Hand-picked reviews and demos of the pedals we love — with full credit and links back to the original reviewers. Scroll on, and check back daily for a fresh one. New posts appear at the top.
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🆕 Featured New Release
NEW Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2 — A Dual Op-Amp Muff With Gate, Mids Sweep and Blend
MusicRadar gives this 4.5 out of 5. The Deluxe builds on an unreleased dual op-amp Big Muff design from Bob Meyer's notebooks, adding a noise Gate, a Blend control, and a switchable mids section with Frequency, High Q, Low Q and Wicker controls, plus an expression jack. The reviewer finds the Gate the most useful addition and hears a more aggressive voicing than the classic Muffs, with some bass rumble at high sustain. His verdict: a cool, capable fuzz, but at around $188 he'd lean toward the standard Big Muff Pi 2 or the Nano for most players.
👀 Just Announced — Previews
MXR EVH Modern High Gain
A high-gain distortion co-designed with Eddie Van Halen himself, finally seeing release after debuting at NAMM 2026. Shop MXR →
Way Huge Swollen Pickle XXX Jumbo Fuzz
The cult Swollen Pickle fuzz supersized into Way Huge's jumbo enclosure, announced alongside Dunlop's NAMM 2026 drop. Shop Way Huge →
JHS Coyote
A new JHS fuzz paying tribute to a 'lost' cult-classic circuit and its maker. Shop JHS →
🎸 The Reviews
NEW Warm Audio WA-C1 Mod Chorus Vibrato — The Compact Analog Chorus Adds a Preamp Bypass
Guitar World rates this smaller, updated take on the WA-C1 at 4.5 out of 5. It pairs separate Depth and Rate knobs for chorus and vibrato with a preamp level control, a High/Low sensitivity switch and a Vintage/Modern bypass option, and a tap-or-hold footswitch toggles between chorus and vibrato. The reviewer hears lush, shimmery chorus at low settings and tape-like to rotary-style vibrato, with the vintage mode adding warmth and punch. Drawbacks are rear-mounted switches and a 200mA power draw; it lists at $199.
NEW Keeley Compressor Plus Germanium — The 25th-Anniversary Comp Goes Germanium
Announced in October to mark 25 years of Keeley compressors, the Compressor Plus Germanium keeps the familiar Level, Tone, Compression and Blend controls but works a germanium transistor into the compression circuit, the output stage and the side-chain feedback path. A two-position recovery switch tunes the release for single coils or humbuckers, and you can choose true bypass or Keeley’s buffered bypass. It runs on 9–18V, is built in Oklahoma, and lists around $189.
NEW Pedal Pawn Say Wah — A Hand-Wound, Vintage-Italian-Voiced Wah From the UK
Pedal Pawn, the British company known for SRV- and Hendrix-inspired gear, has built its first wah, named after the opening track of Stevie Ray Vaughan's 1985 album. Guitar World describes a ground-up circuit and PCB meant to sit well with fuzz and overdrive, a hand-wound inductor, and a custom-taper CTS pot rated for two million cycles. The voicing aims for the vocal midrange of late-60s and early-70s Italian-style wahs without cloning any single one. Each unit is hand-assembled and tested in the UK, at £327 (roughly $435).
NEW Crazy Tube Circuits Rapture — The Triptychon's Amp-Style Drive, Now Standalone
Rapture takes the drive section of Crazy Tube Circuits' Triptychon and puts it in its own box, aimed at players who want an amp-like overdrive without the extra boost and fuzz sections. Sonic State notes Drive, Tone and Master controls plus two toggles: MORE extends the gain range, and MOD reduces clipping for a more open, amp-like response, while leaving both down gives the original Triptychon drive voice. It has relay-based true bypass, runs on 9–18V DC, and is hand-built in Athens, Greece, at 189 EUR.
NEW Dr. No TvL Blameshifter — A Four-Output Switching Pedal From Queens of the Stone Age's Troy Van Leeuwen
The Blameshifter is Dr. No's collaboration with QOTSA guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, a buffered switching pedal with four outputs that grew out of a 2016 band-room joke. Guitar World explains that Output 1 can act as an effects loop or an amp send for adding a second amp, Output 3 is the return, and a side-mounted miniswitch sets Output 2 to either an A-only path or a blended path that also feeds the main output for wet/dry setups. It is handmade in Eindhoven, is listed at $375.40 with a goodie box of picks, stickers and buttons, and is on pre-order with shipping expected November 15.
