from aluminium and clocking in at 2.75 lbs, this 'board is extremely lightweight and very durable. We're in no doubt that this affordable pedalboard can handle the harsh conditions of the road. 

To connect all the pedals together, you'll need a few patch cables. Now, while we always recommend getting the best guitar cables you possibly can, if you are sticking to a tight budget, then you can easily grab six Donner Patch Cables for as low as $20/£10! Okay, they aren't as high quality as something from a big name such as Ernie Ball or Planet Waves, but for this price, they are ideal to get you started. 

Related buyer's guides

• Need a riff machine? Here are the best metal guitars
• These are the best distortion pedals for metal
• Find your high-gain hero with the best metal amps
• Enter seventh heaven with the best 7-string guitars

UK post-rock band Maybeshewill began with university friends Robin Southby and John Helps back in 2005 before expanding into a five-piece. The band disbanded in 2016 and fully reunited four years later. It's great to have them back, especially as they've brought their pedalboards to guide us through. 

Forget the idea post-rock is all about huge 'board full of complex niche effects pedals; Robin and John illustrate it's often about how you use classic units, and the former has actively downsized his. Although one particular ambient reverb pedal from Walrus Audio actually inspired the tones on 2021's appropriately-titled comeback album, No Feeling Is Final.

Let's take a closer look with the video and interview below…

Robin Southby

Robin: "I recently downsized my 'board. I had quite a big one before with a bunch of space on and a few pedals I never used. I was kind of into the idea of having a bit more of a minimal setup. I've gone with really basic stuff – just the bare essentials."

TC Electronic PolyTune Mini 

"This is great in terms of space saving."

Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini 

"This is also really good from a size point of view but sounds just like the full-size Tube Screamer. So I use that in conjunction with the OD-3 for my distortion sounds. The Tube Screamer Mini boosts for lead parts."

Boss OD-3 Overdrive

"The OD-3 is the main drive and between this and the Tube Screamer they can  sound pretty heavy, to be fair. I used a REVV G3 for a while and it coloured the sound quite a lot – a bit too metal sounding. This is more of a transparent sort of thing and it still goes gainy and sounds pretty heavy."

Boss DD-3 Digital Delay 

"The DD-3 is usually set with feedback on max. For the end of a lot of our songs I just kick it on and it does a noisy swell and then you can flick between the modes and get a cool glitchy cutting in and out sort of thing. Then you can play with the delay time and it sounds noisy and nice." 

Electro Harmonix Canyon Delay

" The Canyon is a pretty sick pedal – it does a bunch of different delay sounds. I use it mainly on the Memory Man setting which has got a nice emulation of one. It's got tap tempo as well which is pretty cool. This provides the main delay sound."

• Electro-Harmonix Canyon review

TC Electronic Hall Of Fame Reverb 

"'I've had this for ages. It's basically on the Church sound which has got that real big post-rock reverb, which is great. Sometimes I take the level down a bit for different songs.

"This 'board is pretty simple but it covers all the bases. You can get quite a lot of versatility out of the Canyon especially as it does other delay sounds. So that can be pretty useful.

"You just plug this pedalboard in, it does what you need it to do and I'm really happy with it." 

John Helps

John: "I use a Marshall JVM 410 head which does most of the heavy lifting in terms of tone in my setup so this footswitch is doing most of the work while we're playing."

There's clean, drive and distortion across these switches and the JVM head lets you set a preset in the head. It has a clean channel, drive channel and two distortion channels. Each of those can be three different stages of gain so it gives you loads of control over the tone on every level of gain.

"I have a reverb set on the fourth switch but I don't really use it to be honest."

Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner 

"It has lovely bright lights on the display which is wicked in hazy dark venues!"

Electro-Harmonix Slammi Plus Polyphonic Pitch Shifter and Electro Harmonix Pitch Fork

"These are pitch pedals. The Slammi is used in a couple of songs for whammy-type pitch effects, but not a great deal. 

"The Pitch Fork I basically use as substitute for down-tuning the guitar for specific songs. I don't really like to change the tuning for the guitar – most of our stuff is in drop C# but there are a few songs where it needs to go lower so we use the Pitch Fork to get the guitar down an octave and make it all a bit heavier when it needs to be."

Boss DD-500 Delay 

"From there everything else is in an effects loop and we come back to the DD-200 Delay in the amp's effects loop. I basically have one delay setting which I don't really use during songs but use it for tails out of sections and songs to sustain things a bit. It's way more complicated that it needs to be for that.

