Rejoice, effects pedal nerds! We live in a golden age of stompboxes. Though it’s not difficult to imagine that guitarists decades in the future will gripe that the “25th Anniversary Reissue” of their favorite transparent overdrive pedal “just isn’t as good as they built it back in the day,” the truth is, there’s never been a better time for overdrive, reverb, delay, and fuzz fanatics in the history of electric guitars.

However, there’s one minor issue — with so many different pedals to pick from, how do you decide which one to buy? Long, long ago, a search of “overdrive” or “reverb pedal” on Sweetwater’s website would bring up a few options. But today, we’re positively spoiled for choice by the sheer number of available options for any effect you can imagine. Here at Sweetwater, we want to make things easier for you. So, here are our suggestions for the year’s best guitar pedals, masterfully curated by Sweetwater’s stompbox experts! Want to learn how to buy the best guitar pedal for you? Check out our Guitar Pedal Buying Advice below!

Note: At Sweetwater, we know there’s no such thing as “best” when it comes to music gear. Every player and artist has unique tastes, which is what makes selecting gear so fun! The items on this list feature some of our favorite products from top manufacturers to help you start your buying journey! Explore these recommendations and dive into Sweetwater’s massive collection of gear on our online store. For personalized picks and expert advice, please contact our knowledgeable Sweetwater Sales Engineers at (800) 222-4700!

Best Electric Guitar Pedals — Our Picks

• Boost, Overdrive, Distortion & Fuzz
• Modulation
• Delay
• Reverb
• Tone & Dynamic Effects
• Multi-effects
• Best Guitar Pedal Buying Advice

Boost, Overdrive, Distortion & Fuzz

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Modulation

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Delay

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Reverb

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Tone & Dynamic Effects

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Multi-effects

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Guitar Pedal Buying Advice

Like picking an all-time best ice cream flavor or a favorite color to paint your living room, choosing the right guitar pedal is completely subjective, and no one can tell you what you’re going to love. However, there’s a lot to know about different kinds of guitar effects and what they can do for you. So, before you start buying pedals at random, you’ll want to get a solid overview of the basics.

This Sweetwater buying guide takes a pedalboard-style approach to your signal path, providing important insights into the wide world of guitar effects. Since there’s so much to consider when purchasing guitar pedals, don’t hesitate to call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700 if you have any questions.

• What Is the Best Signal Flow?
• Gain Stage
  • Clean Boost Pedal
  • Preamp Pedal
  • Overdrive Pedal
  • Distortion Pedal
  • Compression Pedal
  • Volume Control
• Frequency Effects
  • EQ Pedal
  • Envelope Pedal & Wah Pedal
  • Pitch-shifter Pedal & Harmony Pedal
• Modulation Effects
  • Tremolo Pedal & Vibrato Pedal
  • Chorus Pedal & Flanger Pedal
  • Phaser Pedal
• Time Effects
  • Delay
  • Reverb
• Other Effects Pedals
  • Amp-emulation Pedal
  • Instrument-emulation Pedal
  • Looper Pedal
  • Loop-switcher Pedal
  • Multi-effects Pedal
• Advanced Pedal Concepts
  • Stereo vs. Mono Pedals
  • True Bypass vs. Buffered Bypass
  • Batteries vs. AC

What Is the Best Signal Flow?

Before we dive into guitar pedals, we should talk briefly about signal path because that will determine how your pedals interact with each other. By and large, the path from your guitar to your amplifier is a straight line, and anything you stick into that path will affect everything down the line. That makes the order of your effects almost as important as the kind of effects that you put on your pedalboard. While there’s no “right” way to arrange your pedals, the most common arrangement looks like this: guitar to gain stage to frequency to modulation to time to amp.

If you’re new to pedals, then you may be wondering what kind of pedals are in the gain stage, the frequency stage, and so forth. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at each section and the kinds of effects that belong there.

Gain Stage

The first part of your signal chain is where you’ll typically stick any effects that are based on gain staging. These can range from pedals as mild as clean gain boosts to insane fuzz effects. This topic is so deep that we even have an entire Boost, Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz Pedal Buying Guide devoted to gain-staging effects.

