Latest Guitar Effects Pedals, News & Updates

The Tubesteader Sunstead is a dual-channel tube preamp and overdrive built with Torsten Kinsella of God Is an Astronaut, voiced for indie rock, post-rock, and shoegaze after classic British alternative-rock preamps. Two 12AX7 tubes run at full plate voltage inside a die-cast enclosure, giving the pedal the compression and touch response of a real tube amp. Channel I moves from moody cleans to harmonically complex overdrive, while Channel II brings more upper-mid presence and higher gain, all the way to dense, fuzzy distortion.

Each channel has its own Gain, Volume, and passive three-band EQ, so two very different sounds can sit at matched levels. A side-mounted Tone Cut switch tames the top end and output for the front of an amp, or opens up the full range for an effects return, power amp, or cabinet simulator. Channel and bypass can be switched from the two footswitches or remotely through a 3.5 mm TRS jack, and the pedal runs on 12 V DC at 500 mA from its included adapter.

The Strymon La Brea Analog Tape Drive is an all-analog drive that turns the tape saturation behind Strymon's Deco into a dedicated gain pedal, covering everything from mild breakup to saturated fuzz. Two cascaded tape stages with tape-deck-style pre-emphasis and de-emphasis give it a warm, compressed response, and notes grow smoother rather than harsher as the Tape Sat control is pushed. A Gain switch sets the range of that control, from low and medium gain to considerably more.

A parallel Dry path, phase-aligned with the saturated signal, can be blended in to bring back dynamics at high gain or used alone for up to 6 dB of clean boost. The Shift switch adds either high-end sparkle or high-midrange bite to both paths. Internally the pedal runs at 24 V for extra headroom, and it belongs to Strymon's Series A line of analog designs with no digital processing at all.

The JAM Pedals Tiny Amp Destroyer is a three-footswitch gain pedal developed with Stu Mackenzie of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, capturing the sound of a tiny pawn-shop amp pushed by two clean boosts until it starts to fall apart. Two independent drive stages, a restrained G2 and a hotter G1, can run alone or stacked, covering focused low-gain drive, raw and boxy distortion, and dense, blown-out saturation. A third footswitch adds a treble booster based on the JAM Rooster, placed ahead of both stages to tighten the low end and sharpen the attack.

Active Bass and Treble controls set the weight and focus of the drive stages, while a Notch control carves out a frequency band for increasingly hollow and scooped sounds. The MAGIC switch pushes the response toward the compressed, unstable feel of a small amplifier beyond its limits. A G1 Global Bypass mode, set at power-up, lets one footswitch bring in the full stacked sound, and the pedal wears original artwork by longtime King Gizzard collaborator Jason Galea.

The Boss EX-4 Effects Expander runs up to four effects at once from 120 Boss effect types in a housing less than twice the size of a standard Boss compact, designed to fill the gaps on an existing pedalboard rather than replace it. Its library spans drives that include models of classic Boss, Ibanez, and Klon circuits, pitch and synth effects, filters, modulation, and delays that include Space Echo and Echorec models, alongside bass-specific algorithms. Effects can be loaded into any block, repeated, reordered, and run in five serial or parallel structures.

Gear Suite offers ready-made settings for each effect, and 128 preset plus 128 user memories hold complete sounds. Two footswitches step through memories or switch blocks like stompboxes, and their functions can be reassigned to tap tempo and other targets. Stereo inputs and outputs double as an effects loop for external pedals, while TRS MIDI and USB-C connect the EX-4 to larger rigs.

The Beetronics Tuna Trem puts nine tremolo modes, called Species, into a hand-drilled tuna can, with an analog VCA tremolo in the signal path and digital control behind the shapes. The Species run from a smooth sine wave and a choppy square wave to lo-fi stutters, woodpecker-like burst chops, a strong-weak pulse, and a syncopated pattern built on a Brazilian baiao rhythm. Two further modes hand control to the footswitch, one for volume swells and one for momentary signal cuts.

Only two knobs sit on the can: Species picks the mode and Speed sets the rate. Holding the footswitch while turning Speed adjusts the depth, and every Species remembers its own setting. The footswitch itself works latching or momentary depending on whether it is tapped or held, which makes it simple to add tremolo to a single riff, and the pedal draws 50 mA from a standard 9 V supply.

Mayasonic's Sun Tzu is an ultra-responsive analog gain pedal that moves from clear, dimensional cleans through edge-of-breakup and singing overdrive to full saturation. Its all-discrete two-transistor circuit uses germanium PNP and silicon NPN devices with no clipping diodes, while the interactive Drive, Bright, and Input controls shape gain, low-end focus, brightness, and playing feel.