"But it's nice to have something that's versatile because a lot of these pedals get used in the studio as well as live. So this is kind of a delay workhorse."

Walrus Audio Slö Multi Texture Reverb

"This is my main reverb, though it's perhaps a bit washier than I would like. But it's the reverb that we used on almost all of our new record. Loads of tone were done with this Slö from Walrus Audio. It's really great; pretty versatile and sounds really good."

Boss RV-5 Reverb 

"I always have it set to the Modulate reverb mode – we've always described it as the I Like Trains sound, if you know that band their reverb has a very distinctive sound and that is all the RV-5.

"When I'm playing live I choose between [this and the Slö] depending on how I'm feeling in the song. I don't really have a set one I go to. They're relatively similar but the RV-5 has more of the wavy, modulated sound." 

JHS Pedals Mute Switch

"It just switches my sound off completely. We have a few songs where it's just a real abrupt stop and that lets me just do that without worrying about the reverb tails.

"It's a really simple setup – I have had much more complicated pedalboards in my time but for this most recent album touring cycle this has been the one I've gone for."

Maybeshewill are releasing their first two albums – Not For Want Of Trying and  Sing The Word Hope in Four-Part Harmony – on vinyl for the first time. Preorder both at mybshwll.bandcamp.com

Maybeshewill play Portals Festival in London on 28 May. More info at maybeshewill.net

Hendrix? Gilmour? Malmsteen? Not for Johnny Marr, he looks further under the radar for his ultimate guitar hero. A figure he holds in such reverence he admits he turned down the chance to meet them. But who?

"I was offered the opportunity to meet John McLaughlin, I don't know whether he's aware of this, only a few months ago and I elected not to," Marr revealed to Shaun Keaveny on his podcast The Line-Up. 

It seems Marr was simply too in awe to meet his hero. "He's the greatest guitar player that's ever lived, John McLaughlin," Marr adds of his ultimate admiration for the jazz fusion maestro. "He's not everybody's [cup of tea] because of his choice in music, because he's coming from jazz and fusion and all that, but the album My Goal's Beyond is absolute genius music. And the early Mahavishnu Orchestra stuff."

Indeed Marr reiterated to Keaveny how he consciously didn't and still doesn't draw too much influence from past rock traditions in an effort to create a genuinely fresh style for guitar. 

"I feel almost like I have a duty to keep the guitar as modern in context as I can," he explains. "It's very easy to switch off and find yourself being too reverential to the past because obviously guitar music and guitar rock established itself very firmly in the '60s and '70s. 

"I Can See For Miles by The Who – you can listen to that, or Hendrix, and go, 'Oh god that's the best way to say it' but it is 50 years later, and at the same time one of the things that really inspired me as a youngster was the sound of glam rock and people like Sparks, who are still doing it. [When I heard] This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us, it sounded so wide awake and modern. There was something cutting edge about that. 

"I want to have that sense of modernity, I want to keep that sense of modernity, because it's very easy to fall back into old tropes with the guitar." 

However Marr did reveal an unexpected blues influence on his work with The Smiths. 

"Funnily enough Howlin' Wolf and John Lee Hooker were big touchstones for me in The Smiths at the time. I mean we didn't make that kind of music but I was listening to a lot of that… I've got no problem with that. I like it for what it is, but I just think guitar culture, one of the things that excited me when I was a school leaver was the opportunity to take guitar into the future."

And he sense that kindred spirit in his often unsung post-punk peers too.

"I recognised that in Will Sergeant from Echo & The Bunnymen, and John McGeoch from Magazine. I think Robert Smith doesn't get enough credit for what he does on the guitar – A Forest was a real game-changer, I think."

"My generation of musicians, we had this idea after punk of going forward. It's this idea that all the great stuff that was happening; building on that and trying to make it futuristic. Guitar culture + futurism is the great equation for me. So I try to make my records sound modern really."

Even so, Marr is not a player that springs to mind when we think of big effects rigs onstage. But his studio pedalboards are a different story… 

Unveiling his new second pedalboard at his Crazy Face Factory studio, he's clearly loyal to his favourite brands – one is entirely made up of Carl Martin units and the other is Electro-Harmonix, including the Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai, Cathedral Reverb, EHX Tortion, C9 Organ Machine, B9 Organ Machine, Synth9, MEL9, Mod Rex Polyrhythmic Modulator and the Superego +.