NEW EarthQuaker Devices Scrolls Bass Odyssey — A Bass Preamp, Fuzz and DI Co-Designed With Kentaro Nakao
The Scrolls Bass Odyssey is EarthQuaker's take on the bass preamp-and-drive box, designed with bassist Kentaro Nakao. Guitar World describes a two-footswitch layout with a flexible EQ section (including sweepable Vari controls) and a Drive section with a Blend knob and a Bandwidth control that moves the clipping from low-focused overdrive to gritty treble. Outputs include an XLR direct out with ground lift, a parallel out and an effects loop, and the reviewer scored it 4.5 out of 5, praising its build and versatility, with the $349 price as the main caveat.
Read the full review at Guitar World → 🎸 Shop EarthQuaker Devices →
NEW Catalinbread Cold One — The 90s DOD Punkifier, Reimagined With a Glitch Mode
Catalinbread's Cold One revives the 1995 DOD FX76 Punkifier, the odd little box Blur's Graham Coxon leaned on, as a three-in-one distortion, fuzz and glitch pedal. Gearnews notes that it pairs an amp-style drive with a transistor fuzz and adds a new Glitch mode that turns the fuzz into a stuttering, arpeggiated tone. Modern touches include buffered input and output and 18V support for extra headroom, and it lists around $200 in the US.
NEW JHS Pherb — A Phaser and Lo-Fi Reverb for $99.99, Built in Record Time
Josh Scott's tongue-in-cheek answer to the Flerb meme pairs a vintage-style four-stage phaser with a dark, chorused lo-fi reverb that pulses a little at long decay settings. Three knobs cover it: Mix blends the two effects, Speed drives the phaser, and Length sets reverb decay and pre-delay. A Break mode runs everything through an analog-clipped bit crusher for more mangled, chaotic tones. Guitar World reports it took about 35 hours from concept to finished pedal, and it is on sale now for $99.99 as part of the 3 Series.
NEW Behringer Zentara & Zentara Mini — Klon-Style Overdrive Returns for About $76
Behringer is back with a Klon Centaur-style overdrive, offered as a full-size Zentara and a smaller Zentara Mini, each in gold or silver. It uses the same circuit as the earlier Centara, the redesign that followed the legal dispute over Behringer's original clone, and aims for the transparent, amp-like push the genre is known for. The Gain control runs from light grit to full drive, and the two pedals can be stacked for more. Guitar World notes most retailers sell them for around $75.90 each, and all four versions are available now.
NEW Walrus Audio Lore MKII & Fable MKII — Reverse and Granular Soundscapes Get Stereo and MIDI
Walrus Audio revives its Storybook Series with MKII versions of the Lore (reverse reverb, delay and pitch effects) and the Fable (delay blended with granular processing), each offering five modes. Both run on Walrus's in-house MDSP platform with full stereo operation, a multifunction Tweak knob, a momentary Dive/Rise control, MIDI, three onboard presets plus a Live mode, and up to 127 presets via MIDI. Premier Guitar lists each at $349.99, in illustrated artwork or minimal black finishes.
Read the full review at Premier Guitar →🎸 Shop Walrus Audio →
Eventide H9 Harmonizer Gen 2 — The Full 74-Algorithm H90 Library in a Pedal
Eventide rebuilds the H9 around the processing architecture of its H90, opening up the complete 74-algorithm lineup of delay, reverb, granular pitch-shifting, vocal and synth effects. The new ARM-based engine and updated converters aim for better fidelity, and it ships with more than 1,000 presets while staying compatible with legacy H9 presets. Mix reports three Quick Knobs, full on-pedal parameter control without an app, dual instrument/line I/O and a $599 price.
NEW Nobels REV-mini — A $99 Stereo Reverb With Freeze and Shimmer in a Mini Box
Nobels packs three reverb voices into this compact pedal: spring, plate and hall, chosen with a three-way mini toggle and shaped by Size, Blend and Tone knobs that glow in the dark. Holding the footswitch triggers Freeze, or Shimmer in plate mode. It also offers mono or stereo operation over TRS jacks and a rear switch for true or buffered bypass. Gearnews reports a price around €99 and an October release.
NEW MXR Turbo Tuner — Sonic Research Strobe Accuracy in a Pedal
MXR builds this tuner on the engine of the original Sonic Research Turbo Tuner, long considered the benchmark for strobe tuning, and claims accuracy to a fraction of a cent. The lagless strobe display has four brightness levels, and the five presets can be reprogrammed for up to 12 strings with ±50 cent offsets, with a USB port for firmware and editor software. It defaults to true bypass, offers buffered options internally, and lists at $149.99.
