____ BEST 12 PEDALS FOR 2022 ___ yes, my personal narrow minded faves :-)

 BEST PEDALS 2022 

For those very few that do not know my choice is always based on a pedal being a pedal that any Pro can use playing in a band doing a live gig whether you have a small audience of less than 100 or like me your band was the opening act for Rush with an audience in the thousands. It must transfer to Pro recordings. It must enhance a song. It can not be the damn song. In short it can inspire you to write a song but not dictate what you can or worse of all can not play.

VALETON GP-200LT Multi Effect Unit

I hate modelers. Why? The main reason is playing one 'feels' like when I have recorded a tune in a very good studio and the engineer did his magic using every artificial but clever audio plastic surgery procedure in the book to make it sound perfect and I am sitting there with my guitar not plugged in and miming along to my recorded track.

That said what I do like about them is all the plastic surgery is done in the box so you can easily make a world class recording stupidly cheap.

If you can not get a world class recording with this Valeton it 

is your composition and/or playing ability not this box.

At a price of $280.00 USD this is mind blowing. 

Yes, I said $280.00 USD.

SOLDANO SLO (Amp-in-a-Box)

When Mike Soldano designed and built his amp Metal tones were

created by ALL of the best 'Shredders' on the planet with a hot rodded Marshall and a few pedals. He manged to eliminate all that in a single amp. An amp that checked all the boxes and still never lost the rich harmonics and overtones of a Plexi. All others like Peavey 5150 and the MESA Dual/Rec contrary to popular myth did not start their designs from an actual Marshall. They simply ripped off his designed as their starting point. The pedal clones the amp with incredible accuracy and at an average price for most brand name and gourmet OD's at $230.00 USD

WALRUS AUDIO EONS FUZZ

It is basically a Fuzz with multiple clipping diodes filters and exceptional EQ so you can literally shape the tone of the Muff Fuzz types, the Tonebender's, Fuzz Faces and any of the many modern Fuzz types. It does a scary good job. I manged to clone 3 different Fuzz pedals I already owned and got a better sound than those 3 pedals gave me. I am down sizing my board so it has already paid for itself. It is $230.00 USD. I got almost that from selling just one of the Fuzz pedals it replaced.

MXR SURPER BADASS DYNAMIC DISTORTION

This pedal covers everything from a low gain transparency to a near transparent sound when pushed into near high gain. It has excellent dynamic range and follows the personal dynamics of your pick as you strike the strings hard or softly or anything in between. 

It also doubles as the best clean booster pedal I have ever owned.

It is especially impressive with semi acoustics guitars like a 

Gibson ES 335 where it keeps the clarity really 

needed when using a lot of full chords.

It is easily as good as the many transparent OD's that 

sell from two to three hundred yet it is $130.00 USD.

EARTHQUAKER DEVICES SPECIAL CRANKER

This pedal was meant to be a near novelty pedal. The idea was to give you the sound of a small practice amp with the volume dimed and the speaker was inadequate to handle it and was always on the verge of complete failure. 

Yes it does that convincingly. 

BIG BUT

With the treble and gain dimed, the voice switch switched to a germanium diode and the master volume at unity gain ...which is at a very low 9 o'clock a miracle happens. 

Plug in a Strat and it sounds like you have two amps on at once. One is a silver face Fender with a Surf music clean sound where you get the bell sound chime of a Strat pickup that is as clear as glass ...but on another amp beside it puts out a sweet old Tweed distortion. It is my dream sound for a Tele or a Strat and the damn thing sells for just $100.00 USD. It should have been named Special Paradise.

