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Xotic AC Booster Not made any more. Send it into a Fender amp and it'll give you thick articulate boost overdrive with a little something extra in the character which I haven't identified yet. Just luscious. Way better than a tube screamer and sounds magical with the ODR and Amptweaker below. Amptweaker Tight Rock The original one, it does fabulous distortion. Use whatever boost pedal you want to emphasise a different character. It does plexi as well. Super quiet and robust build. Nobels ODR This took me by surprise but it's an audio oxymoron. Really pleasant sounding overdrive while remaining articulate in the mids and presence frequencies. Great as a boost pedal too. Does everything well. Crowther Hot Cake Utterly unique drive pedal that does fat and grungy sounding distortion which teeters on the edge of fuzz but never quite goes there. It can be used as a boost as well. The presence control really does mids and it can be tweaked to a very entertaining level of intensity. It's the best drive pedal for a Vox AC30. PRS is a fan (which is probably a good thing) Joyo JF14 American Sound A copy of an old Tech 21 pedal. Use the voice control to move between tweed and twin midrange. The only criticism I have is the components are not as durable as they could be. Slightly higher noise floor. Otherwise, warm, articular midrange distortion from a Fender amp, use it with the ODR1 or the AC Booster for different takes on that mid to late seventies Rivera modded Fender thing. Mosky Silver Horse A little more versatile than the Goldern Horse if you are in the market for a Klon clone. Also, if you don't want or can't find an AC Booster, this does something similar but to a lesser degree for the cost of peanuts second hand. Slightly higher noise floor too but I use it as a boost pedal into the amptweaker for modded tones. That's it, I don't need any more drive pedals. Oh wait, there is the MXR Rockman...

Ain't that the truth! I don't think the pound has topped USD1.31 in nearly a decade now. Long gone are the glory days of US2.20 to the pound. Back in 2008, I was buying things online from the US I could have bought in a shop here, but getting them for half the London price, even after including shipping and import. Not a chance of that now.

Because I was big fan of Robben Ford, I stopped using reverb and just went for a short delay (snapback, or thereabouts) because I read somewhere that he didn't use reverb as it could muddy things up too much. Also being a Brian Setzer fan, this all sounded to be what I wanted. I bought a Line6 DL4 and thoroughly happy with that. I've long since parted company with everything I had back then, as I was concentrating on playing bass. Fast forward to now and I'll still choose short delay over reverb (although both together can be OK, if used sparingly) and, to sate my echo needs, I bought a Behringer analog delay, works fine, albeit in a plastic case. All that said, if I were gigging regularly, I'd probably look at a Boss RE-2 as that would do everything I want, what with emulating the classic Space Echo (more Setzer influence).