NEW Zoom Neurig — A Touchscreen Amp Modeler With Native NAM Support
Zoom's new Neurig is a compact modeler with a touchscreen, four footswitches and native support for Neural Amp Modeler captures, so you can load community NAM profiles and IRs alongside its 32 built-in amp models. It runs up to 14 effects at once with series, parallel and split routing, and adds a looper, send/return, MIDI and Bluetooth. Guitar World notes an approximate price of about $300 based on the Japanese listing, with US pricing still to be confirmed.
NEW Fulltone OCD'Lux — Two Independent OCD Circuits, Four Voices, One Box
Fulltone's new OCD'Lux packs two separately controlled drive circuits into one enclosure, with the original V1 and a more aggressive RAW voice on one side and V2 plus a germanium-diode Custom Shop mode on the other. Each side gets its own volume, drive, tone and high/low-peak switch, plus its own footswitch. Four top-mounted jacks let you run the circuits in series, split them across your rig or reverse their order, and you can pick true bypass or Fulltone's Enhanced Bypass. It is listed at $299, built in the USA, and currently offered as a limited First Edition.
NEW Electro-Harmonix Wailer Wah Pro — The Budget Wah Gets a Die-Cast Upgrade
EHX trades the plastic shell of the original Wailer Wah for a die-cast aluminum chassis, keeping the analog, true-bypass design at a $88 list price. The pedal uses a custom band-pass filter that EHX says delivers a smooth, slightly biting sweep that stays usable from clean tones to high gain without howling. It runs on a 9V battery or an optional adapter, and Bill Ruppert shows it off in the official demo below.
NEW Darkglass Anagram Guitar Essentials — The Bass Brand's Modeler Learns Guitar
Darkglass takes its touchscreen Anagram platform beyond bass with a limited-edition Guitar Essentials pack, loaded with a dozen amp models, cab sims, Rat, Big Muff, Klon and Tube Screamer-style drives, plus delays, reverbs and a looper. MusicRadar rates it 4.5 out of 5, praising its open design, Neural Amp Modeler support and flexibility for recording, practice and live rigs. The catches: mono-only delays, no dedicated editor yet, and a launch library that is lighter than some rivals. Roughly $1,219.
NEW JHS Wanderer — Morning Glory and Notaklön, Side by Side in One Vertical Box
JHS pairs two fan favorites, the Bluesbreaker-flavored Morning Glory and the Klon-style Notaklön (now factory-built rather than a DIY kit), in its first vertical two-in-one enclosure. Guitar World notes that each side has its own input, output and effects loop on top-mounted jacks, so the two drives can sit at different points in a chain or on separate switcher loops with their own presets. Controls include a Gain toggle on the Morning Glory and a +/- switch on the Notaklön that adds boost, mids and extra clipping. It is available now at $299, about $30 less than buying both separately.
NEW Polyend Loop — A Looper, Drum Machine and 100+ Effects in One Stompbox
Polyend, the Polish company behind the Drums and Synth, aims its new Loop squarely at guitarists and electronic players alike. MusicRadar notes it offers four independent mono/stereo tracks with up to 52 seconds each, unlimited overdubs, reverse and ping-pong playback, and varispeed. Every track gets its own effect from a library of more than 100 types, and a built-in four-track drum machine brings 500+ kits and 350+ patterns. With MIDI over USB-C and TRS, an expression input, and 1,000 saveable scenes, it lists at $599.
NEW EarthQuaker Devices Stereo Easy Listening — The Analog Amp Sim Goes Stereo, With XLR Outs
EarthQuaker's all-analog Easy Listening headphone amp gets a stereo upgrade at $249, with two quarter-inch inputs feeding dual XLR outputs, a headphone jack, or both. Plugging into just the left input splits the signal into two independent preamps and cab sims, and a new aux input lets you jam along with a phone or backing track. A three-band active EQ adds European-style voicings alongside the original American-flavored sound, and Sonic State describes the result as lush, low-noise and miked-sounding, with no menus, IRs or firmware to deal with.
NEW Positive Grid Spark Pedal — An Amp-and-Effects Modeler That Costs Under $200
The Spark Pedal brings the engine from Positive Grid's Spark 2 practice amp into a floor unit with 33 amp models, 43 effects, three footswitches, a looper, MIDI and a Bluetooth app that taps into the ToneCloud library and AI tone generation. Guitar Player's Dave Hunter found the overdrive and high-gain sounds strongest, with cleans less convincing and the on-board knobs a bit touchy. His verdict: it can't match the realism of Fractal, Line 6 or Neural DSP, but it punches well above its roughly $199 price.