KEELEY HALO ANDY TIMMONS DUAL ECHO

It is loosely based off of the original Electro-Harmonix DeLuxe Memory Man. It adds true stereo, modulation, memory and more bells and whistles than Andy will ever use. The BIG DEAL is it is in a category of its own. You can get a good ol' vintage just turn on the echo and shred or you can get modern ambiance like sound. The thing is you get that modern sound by just hitting a switch and not being forced to use tap tempo so you can even use it. In short you can write a tune not using it and then when you play that same tune ..turn on that Sci Fi movie sound and just play. With ALL those other ambient delays it is not possible to do this. You need to have the tap tempo match the modulation or for example if you play a chord or a note it may ring out over your next one drastically dissonant. This forces you into constantly finding a compromise in the duration of your repeats. In short the delay writes the tune you do not. It is a case of the tail wagging the dog. 

It is a $300.00 USD sound for a $300 price. Forgivable but for many of us it will have to be forgettable. The price is $70 over maximum, putting it well into WTF territory. 

 

LPD PEDALS FIFTY 5 

Lawrence Petross is known among MIAB pedals lovers for making 3 of the very, very best on the planet. I have all 3 of the standard models but there are 3 Deluxe models each having 2 channels. 

The '55' is different. Not a MIAB. It is switchable between the old Fender Bassman and a Tweed. I know a couple of great players that use newer Fender amps and one of them uses it as his 'Go To' for OD and the second guy uses it as an 'Always On' pedal. 

Yes, many claim to use the best parts in their pedals but LPD part for part do. I am talking about parts at the 'Ouchy' prices. All hand made by Lawrence himself with many hours needed to finish your pedal. $200.00 USD is more than fair for a 'keeper'. Once on your board. Always on your board.  

 

BLACK STAR AMP1

A 100 watt pedalboard amp. You can get great Marshall and classic Fender sounds or run it straight thru to amp up a Modeler. It has memory and you can foot-switch channels. The basic sound is easily a 9 out of 10 against a good Tube amp or a modeler so it is a killer backup amp or even to be your main amp and wait for the day you can afford and feel a strong need for a Dream amp. Pete Thorn tours using one as a his backup amp. At only $500.00 USD it has zero serious competition. 

 

JHS SERIES 3 HARMONIC TREM 

A good tremolo is a reasonable thing to get right with a $100.00 pedal but to do a Harmonic Tremolo is probably a non starter. To do one that is equal to the best and better than most is impossible. OOPS! Apparently not, 

Tremolo is when the volume is modulated between loud and off.  

A Harmonic Tremolo is two units running in parallel. One sweeps the highs and the other sweeps the lows. The effect is very rich yet not overbearing. Some guys will use this as an always on.

 

HARBY PEDALS CENTAURI

It's a Klon clone. There are hundreds so WTF do we need another. First it uses the 1M34A clipping diodes. When a real Klon is put beside a clone it is the fairy dust that tells you you are hearing a real Klon from the get go even if you never heard a Klon in your life. They create a glassy sound that hangs over the tone. It is like the real Klon has a state of the art reverb on but clone does not. In short a subtle but easy to hear difference.

In my opinion if a $7000 original and authentic Klon gets a 10 out of 10 this gets at minimum a 9.5. 

The damn thing is $150.00 USD ...No that is not a typo.

 

WAMPLER PEDALS PHENOM DISTORTION

It is Brian's take on a pedal with a Peavey 5150 vibe. This pedal sells for just $100.00 USD which considering it use cascading FETS to give it a real tube like sound and is not the usual OpAmp pedal is amazing in itself.

Pedals this good both inside and out these days sell for $220.00 USD

 

 

  

JV EFFECTS TRANSMISSION PREAMP

It is a clone of the Hudson Broadcast Pre. Quite simply a modded Radio

Mic Pramp used in the 50's by small independent Radio stations. They were as small as a guy with a single Pre and a cheap high impedance mic in a small office with a transmitting antenna on the roof to broadcast to the locals in a small town. You can kick it into a self destructing Fuzz like tone. To me it is when at just past very low gain so it's completely clean but just past it's headroom a meat clever bite kicks in. The result is a a dead clean sound with balz. Beyond killer! Hand made by a guy in Malta. Best of all $95.00 USD