The important thing to keep in mind is that these pedals shape the foundation for the rest of your tone. You can construct harmonically complex tones with gain-based effects alone, but if you’re at the beginning of an extended signal chain, then you may get better results by keeping it simple. There are many kinds of gain-staging pedals: clean boost, preamp, overdrive, distortion, compression, and volume control.

Clean Boost Pedal

The name suggests it all. These pedals increase (boost) your signal without adding color to your tone. Think of it as the first stage of a preamp section of a recording console. In that stage, all you are doing is amplifying a weak signal to a more suitable level for mixing and listening. For guitar use, a boost pedal can amplify your signal, push the front end of another pedal to create new sounds, or push the front end of an amp to overdrive it.

Preamp Pedal

We talked about how a clean boost pedal is the first stage of a preamp section of a recording console. Well, a preamp pedal is the next stage of that. Here, not only can you boost the signal, but you can also adjust the EQ to how you like it — all in one pedal. This small (yet huge) EQ function is why these two pedals deserve their own section instead of getting clumped together. Preamp pedals are great for tone shaping before hitting the gain stage’s overdrive and distortion sections.

When to Use a Clean Boost Versus a Dirty Boost?

Overdrive Pedal

Overdrive pedals simulate the breakup you get when you push an amplifier to the point where it starts to distort, emulating the progressive compression and distortion intensity based on incoming volume. However, many overdrive pedals (like the classic Ibanez TS808 Original Tube Screamer) are often used as dirty boosts, driving your amplifier’s preamp while also adding a bit of color and texture.

There are two gain stages in a typical overdrive: the input volume (how hard you hit the effect) and the output volume (this drives the rest of your signal path). It’s also common to see at least a simple tone control for backing off high frequencies, though bass, treble, and other tone-shaping controls aren’t rare.

Boost, Overdrive, Distortion & Fuzz Pedals – What’s the Difference?…

Distortion Pedal

If your tone was a batch of chili, then the various types of distortion pedals would be the peppers. They come in a wide range of styles — each with its own flavor and heat range. But they all serve the purpose of spicing up the mix. While some rare tube models exist, typical distortion pedals use diodes and some form of transistor to push incoming signal to the clipping point. The transistor has a lot to do with the character of the distortion, with variants such as silicon-, germanium-, and FET-based models, each imparting a particular set of nuances. Taken to an extreme, where the distortion loses virtually all its dynamics, you get fuzz effects.

How Many Distortion Pedals Do You Really Need?

Typical controls on distortion pedals include: an incoming volume adjustment, drive (gain boost), and a tone knob that modifies the frequency balance. Distortion pedals are also regularly combined with other effects, such as compression and overdrive.

Compression Pedal

As a type of signal processor, guitar compressors aren’t all that different from the compressors you’ll find in the studio. They turn down the volume of signal that’s louder than a certain threshold, decreasing the dynamic range. If the compressor is set to kick in quickly and boost the output, effectively making the quietest sound close to the same volume as the loudest ones, then you get a sustain effect that’s great for solos. On the other hand, if the compressor is set to kick in after a short delay, allowing unaffected transients to pass without gain reduction, then the punchier effect you get is ideal for chicken pickin’ and other more articulated playing styles.

Compression pedals vary in complexity from simple one-knob compressors with fixed settings to sophisticated studio-style compressors with attack, release, threshold, ratio, and volume controls. The most common configurations you’ll find consist of two or three knobs, including a gain adjustment and additional controls, that frequently combine two other functions — such as ratio and threshold — into one knob.

Volume Control

These large rocker pedals are more of a utility than an effect, essentially placing a volume control at your feet. Though you can stick one anywhere in your signal path, volume control pedals usually live somewhere toward the end of the gain-stage section. They’re perfect for creating smooth swells that add ambience to your music or subtle fade-outs, but their variable levels make them less effective than gain-boost pedals when you want to give your amplifier an extra push.age section. They’re perfect for creating smooth swells that add ambience to your music or subtle fade-outs, but their variable levels make them less effective than gain-boost pedals when you want to give your amplifier an extra push.