Are you detecting a theme here? In the studio Marr is a clearly serious sonic explorer., and he's clearly keen on synth sound but also knows where to draw the line. There's that futurist spirit coming through.

The Carl Martin 'board covers the more traditional tonal fare compared with the AC-Tone, PlexiTone and Hot Drive N' Boost overdrive pedals. Plus the Compressor / Limiter, DeLayla XL delay pedal, HeadRoom spring reverb and Chorus XII.

Looks like he's sorted for guitars too… 

• Check out both parts of Johnny Marr's appearance on The Line-Up with Shaun Keaveny here

Cardinal Black are about to play the Royal Albert Hall supporting Peter Frampton and we'll be honest; that's the kind of venue Chris Buck's guitar playing deserves. The gifted South Wales band are the perfect home for Chris's soulful sonics and the songcraft on their recently-released debut January Came Close speaks volumes. But we want to know all about the effects pedals behind it – and Chris has a feast for us here.

A two-layered Schmidt Array smorgasbord of a pedalboard (with a side dish mini 'board too); it's full of carefully considered choices. And as we find out, Chris is pragmatic about digital modelling… 

The GigRig G2

"It's kind of the brain of the pedalboard: everything bar one pedal actually runs through that. Then you can see we've got labels for different songs which then control different patches or presets on the Line 6 HX Stomp XL. 

"So that pretty much controls everything and saves me doing too much of a Michael Flatley through the course of a set."

Mythos Pedals Golden Fleece 

"That's a single knob fuzz pedal; pretty intense in isolation so it gets stacked a lot with different overdrive pedals. whether that's the Black Box or the King Of Tone, which we'll come to.

"From there we go into the G2 and it's kind of run in series from the G2…"

Snouse Black Box  2

"Pretty much a one-to-one recreation of the old Marshall Bluesbreaker pedal from the '90s, sans idiosyncrasies or inconsistencies that you inevitably  get with a 20-30-year-old pedal. 

"I've got an original Bluesbreaker that sounds amazing and sounds pretty much the same as the Black Box to be honest, but it's intermittent to say the least. So having the Black Box takes the worry out of that and sounds every bit as good."

Next to the King Of Tone, I probably get the most use of this during the course of the set. It's one of my favourite overdrive pedals.

Great Eastern FX Small Speaker Overdrive 

"Better than any pedal I've ever tried that does the sound of a small guitar amp about to blow up – it does that cranked Tweed thing, right on the edge of implosion. It's just a really cool sounding pedal.

"The Low control on that is really useful. As much as controlling the lows it generally controls how much it farts out, which is quite nice.

"If you stack that with the Mythos Mjolnir that's a really cool sound. Speaking of which…" 

Mythos Pedal Mjolnir Overdrive 

"I get grief for saying the name wrong every time I talk about it. It's Zach's [Broyles. Mythos founder] take on a Klon type of circuit. 

"It's particularly pokey in the midrange and you can see I've got the tone set fairly high as well, so that's a last ditch, 'I need to poke through' and I turn that on."

AnalogMan King Of Tone 

"I bought my Analog Man a fair few years ago – we're probably talking about 2017 and I think I waited about 18 months for mine. I do believe the waiting list is up around three or four years now so it's getting insane. Down to Mike Piera's exacting standards and he doesn't want to compromise on those.

"Obviously MXR has brought out the Duke Of Tone as well which I'm yet to try – it's based one the single-channel Prince Of Tone as opposed to [the King Of Tone] which, if I understand correctly, is essentially two Prince Of Tones in one box. 

"This is the standard version, it's not the higher gain version, although having tried the higher gain version I can attest to there not being a great deal of difference between the two to be honest.

"If I'm ever short of readies I can probably stick that on Reverb and get a couple of quid for it but seeing as it is my main overdrive pedal throughout the set I'm not going to be doing that anytime soon. I'll probably resort to selling my body before I sell that."

Jackson Audio Bloom 

"We're on top of the 'board now. This is a compressor pedal and for a very long time I was using the Origin Effects Cali76 and it would probably still be there if it wasn't for the fact it's on my bass player's [Sam Williams] 'board, who nicked it when I wasn't looking. Apparently it's more important to be on his 'board than mine.

"In lieu of that this is an amazing sounding compressor, with the added advantage of being to control your EQ a little bit as well. So we've got the Mid, we've got the Treble. Invariably when you turn on a compressor you get a decrease in top end so obviously being able to dial that back in on EQ control is a particularly nice feature.

