This week we’re stepping slightly outside the usual budget territory, but trust me, this one earns its place. The Wampler Ego 76 Mini is Brian Wampler’s take on the legendary 1176 Peak Limiter — a compressor that has been absolutely baked into the sound of recorded music for decades. If you’ve ever loved the feel of a studio guitar track without really knowing why, chances are an 1176 was involved somewhere along the way.

Now, before anyone panics, this isn’t Wampler trying to turn your pedalboard into Abbey Road. The Ego 76 Mini takes the idea of the 1176 — that fast, punchy, characterful FET compression — and translates it into something that actually makes sense for guitarists.

At its core, this is a proper studio-style compressor in pedal form. You’ve got level, compression and a parallel clean blend, which is already a massive tick in my book. On top of that, there are attack and release switches, giving you access to those classic 1176-style response times without needing a degree in audio engineering. It’s clever, because you get all of the best attack and release settings without having to understand what attack and release actually mean.

The real magic of this pedal is how flexible it is in a guitar rig. You can absolutely stick it at the front of your chain and use it like a traditional guitar compressor. It’ll do the squishy Dynacomp-style thing if that’s your bag — country snap, funk rhythm, tightening up clean tones — all very much there. But it doesn’t stop at squash.

Dial things back a bit and the Ego 76 turns into something much more refined. There’s a lovely sparkle and polish you can add to clean tones without killing your dynamics, and that parallel blend control paired with the compression control is where the real magic happens. Being able to mix your dry signal back in means you get the benefits of compression without losing the feel of your playing, which is exactly how compression is used in the studio.

Where this pedal really surprised me, though, was further down the signal chain. Stick it after a drive or two and it becomes more of a glue pedal than a traditional compressor. It evens things out, adds sustain, and just makes everything feel a bit more “finished”. It’s that subtle, almost invisible thing that you don’t really notice until you turn it off… and then immediately turn it back on again.

Yes, it’s more expensive than what we usually cover. No, it isn’t a cheap impulse buy. But unlike a lot of boutique compressors, this doesn’t feel like a one-trick pony or a studio novelty shoehorned onto a pedalboard. It genuinely works in multiple positions, across multiple styles, and rewards a bit of experimentation.

If you’ve ever struggled with compressors feeling either too squashed or too boring, the Ego 76 Mini might be the one that finally clicks. It’s studio compression made usable, musical, and — most importantly — fun. And honestly? That makes it pretty easy to justify the extra spend.

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Sonicake Smart Box – From Proof of Concept to Proper Gigging Tool

The Sonicake Pocket Master was one of those pedals (well, FX unit maybe?) in 2025. The kind that quietly landed, didn’t look like much, but then completely changed the guitar landscape. It was one of the first genuinely affordable ways for everyday players to dip their toes into Neural Amp Modelling on the go, and once people realised what it could do, it absolutely took off. Small, unassuming, and way more capable than it had any right to be.

The Smart Box is very much the next step in that journey. If the Pocket Master proved the concept, the Smart Box feels like Sonicake taking that idea seriously and asking, “Right… how do we actually make this usable outside the bedroom?”

The most obvious upgrade hits you straight away: footswitches. Two of them, no less. This might sound like a small thing, but it absolutely isn’t. The Pocket Master relied on those little rubber buttons, which were fine for desk use but always felt like it prohibited live use. The Smart Box fixes that in one move. Suddenly, this feels like something you could actually put on the floor without fear.

It’s hard not to draw comparisons with the Valeton GP-50 here. Both companies seem to be circling the same idea at the same time: take a compact NAM-capable unit and make it genuinely stage-friendly. With proper footswitches, LED rings, tap tempo, and control switching, the Smart Box immediately feels more confident in that role. You can still pair it with something like the M-Vave Chocolate Plus if you want to go even further, but you don’t have to anymore.

The front panel layout is another big win. Instead of burying everything in menus, Sonicake have added dedicated buttons for each block in the signal chain — amp, cab, delay, reverb, EQ, and so on. Editing patches directly on the unit is now much quicker and far more intuitive. The Pocket Master wasn’t hard to use, but this feels friendlier again, especially for players who don’t want to spend half an hour scrolling through menus. Even the most technophobic guitarist should be able to build a usable patch without getting nervous.