Frequency Effects

Frequency effects cover anything in the filtering domain, including equalizers, wah-wah effects, pitch shifters, and similar effects. This stage follows gain staging because gain-based effects tend to add a lot of harmonic complexity to your sound, which either negates filtering or produces unflattering results.

EQ Pedal

Nothing does the trick like an EQ pedal when it comes to making precise frequency adjustments, sculpting harmonics, or correcting problems in tone. It’s possible to use one of these at the end of your signal chain to correct for frequency imbalances caused by modulation, delay, reverb, or other effects, but most guitarists seem to get the most out of their EQ pedals by sticking them right after the gain-staging section. That way, you can fix any tone problems before they throw off other effects and create more serious frequency imbalances that are much harder to correct.

Most guitar equalizer pedals are graphic EQs with between five and 10 frequency bands. These are easy to dial in on the fly just in case, for example, you need to make quick adjustments to suit a particular venue. Other formats range from simple amp-style tone controls to full studio-style parametric layouts — both of which are great for punching in creative tone shifts and fixing frequency imbalances.

EQ and Overdrive Pedals

Envelope Pedal & Wah Pedal

A whole class of effects pedals is based on sweeping a resonant peaking filter across the frequency spectrum to create a vocal-style articulation. The oldest of these types of pedals is the wah-wah, which lets you sweep the filter manually by rocking your foot. As a rhythmical element, it’s a mainstay of funk and disco, but the continuously variable expression of the wah-wah is a fundamental sound of classic-rock and blues-rock solos as well. While the controls are generally simple, as they are dominated by a single rocker pedal and a few adjustments at most, wah-wahs differ considerably based on their circuitry and their control mechanism (potentiometer vs. optical sensor).

The autowah pedal (also called an envelope filter) was developed soon after the original wah-wah pedal. By triggering a resonant peaking filter off incoming transients (usually, the pick hitting the string), the autowah was originally intended to produce the same choppy rhythm sound you got from a wah-wah pedal. However, the faster automatic frequency sweep response that these pedals provided opened up a new range of effects. Add to that a broad range of controls, including filter styles, dynamics response, envelope shape, and others, and no two envelope filters sound or behave the same.

Wah Before or After Fuzz?

Pitch-shifter Pedal & Harmony Pedal

Pitch shifters and harmony pedals come in many styles, from the classic momentary octave-up pedal or octave-down bass-emulation models to polyphonic harmony pedals that let you dial in full chords. Each of these pedals is its own unique beast, with controls depending entirely upon its function. If you enjoy creating unique sounds and thinking outside the box with your tone, then you can have a lot of fun with pitch shifters and harmony processors.

Although effects manufacturers have made great strides in pitch-shifting technology, there are two things you should still know and consider about pitch shifters and harmony pedals specifically. Firstly, while the effects can be creative and cool, none of these pedal sounds are particularly realistic, and the more you alter the pitch, the less realistic they sound. Secondly, the lower the pitch you play, the harder it is for a pitch shifter to track the note, and you may end up with significant lag or glitches. If you have to choose between playing low and adding harmonies above or playing high and adding harmonies below, then the latter is almost always the better option.

Modulation Effects

While modulation pedals affect combinations of gain staging, frequency, and time, they tend to live in a special place on your pedalboard — somewhere between frequency effects and more pronounced, time-based effects. The term “modulation” really just means that the effect is based on changing something over time. In the case of modulation pedals, the change is regulated by a low-frequency oscillator (LFO), and the part of your signal the LFO affects is the biggest defining characteristic in this pedal class.

Tremolo Pedal & Vibrato Pedal

Both tremolo and vibrato effects are based on a simple LFO that modulates one tonal element and nothing more. Tremolo pedals modulate volume (a classic rockabilly and surf effect), whereas vibrato pedals modulate pitch in a way that’s similar to a Leslie rotary speaker. In either case, basic controls include depth (the extent of the change in volume or pitch) and rate (the speed of the effect).

Most of these pedals will also allow you to shape the LFO, with tremolo pedals regularly offering a range from smooth pulses to a hard square wave that adds a percussive click to your sound. Those vibrato pedals that try to emulate Leslie speakers more closely will usually include controls for changing the effect rate (often limited to two settings) and adding ramp-up time between changing speeds.