"It's got a boost built in as well, which I don't really use to be honest. It's got different compression emulations as well, which I haven't really dug into because it just sounds great in standard mode."

Xotic Effects EP Booster 

"The Xotic EP Booster is my solo boost and has been for a good number of years now. It's just a fantastic sounding pedal and just kind of makes you louder. 

"To be honest I could probably get away with having that on all the time and then getting another one for solo boosts. It's a recreation of the preamp circuit from an Echoplex but just does wonders for your tone, irrespective of whether you use it as a solo boost or it is always on. So I'll probably get another one of those at some point."

Mooer Trelicopter

"Not much to say about that really; it's a great little tremolo pedal. It's set at it's maximum setting so it does that Tom Morello-esque chop. 

"Imagine the start of Green Day's Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, that's pretty much how that's set."

Catalinbread Echorec 

"The Catalinbread Echorec kind of interchangeable [for me] really with the Dawner Prince Boonar. The Echorec is there at the moment, for whatever reason. 

"I bought that on the day of its release going back many many moons ago, because I'd read about the [Binson] Echorec and not ever having tried one, I convinced myself this was going to be a sound that was for me. Fast forward the better part of ten years and it's still there. 

"It's just a great sounding Echorec emulation."

Line 6 HX Stomp XL

"We're into the latter-stage brain of the 'board now with the Line 6 HX Stomp XL, sacrilegiously so in the eyes of many tone purists but this controls all the delays and modulations for the most part. 

"It's just a great sounding pedal; we've got different presets saved within the G2 and for example, 'Rise Up' here – plug: the first single from our debut album – changes to the Rise Up preset. I've got two Cosmos Echoes within that preset then, as well as a slap delay we can control independently.

"If it's just kind of the standard Cardinal Black setting which has got a plate reverb, analogue chorus, a Poly Sustain – which is kind of Line 6's take on the EHX Freeze – and it comes into use at various time in the set.

"We've got a tape echo, a slapback and last but not least, a harmonic tremolo. So that gets a hell of a lot of use. A particularly versatile pedal that's obviously being controlled by MIDI via the G2. That's the extent of my MIDI knowledge; I have zero idea of anything beyond that."

Gurus Echosex 3 

"Again, it's based on the single head of an Echorec which is one of my favourite delays of all time. It just does a single head emulation of that particularly nicely and as you can see, it's incredibly dusty. You never see these things until you whack a big old light on it."

ThorpyFX Deep Oggin Chorus/Vibrato

"Moving out of the 'board via the patch bay and into the auxiliary board, or whatever we want to call it,  we've got the ThorpyFX Deep Oggin. Arguably the best chorus pedal I've ever tried and gets used particularly heavily in two tracks in the Cardinal Black set. Just an incredibly versatile chorus.

"I did the demo of that for Adrian when it first came out and probably had more fun doing that video than probably any other I've done, just dialling in different classic chorus sounds. "

Boss RE-202 Space Echo 

"A modern recreation or emulation of the classic Space Echo. That gets used on a track called I Don't Care. I've got a preset within that in memory bank number one then we've got a ramp function on the tap control which is particularly cool – you can take peoples' heads off!

"If you hold [the first footswitch] down you get almost like a faux freeze effect that loops and gets progressively louder and a little bit more intense, which is very cool."

Universal Audio UAFX Golden Reverberator

"Last but not least we have the Universal Audio Golden Reverberator this we have two different [reverbs]. The one saved is a '63 spring emulation. I tend not to use that too much if I've got my amps – I've got a Fender Pro Reverb over there that has a gorgeous spring reverb in it, as does the Victory Copper. That's a kind of failsafe in case I don't have reverb for any reason."

"The one that does get a lot of use is the plate… or the hall, I can't remember what it's set to now because I set it up such a long time ago now. It's just a really cool, long, slightly epic delay that gets used in more ambient parts of the set."

Chris Buck on Clapton, Blackmore and the 10 albums that changed his life

It's no secret Pearl Jam look up to The Who, and it looks like guitarist Mike McCready was channeling the spirit of Pete Townshend as he went about destroying his Strat, amp and pedalboard at the end of Pearl Jam's last show of their triumphant and troubled European tour.

After a few gig cancellations due to Eddie Vedder's vocal issues, the 25 July show at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam went ahead. So who can blame them for blowing off some steam, right? Well this is a whole new level.  

During the set's final song – a cover of Neil Young's Rockin' In The Free World – McCready attacked not just his Sunburst Strat, but his guitar amp and pedalboard too.