Internally, there are some meaningful upgrades too. The effects list has grown a lot. Where the Pocket Master gave you one or two flavours of each modulation, the Smart Box gives you proper choice — including some more adventurous options. There’s a clear nod here towards ambient and shoegaze players, with textures and effects that go well beyond the usual budget multi-FX safe zone. It really feels like Sonicake are pushing the boundaries of what “affordable” gear is supposed to sound like.

Now, we do need to talk about the NAM situation, because this is still the elephant in the room. Like most compact NAM players at the moment, once you engage NAM profiling, the internal cab sim is bypassed. That means you’re either using full rig NAM profiles (amp and cab together) or running an external cab solution. The Smart Box sticks with this limitation, which is a little disappointing — simultaneous amp and cab modelling would’ve been a genuine leap forward.

That said, it’s not a dealbreaker. There are loads of excellent full rig NAM profiles available for free on Tone3000, and realistically, most users are going to find plenty of sounds that work for them without much hassle. It’s just one of those “we’re not quite there yet” moments for NAM tech at this price point.

Feature-wise, the Smart Box is absolutely stacked. You’ve got over 130 effects, up to nine blocks running at once, 100 presets, drum rhythms, a looper, tuner, metronome, stereo outputs, USB audio interface with re-amping, OTG support for phones, wired and wireless MIDI, expression pedal input, headphones out… and it’ll even run on its internal battery for a few hours if you need it to. It’s one of those pedals where you keep discovering another feature you didn’t realise was there.

Crucially, it still comes in under £100. That’s the headline for me. Yes, it’s not the bold technological leap some of us were hoping for, but it is a clear step towards being a proper gigging unit. More usable, more intuitive, more flexible — and still very affordable.

If Sonicake keep refining this platform, especially on the NAM side of things, this could end up being something really special. As it stands, the Smart Box feels like a confident evolution rather than a flashy reinvention — and honestly, that’s probably exactly what most players actually need.

NUX A/B ROLL – A Looper… and Quite a Bit More Than That

You can't be everything to everyone
At first glance, the NUX A/B ROLL looks like one of those pedals where the design brief was “how many features can we cram into one enclosure before someone tells us to stop?”. Looper, sub-octave, IR loader, auto-recording, OTG audio… on paper it feels like NuX pulled a handful of ideas out of a hat and decided to make it work.

Surprisingly, it mostly does.

Let’s start with the core of the pedal: the looper. This is a no-nonsense, very functional looping engine. Think original Ditto rather than some sprawling, multi-track workstation. One footswitch handles record, overdub, stop and erase duties, and once you get the muscle memory down it’s quick and intuitive. No fancy tricks, no menu diving — just hit record and get on with it. It gives you up to six minutes of loop time with unlimited overdubs, which is more than enough for practice, writing, or building up simple arrangements.

Where things start to get more interesting is the built-in IR loader. NuX have included a selection of cab sims covering the usual bases — small 1x12 combo-style cabs through to big 4x12s that are clearly aimed at higher-gain sounds. Annoyingly, they don’t actually tell you what any of them are in the marketing, but the important part is that they sound perfectly usable. More importantly, you’re not locked into them. Using the desktop editor, you can load your own IRs and tailor each one further with adjustable high and low cuts. At this price point, that’s a really nice touch.

Then there’s the sub-octave control. On its own, it feels like an odd inclusion. But when you look at it in the context of looping, it suddenly makes a lot more sense. Adding a subtle sub octave underneath a loop can really help fill things out, especially if you’re building layers with a single guitar. It pushes things away from “guitar noodling over a loop” and more towards something that feels like a full arrangement.

The real clue as to who this pedal is aimed at, though, is the OTG functionality. Being able to plug this straight into a phone and record or live stream without any additional interface gear suddenly reframes the whole pedal. This is content creation in a box. Bedroom players, younger guitarists, people experimenting with short-form videos, live streams, or quick demo ideas — this thing makes a lot of sense there.

With traditional live opportunities becoming harder to come by, especially for newer players, tools like this are starting to fill that gap. It’s a way to practise, perform, record and share without needing a full rig, a computer, and a desk full of cables.

At around £80, it’s also very easy to justify. That’s roughly the cost of a decent looper or a basic IR loader on its own. Getting both of those, plus a sub octave and direct-to-phone recording, in one compact pedal feels like pretty solid value.

It’s not trying to be everything for everyone, but for the players it’s clearly aimed at, the A/B ROLL is a surprisingly clever bit of kit. A little weird, sure — but in a way that actually works.