Rather than do a ‘best of’ style post, every year I’m writing up a rundown of what pedals I’m using, and why.
Previous years: [2019] [2020] [2021] [2022] [2023] [2024]
tl;dr
It’s been a quiet year for trying pedals. I’ve mostly picked up bucket list pedals that I thought I’d never see or ever be able to afford.
And I really haven’t blogged enough about them either.
I Am Way Behind On First Impressions Blog Posts!
Every year, when I sit down to draft the ‘Pedals’ review blog post, the first thing I do is pull up all of the First Impressions posts for the year. I was very surprised to find that I’ve only written half a dozen of them all year.
That said, a trawl through the New Arrivals posts for the year shows that it’s been quite a quiet year for me on the pedal front. I just haven’t come across that many pedals that I wanted to try.
On top of that, my process with new pedals has really slowed down too.
In previous years, I’d spend anywhere from a weekend to a few days with a new (to me) pedal – just long enough to write a First Impressions blog post and then move on.
This year has been different. Some of the pedals have been on my board for months at a time, and I’ve only taken them off because I wanted to write about something else.
I’ve enjoyed the change of pace.
Sure, my blog is becoming more niche, as I focus down more on the tones that do it for me. But let’s be honest: other than the new Marshall pedals, it hasn’t exactly been a vintage year for mainstream new drive pedal releases, has it?
And this has never really been a blog that’s all about the latest pedal releases anyways.
This Year Has Been (Mostly) About BJFe’s Designs
Most of the pedals that I’ve tried this year were designed by legendary pedal designed Björn Juhl; and a couple of them were made by him too 😍
It all started in March, when I found a One Control Honey Bee OD 4K Mini Custom on the local second-hand market. This is a pedal that I thought I’d missed out on (it seems to be a limited edition design to celebrate 20 years of the Honey Bee family).
Then, in the summer, both the One Control BJFe In Your Hand Series Hand-wired Honey Bee and the One Control Honey Bee OD 4K Mini Standard unexpectedly came back in stock at One Control Japan. Two more limited edition / small batch runs pedals!
(That was my first experience ordering direct from Japan; I would happily do so again.)
The hand-wired Honey Bee was launched last year, and had completely sold out by the time the YouTube demos landed in my feed. I was gutted to have missed out, and absolutely delighted when I was able to snag one from a (second?) batch made this year. I was expecting it to be the definitive Honey Bee in my collection, but it ended up getting completely overshadowed by the other pedal in that order.
I thought that I was picking up the HBOD-4K-Mini-Standard mostly for my tweed-tone collection. It ended up staying on the board through the entire summer, and might just be my drive pedal of the year.
Unexpectedly, the limited edition One Control Blue Bee OD 4K Mini Custom turned up at Andertons (even One Control didn’t have it any more). To save on postage, I also picked up the One Control BJF Series Strawberry OD 4K Mini at the same time. These two have definitely been neglected (it’s been Honey Bee-city here all year); I’m looking forward to spending time with them in 2026.
I’ve always wanted an original BJFe Honey Bee; with desirable second-hand examples often commanding four-figure prices, I thought I never would. Then a BJFe Honey Bee OD Retro turned up on the local second-hand market for a reasonable price. I’m so happy to have this. It’s such a good pedal, and has given me a benchmark to compare all the other pedals in the Honey Bee family against.
A couple of years ago, I picked up Bearfoot FX’s 10th anniversary Honey Bee X OD drive pedal. As the year drew to a close, I was able to pickup a BJFe Orchid Bee OD; this is basically Björn’s 20th anniversary re-imagining of the Honey Bee.
And, if that wasn’t enough, we also had a new Mad Professor Sweet Honey Overdrive (Hand-wired 2025 edition) too. I think it’s the best Sweet Honey OD that I’ve ever played. (The SHOD is another of Björn’s designs.)