Chorus Pedal & Flanger Pedal

Chorus and flanger effects are so similar that they’re not only frequently confused, but they’re also often covered by the same pedal. This makes sense because flanging emulates an old studio trick involving desynchronizing two tape reels, and chorus is the result of an early attempt to emulate flanging that produced slightly different results. The biggest difference between the effects themselves is that flanging produces a distinct rise-and-fall sound, whereas chorus pronounces a more spacious shimmer with noticeable delay.

Chorus effects involve modulating a delayed signal just like a flanger; however, there’s considerably more delay and no (or very little) feedback. They tend to have broader depth and rate controls. Additional controls include pre-delay (to offset the delayed signal further) and a tone knob (to cut down the brightness). The result? You can produce considerably more pronounced effects and noticeably more delay with a chorus than with a flanger.

Flangers produce a movable comb filter (a series of frequency dips and peaks) by doubling the incoming signal, delaying the doubled signal slightly (no more than a few milliseconds), modulating the delay so the filtering shifts a bit, and feeding a small amount of the delayed signal back into the effect. Typical flanger controls include the modulation rate and depth, as well as the amount of feedback.

Phaser Pedal

Phasers use an interesting phase-cancellation method to create a number of frequency notches and peaks at evenly spaced intervals across the spectrum. An LFO modulates the cutoff frequencies of the phase-shifted signal, causing a gradual sweep that’s similar to flanging but still a bit subtler. It’s a favorite effect for adding color to rhythm guitar. While classic phasers typically have just a single rate control, some modern phasers include a depth control, which lets you increase the amount of resonance in the filtering to produce a much more noticeable effect.

Time Effects

From subtle ambience to infinitely deep, spacious textures, time-based effects are found on pedalboards throughout all of modern music. They range from distinctly artificial to astonishingly realistic. Like distortion effects, time-based effects pedals are all a matter of taste, and the perfect delay or reverb pedal for a surf guitar may have little in common with the one you’d want for a metal lead.

Delay Pedal

At its simplest, delay is an effect based on taking the original incoming signal and repeating it some time (or multiple times) later. The basic controls of any delay pedal include the delay time, the number of times the delay is repeated (feedback), and the balance between the incoming and delayed signals. More importantly, delay effects are common in any kind of modern music, from the short slapback delay used in surf and rockabilly to the long delays favored by blues-rock lead guitarists. Many guitarists don’t consider a pedalboard complete without delay.

Delay types are generally based on the type of circuitry or digital algorithm used to create the effect. Early analog delay pedals used loops of tape or a series of bucket brigade chips, both of which produce distinct harmonics and decay characteristics as the delay repeats trail off. Later, digital delays developed distinct sounds of their own, with Adaptive Delta Modulation and PCM delay types providing unique characteristics that guitarists still love. Today, delay pedals often feature multiple delay styles and delay lines (taps) that let you create an impressive range of effects.

Reverb

The goal of any reverb — regardless of whether you’re using the effect on vocals in the studio or a keyboard onstage — is to create a sense of space around the sound. Some of these effects are purely synthetic (and impressively musical), others emulate classic analog-reverb types (such as springs and plates), and others emulate the sound of large rooms and real spaces. Comparing one reverb to another is next to impossible since reverb is all a matter of personal taste.

Depending on the onboard options, reverb pedals can have anywhere from a single level of control to a plethora of digital settings that allow you to craft your ideal reverb tone. The common controls you’ll find include decay (how quickly the reverb effect fades out) and either a level or a wet/dry balance to adjust how much reverb you hear. Tone controls to tame high end are also fairly common.

Other Effects Pedals

There are many additional types of guitar pedals that fall outside this typical pedalboard arrangement, including amp emulators, instrument modelers, loopers, multi-effects pedals, and more.

Amp-emulation Pedal

Lying somewhere between distortion and overdrive, amp-emulation pedals model the specific characteristics of particular styles of guitar amplifiers. Amplifier-emulation pedals are a lot like amplifiers in that there are many of them, and they each offer a different range of tones, from subtle warmth to insane distortion and drive. These are extremely cool, particularly if you use a neutral, solid-state amplifier or want to record direct without an amplifier. Depending on whether you want to use it as a type of distortion or to simulate an amplifier, you may stick your amp-emulation pedal toward the front or the back of your pedalboard.