NEW ThorpyFX Kudu — A Transparent "Amp Improver" Drive That Grew Out of a Distortion+ Mod
The UK-built Kudu began life as a modded MXR Distortion+ before turning into a more versatile stompbox. Level, Drive and Bite (a presence and treble control) sit alongside a three-way clipping switch: Soft for squishy silicon compression, Hard for edgier LED clipping, and Soft+ for a blend of the two. Guitar World's Trevor Curwen awarded five stars, calling it a true amp improver you would instantly miss if you switched it off, and says it works alone or stacked with other dirt pedals. It lists at $238.
Keeley Rotary — A Leslie-Style Rotary Speaker Sim With Real Drive
Keeley's Rotary recreates the swirl of a vintage Leslie cabinet in a USA-built stompbox. Guitar World highlights the big Speed knob, Blend and Drive controls, a slow/fast footswitch with adjustable ramp and a Brake mode, plus a three-way Mid Boost switch and stereo in/out. The Drive control adds tube-like saturation, and bypass can be switched between true and buffered. It lists at $229.
NEW Strymon La Brea — An All-Analog Tape Drive, Inspired by the Deco
La Brea carries on the legacy of Strymon's Deco, but as a fully analog circuit that uses multiple gain stages modeled on reel-to-reel tape behavior. Guitar World notes it works as a clean boost or a saturated drive, offers more gain than the Deco, and keeps a discrete dry path in phase with the saturated signal. A three-position switch restores highs or mids lost to saturation, and the pitch is that the tape-style drive stays smooth and never harsh. It's $199 and available now.
Boss XS-100 Poly Shifter — Boss Takes On the Whammy With Four Octaves
The XS-100 is Boss's answer to the DigiTech Whammy, a foot-controlled polyphonic pitch shifter that stretches the range to four octaves. Guitar World highlights its 30 preset slots, a customizable expression pedal response, MIDI support, and the ability to shift and detune at the same time. The reviewer finds the tracking cleaner than the Whammy's but a little less characterful, with menus that take some getting used to, so whether it dethrones the classic comes down to taste.
NEW Strymon Canoga — A Fuzz Face-Style Silicon Fuzz With Just Two Knobs
Strymon’s Canoga is a fully analog silicon fuzz inspired by the vintage Fuzz Face, designed by company CEO Gregg Stock as part of the new Series A analog line. MusicRadar notes it keeps things simple with just Drive and Level knobs, top-mounted jacks, and no MIDI or presets. The circuit reacts to pick attack and your guitar’s volume knob, cleaning up into bluesy semi-clean tones when you roll back, and it lists for $199.
NEW Electro-Harmonix Adrian Belew Echoflanger — A Cult Modulation Classic, Reissued With King Crimson’s Guitarist
Electro-Harmonix teamed up with King Crimson and Talking Heads guitarist Adrian Belew to bring back the cult-favorite Echoflanger as a limited-edition, all-analog modulation pedal. Guitar World reports it keeps the original’s Filter Matrix, Flange, Chorus, and Slap Back modes while adding new blended combination modes, expanded Range, Tune, and Feedback controls, and a Blend switch for mixing in dry signal. It also adds stereo outputs and relay-based true bypass, and lists for $239.
Read the full review at Guitar World →🎸 Shop Electro-Harmonix →
NEW JAM Pedals Wahcko MK2 — A Custom Inductor and Bass Mode for the Handmade Greek Wah
JAM Pedals' update to its long-running Wahcko swaps the original red Fasel inductor for a custom coil modeled on vintage TDK designs, chasing a smoother, more vocal sweep. A new internal Q-trimmer lets players dial in peak intensity, and a DIP switch unlocks a dedicated bass mode with extended low-end range alongside the familiar six-position sweep selector. JAM also swapped the old plexiglass footplate for grippier rubber while keeping true bypass, adjustable spring tension, and battery or standard power options. Still handmade in Greece, the Wahcko MK2 runs €379, with the original MK1 sticking around at €339.
NEW Walrus Audio Fundamental Lo-Fi Delay — Three Gritty Echo Algorithms for $99.99
Walrus Audio’s tenth pedal in its budget-friendly Fundamental Series trades a single clean repeat for three character-driven lo-fi delay algorithms, picked with a simple slide switch. “AM” leans into brighter, radio-style decay, “Murk” piles on filtering and modulation for thick, swirling echoes, and “Echo” spreads into multi-tap patterns running from tight and textural to wide and syncopated. Sliders handle time, feedback, and mix, tap tempo is built in, and it tops out around a second of delay — a compact, no-frills way to get gritty, unpredictable echoes without digging through menus.
NEW Boss EX-4 Effects Expander — 120 Boss Effects, Four at Once, in a Space-Saving Box
Boss packed its EX-4 with a 120-effect onboard library spanning overdrive, modulation, delay, reverb, bass-tuned tones and specialty effects like Slow Gear and Slicer, and it can run up to four of them simultaneously through a single compact chassis. A color 2.4-inch display with four dedicated FX buttons handles quick on/off toggling or deep editing, "Gear Suite" gives you pro-tuned starting points per effect, and there's a built-in effects loop plus foot volume and noise suppression utilities. It's priced at $299.99.
