On the left is the AUX3 for Strymon, basically a more compact version of the Stymon Multi switch for controlling their larger boxes (for me the BigSky and Timeline). I had grabbed a used one of these in the sparkle black finish from a friend a while back and it's been working out great and replacing the bigger Strymon Multi switch on the stereo guitar board will let me get things arranged a bit more to my liking. This one seems every bit as solid and is nicely finished in durable feeling black powdercoat.
On the right is the Dual Favorite switch for the Strymons, letting you do favorite selection for 2 Strymon boxes from a single lower profile and more compact pedal than putting 2 of the Mini switches side by side. It feels and looks just as well put together as the AUX3s and it winds up a good bit cheaper than buying 2 of the Strymon Minis. I'm thinking this probably ought to work as a dual tap (or 1 tap, 1 favorite) switch too if you set pedals to EXP tap mode rather than Favorite, but I haven't confirmed this yet.
In the back is the free T shirt Andrew sent me along w/ order, pretty nice feeling and looking and will probably get a pretty fair amount of wear.
The other was a result of my expedition to a couple music shops up in Columbus w/ my guitar junkie nephew after meeting up for a birthday lunch for my mom yesterday, a Darkglass Microtubes B7K bass preamp:
I lost count of the number of times I've read/heard these recommended on the subject of "best bass preamp and OD pedals". When I saw one in a pedal case at the first shop I hit yesterday afternoon I had to give it a try and kinda sealed my fate. After playing w/ this box for 2.5-3 hours after I got home last night the only potential regret I could see having is not ordering up one of B7K Ultra models so I had the second footswitch for individual control of the drive section. Adding another $50 to the cost to get it would probably push it a bridge too far for me though.
It seems to have a very nicely tuned and flexible EQ stack, I think the Attack and Grunt switches seem like they will be useful in each position for me, and the drive section seems to cover a pretty broad range of driven sounds from just a bit of hair through full on distorted meltdown in really great ways using either the Wattplower or the Sterling. Seems to have a very nice bloom to it and it feels very responsive as well.
They had the Alpha & Omega as well and it seemed pretty nice for covering all your driven and fuzzed out sounds but maybe not as good to me or as flexible in the saturated clean sounds/preamp department.