Credit to YouTuber George from the Netherlands for the excellent footage above.

We're assuming this was the 2021 Custom Shop version of his favourite 1959/60 vintage Strat at the very most, and even it was… ouch: that's a $15,000 guitar! 

McCready first throws the, soon-to-be-ex, Strat straight at his cab. Then begins using the guitar to demolish what looks to be the front of his Rola Lead Custom head (a Seattle company). He then uses the guitar to push the head and its cab backwards. But he's far from done.

At this point the Strat's body is still kind of alive… it's attached to its neck at least. But then comes the breaking point; McCready swings it over head straight down on his pedalboard – including an unsuspecting Line 6 DL4 – while amused / shocked touring bandmate Josh Klinghoffer looks on and the guitar's body is splintered into pieces. 

McCready throws it down again, numerous guitar picks go flying, and somehow the strings are holding the broken pieces together. As if waking up out of a daze, the guitarist simply drops what's left of his Fender and walks away, leaving eager fans disappointed to not get a piece passed their way.

For those who are recoiling in horror right now, we would like to assure you that McCready has probably got it out of his system, but alas, he's a repeat offender…

Classic interview: Pearl Jam's Mike McCready 

When EarthQuaker Devices launched the Hizumitas Fuzz Sustainer back in November 2021 it was as though the Akron, Ohio pedal specialist had made one piece of an arcane puzzle available. 

The Hizumitas is a Wata signature fuzz pedal, a faithful recreation of the Boris guitarist’s vintage Elk BM Sustainer – a rare and ornery Japanese take on the Triangle Big Muff that has been crucial to her electric guitar tone. 

But it was only one piece. And Wata’s pedalboard remained something of a mystery, not so much as to what was on it but how she arranged her guitar effects pedals, carefully curating a signal path that would yield maximum dynamic range, and an opulently textured wall of fuzz noise when the occasion called for it.

Now, in the latest episode of EarthQuaker Devices’ Bored To Death YouTube series, Wata has peeled back the veil to offer a guided video tour and demonstration of her pedalboard, and to demystify her signal.

As you might expect, her ‘board is well stocked with fuzz pedals. Sharing space with the Hizumitas are fuzz pedals such as Mattoverse Electronic’s AirTrash – a pedal to make your guitar sound like “absolute garbage” – and the monstrous Dwarfcraft Shiva, and of course Wata’s signature MASF Watafuzz. And the Boss DS-1 distortion pedal plays a key role in allowing her to stack with the Hizumitas for a more aggressive sound. 

With pedals such as EQD’s Hummingbird tremolo, Aqueduct Tremolo and Avalanche Run stereo reverb and delay, and the Bananana Mandala glitch pedal she has plenty of pedalboard options for augmenting her tone.

Perhaps coolest of all is how Wata arranges her mis en place, with her vintage Roland Space Echo unit mounted shoulder height on her right hand side so she can adjust that it the fly.  Wata still uses an original unit, but with Boss releasing two pedalboard Space Echo variants this week, perhaps we will see this move to her pedalboard in future. 

Similarly, volume and wah pedals are arranged on the right hand side of her board, with Electro-Harmonix Freeze pedal is to her left to help cue in Takeshi. Check it out at the top of the page.

The Hizumitas Fuzz Sustainer was painstakingly recreated from Wata’s original Elk BM. Putting together a replica that sounded the same as the original unit took EQD’s Jamie Stillman over a year.

“Eventually I got up to seven revisions, and it took over the course of a year, sending it back and forth before I finally asked her to send me her pedal,” he said. “Because it was starting to sound so different from mine that I assumed that it must have been wired different. I actually took mine apart and measured each piece just to see what the tolerances were, and everything had drifted, pretty wildly.”

The Hizumitas is available now, priced $149 / £159. See EarthQuaker Devices for more.

It’s not everyday we get to use the words ‘power supply’ and ‘interesting’ together, but today certainly is. Wallet-friendly gear provider, Harley Benton has announced the release of a brand new pedalboard power supply, and it aims to recreate the response of a dying battery.

Why? Well, as tonesmiths will tell you, starving an analogue guitar pedal - particularly gain-based drives, fuzzes and distortions slightly of its required voltage can result in interesting and sometimes preferable sounds. Indeed, thousands of words have been written around Eric Johnson’s use of partially-dead Duracells for this very reason.

The Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO-3AC SAG is made of road-tough aluminium, measures 130x88x35mm [wxdxh] and weighs-in at 400 grams. 

It offers four isolated outputs, each of which are also filtered to eliminate noise and provide short-circuit protection for your pedals. The first two outputs can provide 9 volts each, but trim pots on the top of the unit allow for a reduction down to 4-volts. Similarly, the 18-volt maximum of outputs three and four can be reduced to 6 volts.

A fifth power output which can be used as a link to power a 12-volt pedal, or additional DC input PSUs, with LEDs indicating the status of each power output. As part of Harley Benton’s Modular series, the PowerPlant ISO-3AC SAG can connect to other HB Modular units for future pedalboard expansion. 

It comes with all the cables you need to get rigged-up out of the box, including 5x power jacks, an AC power cord and female-to-male ‘kettle’ connector. 

The Harley Benton PowerPlant ISO-3AC SAG is available now priced around £57. 

Pedalboard amps - that being a guitar pedal-based preamp/frontend with speaker emulation for going direct into a cab or PA system - have become big news in recent times. In the last few months we’ve seen offerings from Blackstar with its Dept.10 series, the Orange Guitar Butler, IK Multimedia’s X-Drive, Victory Kraken and more. 

Now, effects veteran Carl Martin has pulled up a chair at the pedalboard amp table with its new Ampster: a completely analogue, valve-driven preamp designed to either complement your current amp, or replace it entirely.

The single-channel Ampster gives us a set of familiar amp channel controls, with gain, three-band EQ, presence and a master volume control on the face of the pedal. 

Two footswitches offer LED colour-coded speaker emulation switching (red for 2x12” or green for 4x12”) and output muting. There’s even a window for you to take a look at that 12AX7! 

The back panel of the Ampster is well-stocked, too, with a three-position voicing switch which tailors the low end response, plus a ground lift switch to help eliminate any unwanted earth problems. 

Connectivity-wise, there’s a balanced XLR direct output for connecting straight to a PA or powered cab, effects send and return allowing you to route external pedals in the same way as an amp, a remote input for external foot-switching of the cabinet type, and a link output for routing your guitar’s dry signal to another amp or device.

Tonally, the Ampster delivers a clean-to-driven preamp sound, with some Marshall-y type overdrives at its higher gain settings. It’s powered by a 9v/1000mA PSU, which Carl Martin doesn’t actually provide with the Ampster due to  “various import regulations in different countries” but does suggest its PowerJack or similar power supply.

The Carl Martin Ampster is available now, priced at $299/€299.  

Legend of funk Leo Nocentelli has a signature Cry Baby wah pedal and it is a thing of beauty. Finished in gold and purple sparkle, with a green treadle grip emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis, the Cry Baby Mardis Gras is a celebration of his home town New Orleans.

Nocentelli is one of the greatest players to come out of the city. Listening to him play with The Meters, it as though his right hand is wired differently to other guitar players, at one with the groove. 

But like any guitar player playing funk, the wah pedal holds a special attraction, a vocal filter to accentuate the groove. Nocentelli used his most famously on tracks such as I Just Kissed My Baby, and his signature Mardis Gras is voiced to recreate that sweet, vocal electric guitar tone you hear on the record.

It has a deeper frequency range, much like Nocentelli’s JH-1 Hendrix signature wah. With the heel down, the centre frequency sits at 290 Hz to 310 Hz, and with the toe down its 290 Hz to 310 Hz. Like a regular Cry Baby, the pedal is activated by a toe-mounted switch. It takes a 9V batter or DC power supply.

Speaking to the Jim Dunlop site, Nocentelli spoke of how “master of the wah” Jimi Hendrix turned him on to the wah with tracks such as Machine Gun and Voodoo Chile, with Nocentelli picking up one for The Meters’ debut album and using it on Here Comes The Meter Man solo.

“I wasn’t into how to use it properly when we recorded that, but as time went on, I started using it more,” he said. “The song that really brought out the way I interpret the wah-wah was Just Kissed My Baby.”

To recreate the effect heard on the record, Nocentelli explained how you push the toe down for the higher notes, and move it to the heel position for the low notes – “It’s very meticulous and very methodical.” 

The Leo Nocentelli Cry Baby Mardi Gras Wah is available now, priced $199. See Jim Dunlop for more details.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors is one of the great pedalboard mixologists of our time, identifying less obvious but inspired effects combinations and selling the to the musically adventurous guitar player. 