NEW King Tone Soloist Mini — SRV Glass From the Duellist, Shrunk to a Micro Board
King Tone has squeezed Side A of its legendary Duellist — the glassy, SRV-flavored Soloist overdrive — into a mini enclosure with the circuit left untouched. Drive, Volume, Tone and Body controls sweep from amp-like cleans to fat, sustaining leads, while an internal trimmer swaps between Stock, Glass and Edge voicings to dial the classic mid-hump in or out. It runs the same high-quality 4558 op-amps and sought-after voice as the full-size original, now small enough for a travel rig or fly board at $199.
NEW Boss PX-1 Plugout FX — 16 Classic Boss Pedals in One Expandable Stompbox
Boss has squeezed nearly five decades of compact-pedal history into a single shapeshifting box. The PX-1 ships with 16 faithfully modeled classics — from the DS-1 Distortion and SD-1 Super Overdrive to the CE-2 Chorus, DD-2 Digital Delay and the famously elusive SG-1 Slow Gear — each running on a dedicated DSP engine so it looks, sounds and responds like the original, complete with the familiar Boss knob layout and a small display for deeper settings. A Swap function flips between two effects on the fly, and stereo I/O, tap tempo and MIDI clock are all on board, while the effect library keeps growing through the Boss Effect Loader app. Guitar World’s review sums it up as an effects-pedal jukebox packed with classics and overlooked gems — how well it fits your rig mostly comes down to how much you’re willing to spend beyond the $249 asking price.
NEW Electro-Harmonix Pico Atomic Cluster — A Glitch-Synth Spectral Decomposer, Pocket-Sized
EHX calls this the strangest effect it has ever built, and Guitar World’s four-star review happily agrees it is out to throw a spanner in your tone. The Atomic Cluster reduces your guitar’s frequency resolution into a swarm of resonant oscillations: the ATOMS knob sets how many ring out at once — roll it back for glitchy arpeggios, ambient synth pads and backwards-style swells — while SPEED (with tap tempo) controls how fast they refresh, from rhythmic bubbling to pure chaos. Sharp and Smooth modes plus a full wet/dry Blend make it a genuine sound-mangler rather than a one-trick box. It is Pico-sized and carries a $129 street price.
Read the full review at Guitar World →🎸 Shop Electro-Harmonix →
NEW IK Multimedia TONEX Board — The Whole TONEX Universe, Now With a Touchscreen
IK Multimedia just dropped the TONEX Board, its first touchscreen floor modeler, and Guitar World calls it the company’s most ambitious unit yet. It packs the full TONEX ecosystem into one pedal: a 5″ touchscreen, four footswitches with Preset/Scene/Stomp modes, 2,000 built-in Premium Tone Models (with the new V2 captures), 76 AmpliTube and TONEX effects, and enough routing for dual-amp, stereo and wet/dry rigs, plus MIDI, dual stereo outs and an effects loop. The headline is the price — at $999 it undercuts the Quad Cortex mini, Tone Master Pro and Helix Stadium, which is why GW says it’s “biting at the heels” of the big-name modelers. Shipping now.
NEW JHS x Coppersound Short Circuit — A $119 Boost-A-Drive-A-Fuzz You Solder Yourself
JHS has teamed up with DIY specialists Coppersound for the Short Circuit, a $119 build-it-yourself “Boost-A-Drive-A-Fuzz” that grows the classic two-transistor LPB-1 circuit into a three-mode dirt box with Volume, Gain and a RAT-style Filter control. Unlike the snap-together Notaklön and Notadümblë, this one is a real soldering project: you populate the PCB with resistors, caps, diodes, transistors and pots yourself, then box it in a rugged 125B enclosure with a Coppersound faceplate. Guitar World notes it’s also a personal milestone for Josh Scott — it was the project on his bench right before the 2025 mountain-bike crash that sidelined him. Available now direct from Coppersound.
NEW Catalinbread EG1 Lo-Fi Delay — Radio, Cassette and Broken-TV Echoes on Tap
Catalinbread’s second pedal on its tap-tempo platform is a lo-fi delay built around the idea of signal “transmission” rather than a single tape imitation. A three-way toggle picks Vintage Radio (band-pass filtering and broadcast grit), Cassette Tape (wow, flutter and saturation) or Digital Television (Nyquist error and downsampling), with a Mod knob whose job changes per mode and a Transmission knob that sets how much of that degradation hits the repeats. Underneath is a proper delay: roughly 900 ms of time, feedback that will self-oscillate, a mix control that goes fully wet, and a multi-color tap footswitch. Delicious Audio calls it eccentric yet thoroughly playable, and Catalinbread has it at $239.99 (on sale for $203.99 at launch).
