I suspect that a lot of musicians have, lurking in some corner of their abode, a Frontline pedal or two.

Frontline are well known for their budget price but unfortunately their low price used to reflect in the quality of the units.

But it seems that they have seen the error of their ways and the latest offering, the Series Two range, does a much better job in providing reasonable quality effects at a good price.

There are ten new effects in the range, eight of which I got my grubby mitts on.

I must admit I started with a certain amount of doubt about Frontline's ability to know a good sound if it jumped up and manifested itself to them in the form of the second coming.

Which just goes to show what a prat I really am.

All the effects are housed in very rugged 13x8cm steel casings and look as if they can take plenty of being trodden on and kicked around in grotty rehearsal rooms and dimly lit, smoky public houses.

The footpedal itself is as wide as the unit and so is an easy target to hit in moments of blind panic when you realise that you're supposed to be playing. It has a very short travel so is very easy to switch on and off, though it's easy to do both at once if you're not careful.

Some sort of rubber coating wouldn't go amiss just to give your toe a bit of extra grip.

Access to the battery is through a plastic plate on the front of the pedal which simply pulls off. This is one of the best features of the pedals as replacing a battery takes a matter of seconds and saves messing around with a screwdriver. The units take the standard 9v battery and even if you manage to break the plastic covering (fairly inevitable eventually) the fit is snug enough to stop the battery from falling out.

The LED on the front of the pedal indicates whether the unit is on or off but also dims as the battery level goes down and so can be used as a battery indicator of sorts. If you're not one of those smarmy gits with rechargeable batteries and so get really bogged off about having to buy new ones every ten minutes then there is an input socket for a mains adaptor, presumably 9v, though it's not labelled.

The input and output sockets are for a regular quarter-inch jackplug and on the 'stereo' models there are two outs which seemed to be 'bright' and 'regular' channels for whatever sound, or possibly just 'effect' and 'straight'. But I could be wrong as there were no instruction booklets with any of them.

All the controls are labelled and on the whole pretty self explanatory but it would be nice if the knobs were a bit easier to read because it can be a little difficult to see what settings the pedals are on at times.

But never mind the quibbles, let's take a squint at the individual units.

The Heavy Metal Distortion has taken over from the fuzz box as probably the most popular effect of all time, and this one in particular is very good.

It has four pots that control Low Boost, High Boost, Level and Sensitivity. The first two are bass and treble tone boosters which give this distortion a more versatile range of sounds than many other similar models. I found that by playing around with the boost controls I could do pretty good Cult imitations or alternatively jump around in front of the mirror while doing really bad versions of Van Halen songs.

The sensitivity control adjusts the amount of distortion — filthy or really filthy — while the level controls the output volume.

This was definitely one of the best units of this kind I've used — but there are one or two things about it that might niggle.

One is that the pedal is surprisingly quiet on the output side and, secondly, there is a lot of background noise; but then with this thing that's the whole point isn't it?

The Heavy Overdrive, on the other hand, was one of the not-so-good pedals considering that it's the same price as the Heavy Metal pedal (£39) and isn't half as versatile.

The controls are the same set up as the HM pedal except that 'sensitivity' is replaced with 'drive'.

On a totally clean channel with the drive set at full and the level right up then you can get a reasonable amount of distortion but still not enough to describe it as heavy.

If, however you have an amp with a gain control then you can achieve a much heavier sound by putting a small amount of gain on the amp anyway but this seems to defeat the point of the pedal really.

The two boost controls give a certain amount of control over the tone but they're not as good as the ones on the HM pedal.

Again, there is a lot of background noise on the pedal, as there is on all of them, due to the fact that to keep costs down there's no expander/compressor circuit to eliminate background noise like you'd find on more expensive pedals.

As for the Overdrive, this must be the weediest overdrive that I have ever heard. It sounds more like a disturbing case of flatulence than an overdriven valve amplifier.

It has just two controls, one for drive and the other for the output level. Even with both set on full it did little more than to remind me why I hadn't looked forward to reviewing these pedals.

This again is £39 and doesn't in my opinion give very good value for money.

As with the Heavy Overdrive, the harder you hit the strings supposedly the more distortion you get but there is so little in the first place that you can thrash away at 100mph and still sound like John Denver and the Muppets.

In two words — It sucks.

The Stereo Delay, on the other hand, is exceptionally good - especially considering that you can buy it for as little as £72.

The controls consist of three knobs labelled Repeat, Delay and Mix. The Repeat and the Delay are pretty well self explanatory with the first controlling how many times the signal repeats and the delay controlling how long it repeats for. Mix serves to control how dry the sound is.

For an analogue delay it delays for a very long time and in places it gets a bit swampy if you're not careful how you use it, but minor adjustments soon cure that.

The sound quality does suffer a bit and there is again a bit of background noise but these are the only setbacks on an otherwise very good and very cheap delay. Nice one.

The Compressor was almost as impressive as the overdrive pedal. I say almost because when really pushed at least the overdrive did something even if it wasn't a lot.

The compressor didn't seem to do anything much except create loads and loads of background noise and clip off a miniscule amount of the top of the note being played.

It has two controls (for what they're worth) for level and sensitivity. The sensitivity knob does bugger all and the level controls the volume output.

If it's being sold at any more than £2.50 then it's a rip-off. The worst thing is it's orange.

Out of the two chorus pedals in the range, I preferred the mono version because it didn't have as much background noise as its stereo relation and because the sound quality was slightly better.

It has just two controls for width and rate and produces some really pleasant chorus effects especially on a fretless base where you get instant Paul Young record sounds. Perhaps, upon reflection, it doesn't make a very nice sound at all.

The rate control sets the number of times it chorusses per second, while the depth control sets how deep the effect is.

On the Stereo Chorus, there's also a tone control which controls, believe it or not kids, the tone!

It is of course 'stereo' though it has no pan control. The stereo effect is good anyway but I don't know many musicians that have stereo amp set-ups and the rather excessive amounts of background noise mean that these effects are no way up to studio quality.

The sound also suffers on this one, as it did on the stereo delay, with it sounding a little as if you were playing your lines by phone; except nowhere near as severely as that.

The Four Stage Phaser is another goodie. It has three controls for Width, Rate and Feedback so you don't need too many CSEs to work out what they do.

The phaser is very good and easily worth the £42 I've seen it advertised for.

The amp I used to test the effects out on was a 50 watt Peavey Classic which has a built in phaser and the Four Stage kept up with that, no problem, in terms of sound quality and background noise (or lack of, rather).

Definitely value for money and while still slightly on the noisy side a really good phase.

A mixed bag. Some you wouldn't touch with a ten-foot jack lead, while others sound great and cost bugger all.

I suppose I ought to finish with some dreadful pun about 'put a Frontline in your backline' but I can't be bothered.