Released in 2017, its Excess distortion/chorus/delay was one such example of its approach, augmenting a distortion pedal with chorus and modulation for some off-road sounds. Or was it a chorus/delay pedal augmented by distortion? 

Either way,  that concept has been refreshed, modernised, with the Excess V2 taking that same distortion, modulation and delay and housing it in a more compact enclosure, and adding extra controls so you can tease ever-more creative sounds from a unit that has distortion on tap, but also chorus, delay and harmonised delay.

Once more, it is a dual-footswitch design, with modulation on the left, distortion on the right, each highlighted by blue and red LEDs respectively. There are six dials arranged across the top of the pedal, with the top three Volume, Tone and Gain dedicated to the distortion, and the bottom Volume, Time and Depth controlling the modulation and delay. 

The distortion has plenty of range on it. You can run it as a low-gain overdrive pedal or dime it for saturated, hard-clipping distortion. As for the modulation, the Excess V2 presents a moveable feast of sounds, with a three-way toggle switch to select between delay, chorus and Fifth – a harmonized delay in which your signal is repeated a perfect fifth above the note your are playing. 

When in the Fifth mode, the harmonised – or pitch-shifted – delay can get weird as you turn the Depth control clockwise. This adds repeats like the feedback control on a regular delay would, the and the Excess V2 starts adding fifths to your original repeats, deepening the harmony.

The chorus mode is more straight down the line. Rate adjusts the speed of the LFO, Depth adjusts the width of the chorus, and the more you turn both clockwise, the more intense the effect gets. Delay, meanwhile, has a short maximum time of 125ms, and is designed for comb filter, doubling and slapback effects. If you max out the Depth control, the Excess V2 will threaten to self-oscillate, but will stop just short of that.

All this presents you with plenty of options to dial in electric guitar tones that range from the conventionally processed to plain old weird. 

But there’s a second toggle switch that allows you to run the modulation section into the distortion, with the potential for creating harmonically intense musical textures, in parallel for a notable volume boost and both effects effectively cohabiting but not speaking to each other, or with distortion feeding the modulation section for standard operation. Of course, pedals such as this question what “standard operation” means when it comes to guitar tone.

There is an internal trimpot that adjusts the mix of the modulation section. The factory setting is 50:50 wet/dry, but the wet signal can be cranked all the way up for pitch vibrato or weirder delay, or dialled back for more subtlety. Finally, there’s an expression pedal input so you can control Rate and Depth parameters on the fly.

The Excess V2 Distorting Modulator is available now, priced £199 / $209. See Old Blood Noise Endeavors for more details.

Halsey guitarist, session pro and guitar teacher Arianna Powell has offered a guided tour and demo of her pedalboard and shared some of the tone secrets behind her phenomenal sound.

Appearing on EarthQuaker Devices' Board To Death YouTube show, Powell walked through her 'board setup, which was a custom build put together by Dave Phillips at LA Sound Design.

As with many a session pro, Powell's signal chain is designed to offer the widest range of electric guitar tones possible, from earthy, analogue overdrive to ethereal soundscapes – made possible by some of EarthQuaker Devices' most outré delay and reverb pedals such as the Afterneath Enhanced Otherworldly Reverberator and Powell's favourite, the Avalanche Run, which combines reverb and stereo delay in one DSP-powered unit.

There are a number of EQD pedals on Powell's 'board, with the first in line an EarthQuaker Devices Hoof fuzz pedal, which offers a more versatile take on the Russian Muff, with its Shift knob offering comprehensive control of your mids and allowing it to sit in a mix better. “I like using that to kinda mimic or copy what a synth bassist is playing, and maybe add an octave to it,“ says Powell

Those octave effects will come from an Electro-Harmonix POG2, which Powell also uses for creating church organ-style tones. Elsewhere, Powell uses a Keeley Electronics Compressor Pro, J Rockett Tim Pierce and JHS Angry Charlie overdrive pedals.

There is a Strymon Timeline and a BigSky reverb in the mix, too, and another couple of EarthQuaker Devices stompboxes in the shape of the Sea Machine chorus pedal and a Spatial Delivery envelope filter.

Powell runs a pair of power supplies from Truetone and Voodoo Lab, with a buffer to counter any signal loss from running through so many pedals, and a TC Electronic Polytune guitar tuner, too. 

You can also check out Powell's playing on the new Halsey album, If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which was produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and is out now via Capitol.