NEW JHS AT Mini — Andy Timmons’ 100-Watt Drive, Shrunk to $129
JHS has squeezed the original AT V1 circuit — the Angry-Charlie-derived “@” drive Andy Timmons has leaned on since 2016 — into a mini enclosure. Gearnews notes the trade-offs are small: the footswitchable boost and the wattage toggle are gone, with the pedal locked into Timmons’ preferred 100-watt voicing, the loudest and least-compressed of the bunch. You still get Volume, Drive, EQ (a high-pass filter that tames or thickens the top end) and Air (a presence-style brightness control), covering everything from punchy British crunch to saturated lead distortion. At $129 versus $219 for the full-size AT, it’s a cheap way onto a crowded board.
NEW Walrus Audio Canvas Expression — Two Jacks, 16 MIDI Messages, Nothing to Wear Out
Walrus Audio’s Canvas Expression follows January's Canvas Volume with a matching expression pedal, and the headline detail is what is not inside it: in place of the strings, gears and potentiometers that eventually kill most expression pedals, the treadle rides on a contactless magnetic position sensor, which gearnews reports delivers a very smooth tracking response alongside adjustable tapers for setting the feel underfoot. Jacks A and B are fully independent and can each be assigned to expression, switch or CV duty across TRS, TS and RTS wiring, while 1/8-inch TRS MIDI and USB-C turn the pedal into a controller capable of up to 16 assignable MIDI messages — all configured in a browser-based editor that covers taper curves, wiring, CC and PC assignments, CV settings and switch behaviour, with four LEDs under the treadle showing which parameter you are editing. gearnews's read is that it is overkill if you only ever need to sweep one knob on one pedal, but close to ideal for touring players and synth users pushing a lot of control data around a rig. It is built from steel and aluminum, runs from a standard 9V center-negative supply at 300mA, and is available now at $299.99.
NEWDOD Drag Analog Delay — A Bucket-Brigade Echo With a Tape-Stop Trick
The Drag is the spiritual successor to DOD’s cult-classic Rubberneck, squeezing that pedal’s time-stretching wizardry — plus a few new tricks — into a single-footswitch enclosure. Guitar World’s Alex Lynham gave the sounds a full five stars: an all-analog 750ms bucket-brigade voice that is dark and rich enough to set up like a Space Echo and walk away, with Rubbernecking, SlideStop and Evade friction modes on tap for octave-up and octave-down pitch bends, screeching tape stops and genuinely unpredictable glitches when you push the BBD chips past their limits. The catch is the control layout — cramming Rubberneck-level functionality onto one footswitch means you will be reaching for the manual, and probably for a DigiTech FS3X external switch, to get at everything. His verdict: an unusual pedal that is trying to do something new, and one where trial and error pays off. Street price is $219.99.
Electro-Harmonix Effects Interface — Your Pedalboard, Now a DAW Plugin
From the company that gave us the Big Muff comes a Big Muff-sized box that finally makes hardware and software play nicely together. The Effects Interface works three ways: as a standalone 2-in/2-out USB-C audio interface, as a way to insert your real pedals into a DAW track exactly like a plugin, or — flipped around — as a footswitchable way to drop computer plugins into your live signal chain. Guitar World’s Alex Lynham scored it five stars across build, usability and sound, praising the chunky sliders and stereo input metering and noting that running drum busses through a Big Muff, a Tube Screamer or a pair of real-time Whammys effectively hands you a whole new rack of gain and modulation plugins. His caveats: pushing DAW plugins back out onto your board takes more setup fiddling, and at $359 it costs about what a decent audio interface does. His verdict was still that it is a pedal he did not know he needed.
Read the full review at Guitar World →🎸 Shop Electro-Harmonix →
NEW Crazy Tube Circuits Triptychon — Boost, Fuzz and Drive in One Five-Star Box
Stacking a boost into a fuzz into an overdrive is how a lot of great rock tones actually get built, and the Athens-built Triptychon puts all three of those blocks in one compact enclosure — a four-voice fuzz section, a switchable Rangemaster-style treble boost or analog octave-up, and an amp-like drive with its own tone control. Guitar World's Alex Lynham gave it a five-star review, calling it superbly built and noting that the drive stage actually makes the fuzz more controllable rather than less, much like a pushed tube amp would. He reckons it is at its best with all three circuits running and the Fuzz and Drive past noon, where the lead tones are, in his words, simply brilliant. His only real gripes: it is not cheap at $359, and there is no Big Muff voicing in the fuzz block — but he found there was hardly a bad setting on the pedal.