None of these pedals were on my radar at the start of the year. I thought that I’d missed my chance at ever getting the One Control pedals; I never expected to find original BJFe pedals at a price that I could afford; and I had no idea that the new owners at Mad Professor were going to bring out new hand-wired pedals.
I can’t overstate how much joy these pedals have brought me this year.
I’ve Started Exploring Origin Effects Pedals
… and I found them to be a bit of a mixed bag.
The Origin Effects M-EQ Driver is a bit of a puzzle. I thought that a Pultec-style EQ would be a very useful tool for someone like me (I love stacking pedals, and Pultec emulations in my DAW are my go-to for post-processing EQ). So far, though, I’ve really struggled to get a tone that I like from it. It’s got this savage bass cut that I haven’t managed to overcome, and the controls … they don’t seem to work like the Pultec emulations that I’ve used.
It’s not unusual for me to need a year or two with a pedal, in order to figure out how it fits into my rig and my tastes. So I’m going to spend more time with it in 2026 before deciding whether or not to move it on.
I’m slowly warming to the Origin Effects Deluxe55 Tweed Deluxe amp simulator. I was quite meh about it at first, but the more I’ve played through it, the more I’ve come to enjoy it. I suspect a big part of the problem is that I’m just so used to my modern Fender ’57 Custom Deluxe Tweed Deluxe reissue amp … and I need to remember that the Deluxe55 (like other Tweed Deluxe amp simulators) are chasing the tones of original 1955 Tweed Deluxe amps!
I have been won over by the Origin Effects Halcyon Gold Klon klone. I don’t think it has that wow factor that the top-tier Klon klones have. However, I’ve found that the adaptive modes give me a useful option when I’m stacking pedals; there are definitely days when I’m grateful for the more subtle mid-boost.
Speaking of Klon klones …
I Picked Up A Bucket-list Klon Klone
… and I was blown away by how good it sounds in my rig.
The Arc Effects Klone v2 is one of the o.g. Klon klones. I got a real Klon KTR instead back then, and by the time I started looking for a backup for my Klon KTR, the Klone v2 had become pretty rare over here.
Now I have one, and I have to wonder: if I’d bought one years ago, would I have ever started my Klon klone collection? That’s how impressed I am with it.
Straight out of the box, the Klone v2 had that wow factor that (in my experience) most Klon klones lack. To my ears, it sounds identical to my Klon KTR, and has the advantage of being smaller than the Ceriatone Centura and Warm Audio Centavo. Since it arrived, it’s been living on the board full-time.
Expect to see it featured in a future #CoffeeAndKlon blog post.
How Did You Do On Your 2025 Plans?
Surprisingly well! Thanks to the BJFe-fest, I’ve picked up quite a few more tweed-tone pedals for that collection, and I got to try the Deluxe55 too.
What Are Your Plans For 2026?
There’s only one pedal currently on the bucket list: a BJFe Flametop. The Flametop circuit was the prototype for my beloved Mad Professor Sweet Honey OD. I’m very curious to compare the two.
If the chance comes up, I’d like to try out the Origin Effects Halcyon Blue and Halcyon Green overdrives. That’s only going to happen if I luck out and find either one second-hand for a very reasonable price. Origin Effects has been too hit-and-miss for me to feel confident in spending a lot of money on either drive pedal.
I’m tempted to just order the remaining BJF-series mini pedals direct from One Control Japan. It’s by far the easiest way to get hold of them right now. I’m intrigued to hear what they all can offer. Do I have enough free time to justify getting them, though? That’s the real question.
Other than that (and the ongoing quest to collect every tweed-tone pedal that I can) … I don’t have any firm plans. Regular readers may recall that, for some years now, I’ve been commenting on how rare it is to see interesting pedals on the second-hand market. I think 2025 has been a dreadful year for that.
Maybe it’s time to try a Boss Metal Zone through a Tweed Deluxe amp …?
Oh, I still want to start documenting pedals Trogly-style, only in written format. I know that I want to capture each pedal’s technical data as structured data, but I haven’t figured out how to present that yet.