The Foo Fighters lead guitar player Chris Shiflett has shared details of his touring pedalboard, revealing the epic array of stompboxes that feed his dual guitar amps setup. And he's also posted a pics of Dave Grohl and Pat Smear's 'boards too. 

Shifty's 'board has a number of his favourites on there. He's got a trio of Xotic Effects pedals, with an XW-1 wah pedal going into an SP Compressor and an EP Booster. Pedals come and pedals go, but for Shiflett, the small but mighty EP Booster has been a perennial for a number of years now.

Shiflett has previously described the EP Booster as his favourite pedal, and speaking to MusicRadar in 2019 he explained why it has stayed on his 'board over the years.  

“If there’s one pedal I cannot live without, it’s the EP Boost. I think that’s everybody’s go-to boost pedal,“ he said. “I don’t always have it on, mostly for leads. I’ll just kick it in here and there where I need it, if I  need a little extra. I also have it set somewhere around 12 o’clock.”

More oomph comes via a KTR another Shiflett regular, Klon KTR Professional overdrive pedal, which was launched in 2014 as a more affordable alternative to the Klon Centaur that was racking up crazy prices on the internet – and still does. It features a red enclosure and wry comment on the overheated second hand market for the original Centaur drives, with a new surface-mounted circuit, but now out of production, a KTR will set you back around £700 online.

But there are a few surprises, too, not least one a rare original design JHS VCR volume, chorus and reverb pedal. Launched as a signature pedal for Ryan Adams, JHS Pedals rebranded the VCR as the Space Commander in 2019 following sexual assault allegations against Adams – even offering existing customers the chance to have their original units replaced.

A pair of Strymon Timeline delay pedals dominate the 'board, with one being sent to his Friedman amplifier, the other to his Vox. As on previous rigs, Shiflett uses a Lehle Little Dual II for switching between the two. The Little Dual II is a max fidelity switcher with distinctive mushroom-shaped knobs for soft-switching.

The Strymon Timeline has heaps of features, but Shiflett likes to keep things straightforward. When they were on his 2019 rig, he only used the tape delay mode.

“I have a light 400ms, a heavy 400ms and a slapback,“ he said. “And that’s it. One of the 400ms settings is a couple of repeats, and the other is a lot of repeats. But it’s fun, we have a song where I kind of ape an Echoplex kind of feeding back thing. I just crank up the mix, and the repeats 100 per cent and then use the time to fuck with the pitch for a little bit. But for most of the set I have it on the slap, and that makes sense in this band.“

Shiflett's fuzz pedal of choice is the JHS Muffuletta, which with its multi-Muff circuit design is a popular choice on many a pro guitarist's pedalboard. Elsewhere, there are some reassuringly affordable choices, such as the Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail reverb pedal, an EVH Phase 90 phaser, an MXR M117R Flanger and a Boss CE-2W Waza Craft Chorus, which, for our money, is the best chorus pedal on the market.

For octave-shifting and pitch-shifting weirdness, there's the ever reliable EHX Micro POG – “I know they make the big fancier version with a lot more shit all over it, but I could never figure that out“ – and there's a TC Electronic PolyTune 3, which as guitar tuners go, is another MusicRadar favourite.

We might not have the resources to run a custom 'board such as Shiftlett's, with remote switches for most of the boxes – plus a Boss FS-5L latching footswitch – but there's plenty of inspiration to take from this, and it's always nice to see a guitar player from one of the biggest rock bands on the planet use gear that's within the budget of regular players.

But if you are looking to get in on Shiflett's favourite effects pedals, the flanger and phaser are essentials. ”[They're] probably my most go-to effects. They’re just classic rock-sounding to me.”

In his post Shiflett also revealed what looks like a blurred pic of Dave Grohl's pedalboard…

Note the word 'Aurora' labelled on one of the Boss DD-3 delays, a key song from third Foo Fighters album There Is Nothing Left To Lose. 

Grohl's minimal onstage pedal setup has been pretty much unchanged for years with a good 'ol MXR Phase 90 you'll hear on Breakout and a second DD-3 used in songs including Rope. 

Ad here's Pat Smear's pedalboard, as posted by Shiflett. Another relivately simple affair with a RJM LT Mastermind midi switcher, Boss BF-3 Flanger, Electro-Harmonix Neo Clone Chorus and an MXR Carbon Copy Analogue Delay. 

All great choices but Shiflett is clearly the pedalhead of the band! 

• Read more: Rig tour: Foo Fighters' Chris Shiflett 2019