NEW MXR Mr. TalkBox Signature — 25 Watts of Talk Box, Built With Byron Chambers
Byron “Mr. TalkBox” Chambers has spent 27 years putting talk box vocals on gospel, funk, R&B and pop records, and when he wanted a rig-friendly box built specifically around that silky electro-groove sound he took the idea to MXR. Per Premier Guitar's announcement, the result leans hard on headroom: a 25-watt amp and a lightweight neodymium driver deliver a thick, full low end without the usual talk box heft, while Volume, Tone and Gain controls plus a gain-bypass switch let you shape vowels and keep hot signals in check instead of just wrestling them. It runs on 18V and ships with an 8-foot tube and a mic stand clip, so it works equally well on a pedalboard or a desk for radio and podcast work. It is available now at $449.99 street.
Source Audio Encounter — Six Delays, Six Reverbs, One Deep-Space Vessel
MusicRadar frames the Encounter as an evolutionary rebuild of Source Audio’s 2019 Collider rather than a simple reissue: six delay engines (Noise Tape, Resonant, Drum Echo, Echoverb, Kaleidoscope and Helix) sit alongside six reverbs (Hypersphere, Shimmers, TremVerb, Reverse, Lo-Fi and Swell), several of them all-new algorithms aimed squarely at ambient players. Each half gets its own multi-function footswitch — the delay side doubling as tap tempo with a subdivisions switch — and the whole pedal runs in full stereo with a 100% analog signal path, eight onboard presets, 128 more over MIDI, and selectable true, soft or buffered bypass. Deeper editing happens over USB in Source Audio’s Neuro app, where patches can be shared with and pulled from the wider user community. At $399 it is not a casual buy, and MusicRadar’s read is that this one is built for pedalboard cosmonauts chasing genuinely immersive soundscapes rather than everyday slapback.
NEW Death By Audio x Rainger FX Amp Crash — A Real Amp and Speaker, Sealed Inside a Pedal
When Rainger FX’s David Rainger pitched Oliver Ackermann on the idea of putting a microphone inside a pedal, Death By Audio escalated it and dropped a real 3-watt amplifier and a 2-inch speaker into the chassis alongside it. Nothing here is modeled: an actual amp pushes an actual speaker while an internal mic captures the air moving around inside the box, and you blend that mic’d signal against the direct one to land anywhere from warm, touch-sensitive overdrive to crushing fuzz, natural feedback and genuinely unpredictable harmonic blooms. A built-in effects engine with reverb, echo and chorus warps those physical tones further, and an external 8-ohm speaker output turns the pedal into a tiny standalone amp for driving a full cab. Delicious Audio calls it a masterclass in weird, wild engineering that only two kindred boutique builders could pull off — rugged buffered bypass, lifetime warranty, and equally at home as a practice rig, a direct recording tool or a living instrument that reacts to how you play.
Read the full review at Delicious Audio →🎸 Shop Death By Audio →
NEW Walrus Audio Lüm Texture Engine — The Sold-Out Granular Experiment, Back for Good
Walrus originally built just 600 Lüms as a limited-run experiment, sold every one of them, and then discontinued it — and MusicRadar reports that enough players kept asking that the pedal is now back permanently, in matte black and guava gloss. It is essentially the Slö, Lore and Fable collapsed into one box: Grain Cloud scatters your signal into glitchy fragments, Grain Verb soaks those grains in reverb, and Forward/Reverse Verb runs a conventional and a backwards algorithm head-on into each other. Three onboard presets, adjustable ramp time, selectable trails and a Stretch Engine that shifts the sample rate from 0.5x to 2x round it out. MusicRadar’s read is that “texture” is quietly becoming its own pedal category alongside delay and modulation — and at $279, the Lüm is the obvious way in.
NEW Crazy Tube Circuits White Whale Junior — A Real Spring Tank That Fits on Your Board
Digital spring emulations have gotten very good, but they still are not springs — and the White Whale Junior refuses to compromise. Crazy Tube Circuits has fitted the same three-spring tank used in its full-size White Whale models, driven by a dedicated analog power amplifier, into an enclosure measuring just 154 x 83 x 68mm, which may make it the smallest pedal on the market to pair a genuine spring tank with authentic amp-style tremolo. The two sections run fully independently, each with its own footswitch and its own volume control: the reverb side gets Dwell, Wet Mix and Tone, the tremolo side gets Speed and Intensity, and the reverb sits ahead of the tremolo in the chain, exactly as it would inside a vintage combo. Designed and built in Athens, Greece, it runs from a standard 9V center-negative supply at 110mA and lands at $359 — a lot of drippy, surf-soaked real estate reclaimed from your pedalboard.