Instrument-emulation Pedal

Want to switch to an acoustic guitar in the middle of a song? How about turning your guitar into an organ? There are some seriously interesting instrument-modeling pedals out there that can totally transform your sound. What’s more, these pedals seem to be getting more popular every year, so there’s always something new to explore.

Looper Pedal

Over the past decade, looper pedals have become increasingly popular. The idea is pretty simple: you start recording when you step on the footswitch, and when you step on it again, what you just played loops back indefinitely. Some loopers are much more complex than this — with multiple parts, sync capabilities, and other cool features — but even a basic looper can be an amazing songwriting and practice tool. What’s more, there are many excellent ways to use loopers onstage, particularly to create background rhythms and continuous effects.

Loop-switcher Pedal

Not to be confused with loopers, loop switchers are a major part of advanced pedalboard construction. These devices let you set up independent effects loops that you can switch on and off and arrange in various configurations. One of the bonuses of using a loop switcher is that you can leave all your pedals in the signal path and then engage them all with a single press of a footswitch. This lets you pull off massive tone changes in the middle of a song, including switching amplifiers right along with your effects. If you look at the pedalboards of the top guitarists out there, then there’s a good chance you’ll find a powerful loop switcher in there.

Multi-effects Pedal

Take all of these other pedal types and toss them into one oversized pedal, and you get a typical modern multi-effects pedal. Some of these pedals are extremely cool, with physical modeling that not only covers all of the bases but also allows you to dig in deep and tweak your effects as though they were individual pedals. If you play in a cover band or on a worship team, then multi-effects pedals can save you a lot of money and a lot of trouble. They don’t offer quite the same freedom and possible sound quality as traditional pedals, but having your whole pedalboard in a single unit that can be as small as a single pedal is mighty convenient.

Advanced Pedal Concepts

A few additional concepts will help you make informed decisions about the pedals you buy. These are deep subjects, so these quick overviews don’t cover everything, but they’re a good place to start.

Stereo vs. Mono Pedals

Some pedals — particularly time-based types — can run the effect in mono or stereo. Running pedals in stereo allows you to take full advantage of the depth and dimension of spacial effects, such as room reverbs and ping-pong delays. The downside is that stereo doesn’t do you much good unless you’re either recording or running two amplifiers. What’s more, stereo effects can come with some unpleasant phase-related issues that can cause your tone to get lost in the mix. It’s a bit of a gamble, but when stereo effects work, they’re absolutely amazing.

True Bypass vs. Buffered Bypass

This is the topic of endless debates between tweaky guitar players. The simple answer is that neither true bypass nor buffered bypass are inherently better than the other. Ostensibly, true bypass completely cuts the circuitry of the pedal out of the signal path when it’s not in use, keeping your signal path free from any additional coloration caused by the pedal’s circuitry. However, there’s still a considerable amount of wiring in guitar pedals, and several true-bypass pedals in a row will add the equivalent of several feet of extra guitar cable.

Buffered-bypass pedals may affect your tone, but their small amount of amplification improves signal retention and fights the high-end attenuation caused by an extended cable run. If you’re running a few pedals over a small distance, then true bypass may be better for you. But if you have a packed pedalboard, then buffered bypass may provide you with better tone all the time.

Batteries vs. AC

There’s a persistent myth that all AC power supplies are noisy and can ruin your sound. While there’s no getting around the fact that bad power can affect your pedals (and batteries will get around that issue), bad power will be an even bigger problem for your guitar amplifier than your pedalboard. Some pedalboard power supplies are great at fighting power-related noise, but the best thing you can do for your guitar gear is to get a decent power conditioner and run your amp and your pedals through it. That way, you get clean sound and don’t need to worry about juggling 9-volt batteries when your pedals die in the middle of a show.

Grab Your New Guitar Pedal Today!

Choosing a guitar pedal is hard, but it doesn’t have to be! This guide provides you with an excellent jumping-off point for selecting the right guitar pedal. If you’d like personalized
recommendations, then please call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700.