Designed to respond closely to guitar volume and picking dynamics, Sun Tzu can work as an always-on foundation into a clean amp or as a boost into an amp that is already breaking up. The Thin/Thick Input switch and three-position Bright control provide six response combinations, while the internal LED-disable switch offers a more elastic feel and lower battery consumption.

The Rando (Proto 7) is a double-tap delay pedal developed as a spiritual successor to the CSIDMAN delay. It combines a clean delay line with a second line whose delay time is randomized at a fast interval, creating sounds that range from clean digital delay to heavily randomized repeats.

The Rando control blends between the clean and randomized delay lines, while Mix sets the balance between the effect and dry signal. The clean path includes adjustable delay time and modulation rate, and the Feed control ranges from a single repeat to mild self-oscillation.

The Old Zoo-Lion Meat is a limited-edition fuzz pedal from Beetronics FX and Jack White's Third Man Hardware, packaged as a tongue-in-cheek novelty meat product tied to the biblical tale of Samson and the lion. Unveiled July 24, 2026 at the Third Man Hardware x Reverb pop-up in Chicago, it was released in a run of 333 units, each individually numbered and hand-signed by Jack White. The circuit lives inside Beetronics' signature tin can enclosure, its transparent bottom lid showing off the brand's bee-shaped circuit board.

A single Phlegmatic Growl knob sets the master volume, but the fuzz itself is shaped by the guitar's own volume control, cleaning up into a bright, articulate tone when rolled back or opening into a thick, roaring vintage fuzz at full tilt. The blister-pack artwork, drawn by Rob Jones of Animal Rummy, carries the meat-label joke all the way through with a mock taxidermy photograph, while a true-bypass footswitch and LED indicator keep the signal untouched whenever the effect sits off.

The Black Squirrel is a limited-edition modification of 1981 Inventions' DRV III drive circuit, built in collaboration with Jack White's Third Man Hardware and released in a hand-numbered run of just 65 units. First sold in person at Earthquaker Day in Akron, Ohio, the leftover stock sold out within seconds once it hit Reverb. A three-knob panel of Drive, Cut, and Vol drives a heavier, more aggressive low end than the stock DRV circuit, hand-selected and road-tested by Third Man Hardware for what many consider the thickest version of the pedal yet.

Its extended frequency range stretches the Black Squirrel well past guitar duty, working as readily on bass as on keyboards, synths, and drum machines. Each unit is powder-coated in Third Man Yellow and carries original black squirrel artwork by Karen Schierhorn and Grant Wilson of BIG EAR pedals, paired with a 5 x 7 inch art print and a small squirrel figurine in the box. The pedal has shown up on Jack White's own guitar pedalboard and on Dominic's bass pedalboard.

The Dr. Scientist Dungeon Crawler is an extreme metal distortion that takes a clean amp all the way to death metal, doom, and black metal tones using three high-gain 2N7000 MOSFET stages instead of diode clipping. It is the company's first FET-based pedal and its most amp-like gain design, voiced for heavy pick attack, a scooped midrange, and deep bass. A Grind control blends in a silicon NPN rectifier stage that scrambles the high end, a nod to the FZ-2, and even the lowest Gain settings stay in drier, darker high-gain territory.

Shaping comes from an active six-band gyrator EQ with post-gain Lows, Lower Mids, Upper Mids, and Highs, joined by a pre-gain Thick filter that governs palm-mute tightness and a resonant Presence control. A comparator-based noise gate opens and closes fast enough to silence the pedal at full gain. Mix brings back the buffered dry signal for bass, synths, or drum machines, a second footswitch adds both gain and volume, and relay-based true bypass switching remembers both stomp states.

The MXR STB100 is Slash's signature take on the Heil Talk Box, the design Dunlop itself built and sold for years as the HT1, made with Dunlop as part of a collaboration on picks, pedals, and other gear that stretches back more than thirty years. A loudspeaker personally chosen by Slash adds volume and low-end weight, while a reworked conical tube adapter improves airflow and a streamlined candy apple red housing gives it a sleeker look. Every unit comes with a numbered card hand signed by Slash.

Rather than running on an internal amplifier, the STB100 is driven by a connected amp head rated for an 8 ohm load at 100 watts RMS, with heavy-duty speaker cables carrying the signal in from the amp and out to a speaker cabinet. The footswitch sends the signal through the included tube when engaged, and the player shapes vowels and consonants with their mouth around the tube while a nearby PA microphone picks up the result. A protective warning light watches over the speaker rather than signaling whether the effect itself is on.