NEW JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer — A $29 Pawnshop Amp, Bottled and Set on Fire
Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard has tracked every Gizzard record through a $29 pawnshop practice amp, and this JAM Pedals collaboration bottles what happens when you shove two Boomster boosters into it until it stops behaving. It is a three-footswitch gain machine — two stackable drive stages plus a standalone treble booster built on JAM’s Rooster circuit — with active Bass and Treble, a Notch control for dialing in boxiness, and a Magic switch that piles on small-amp compression. Guitar World reports a $399 price, artwork by longtime band artist Jason Galea, and the first 50 units hand-signed by Mackenzie and Galea. As JAM puts it, this is not an amp in a box so much as the sound of the box losing the fight.
NEW Old Blood Noise Endeavors Beam Splitter V2 — One Guitar, Three Amps, No Overdubs
OBNE's Beam Splitter takes one mono guitar signal and fans it out into three parallel analog drive voices — hard clipping, soft-and-hard clipping, and a transistor drive that now pushes into fuzz — then routes two of them through independent delay lines of up to 211ms, so a single part arrives sounding triple-tracked. Delicious Audio reports that V2 keeps the lush chorusing, slapback and width of the original while rebuilding the architecture around full digital control: three footswitches, three onboard presets expandable to 127 over MIDI, expression assignment for any knob, a lower noise floor, and a new Spread control for stereo imaging. Outputs can stay in parallel mono, spread to stereo, or split three ways into OBNE's “trereo” format for wet-dry-wet rigs. It's $379, built in Oklahoma, and offered in Shadow, Cool and Warm.
NEW Keeley Tube Drive Twin Triode 12AT7WA — A 1950s Sylvania Tube, Numbered in Gold
Keeley's new Tube Drive is a two-in-one gain box built around a genuine 1950s Sylvania 12AT7WA, with both triodes running in series in Class A at high voltage and feeding a vintage tweed-style tone stack — real tube breakup rather than an emulation of it. The second footswitch belongs to the Super Phat Mod, one of Keeley's most-loved overdrives, and a simple foot gesture flips the effect order so you can push the tube into the Phat Mod or run it the other way around. Every tube is hand-selected, burned in and tested behind a matte black shroud, and the pedal adds a Remote jack for external per-side switching plus selectable true-bypass or Keeley's silent buffered switching. Keeley lists this RKFX.com-exclusive 12AT7WA edition at $499 — a numbered run of 100 in brushed gold, designed and assembled in Oklahoma City — and that first batch sold out on August 7, with wider 12AT7WC and standard 12AX7 editions reported to follow on September 1.
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NEW EarthQuaker Devices ZEQD-Pre — A Real EF86 Tube Amp for Your Pedalboard
Co-designed with Mike Zaite of Dr. Z Amplification, the ZEQD-Pre is a genuinely all-analog preamp built around an EF86 pentode — the same hi-fi, touch-sensitive tube behind the pristine clean tones of several Dr. Z amps. It pairs a passive three-band EQ with a separate footswitchable boost (engaging the boost bypasses the tone stack), and adds a balanced XLR direct out with switchable analog cab simulation plus a headphone output for silent practice; every output stays live at once, even in bypass. Premier Guitar’s Charles Saufley found the EQ section made a 50-watt Bassman sound full and lively at bedroom volume, and running the pedal straight into an interface stripped away the “uncanny valley” lifelessness of direct and modeled tones — he described it less as a compromise than as an amp with its own appealing voice, somewhere between a Princeton and an AC15. It earned 4.5 out of 5 and a Premier Gear award at $399 street; his only real gripe is that you can’t run the boost and the EQ together.
Read the full review at Premier Guitar →🎸 Shop EarthQuaker Devices →
NEW MXR Flanger/Doubler — Dimebag’s Rack Secret, Now a Stompbox
MXR has squeezed its legendary rack-mount Flanger/Doubler into a pedalboard-sized enclosure, keeping the all-analog bucket-brigade circuitry and the original control set intact. A Doubler button flips between sweeping jet-engine flange and the thick, slightly offset second layer that Dimebag Darrell ran as an always-on thickener on tracks like “Cowboys from Hell.” Guitar World notes it also adds an Invert switch for wet-signal polarity, CV in and out for synths and sequencers, a Line Level switch for hot signals, and two LEDs that track delay time visually. Street price is $333, and Zakk Wylde’s guitar tech confirmed he had already used one in recent Pantera Celebration rigs.