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Best New Pedals 2023 | April Edition

April 2023 was a rather exciting month for pedal releases, if anything due to the unusual timing of the NAMM show, which still triggers a noteworthy amount of product announcements. Speaking of NAMM, we had our usual, huge shared pedal booth at this year's show, and our YouTuber friend Devon…Click on the title for more

Best New Pedals 2023 | April Edition

Coffee Shop Pedals Cortado Reverb

The Coffee Shop Pedals Cortado is a multi-mode, stereo reverb pedal hailing from Saskatchewan, smack in the middle of Canada. This device is a testament to how, in this day and age, small builders with very small teams (in many cases a team of one) can create quality digital stompboxes…Click on the title for more

Coffee Shop Pedals Cortado Reverb

Tru-Fi Ghost Vibe

The Tru-Fi Ghost Vibe is a recreation of the classic vintage Uni-Vibe effect by a boutique US pedal builder headed by a self-described "Hendrix tone nut" whose mission is to deliver "toneful and well-built guitar pedals that sound and look like they are 50 years old." Needless to say, the…Click on the title for more

Tru-Fi Ghost Vibe

Thorpy FX The Deep Oggin Chorus

Lately, creative (and crazy sounding) effect pedals have dominated most "Best of" lists - whether year-end ones or NAMM-related ones. Yet, some more traditional pedals are still able to make the cut just because of how good they sound. Enter Thorpy FX's The Deep Oggin chorus, selected by Reverb's Andy…Click on the title for more

Thorpy FX The Deep Oggin Chorus

Mr. Black Twin-Lazers True Stereo Phase Shifter & Modulator

It looks like stompbox designers are having a lot of fun with phaser pedals these days! After intriguing 2018 releases by EQD, Alexander Pedals and Old Blood Noise (among others) Portland's Mr. Black also unveiled a new (and blue) dual phaser called Twin-Lazers - a "True Stereo Phase Shifter & Modulator."…Click on the title for more

Mr. Black Twin-Lazers True Stereo Phase Shifter & Modulator

NUX Amp Academy

It seems like amp and cab modelers have been getting better and more feature-rich by the day since the turn of the decade. The next challenge is to keep that quality and features and bring down the price, which is what the NUX Amp Academy, a $189 fully-featured device, is…Click on the title for more

NUX Amp Academy

Electro Harmonix East River Drive

After a period spent focusing on effects other than distortion, Electro Harmonix in 2013 seems to have shifted its attention back to what made it famous in the early days. After repackaging their classic 70s Hot Tubes pedal in "nano" format, the NYC-based builder has released a brand new distortion…Click on the title for more

Electro Harmonix East River Drive

Emerald Ox FX Chimeric Percolator

The Emerald Ox FX Chimeric Percolator is a handmade pedal that addresses the quandary of "perfecting the Harmonic Percolator circuit" in a peculiar way. Rather than arbitrarily deciding what the best sound is for this famously sonically unreliable vintage circuit, the builder, after comparing the varying tone of several units,…Click on the title for more

Emerald Ox FX Chimeric Percolator

New Pedal: Ohms Pedals Stolen Horse

NOT a Klon clone (as some may have assumed from the name/graphics combo), the Ohms Pedals Stolen Horse is a LOUD distortion pedal using an original circuit based on multi-stage opamp clipping with plenty of tweakability. The gain circuit was designed to produce amp-like tones from clean to heavily distorted,…Click on the title for more

New Pedal: Ohms Pedals Stolen Horse

TC Electronic Infinite Sample Sustainer

Since it was acquired by Behringer's Music Tribe, Danish company TC Electronic has lost a lot of its original appeal - the one of a forward-thinking company run by bright and likable people. A series of redesigns of cheap, old Behringer pedals and unnecessary clones of existing circuits have diluted…Click on the title for more

TC Electronic Infinite Sample Sustainer

Pedal Brainz Left Brain Expression Modulator

The Pedal Brainz Left Brain Expression Modulator belongs to the "controller" category of pedals, but also to the niche of devices to be filed under "if it was candy, we would eat it." The adorable-looking bright pink mini-pedal is a source of expression modulation patterns - up to 50 -…Click on the title for more

Pedal Brainz Left Brain Expression Modulator

Analogwise Pedals Dead Man Walking Fuzz

Born from the need to create a fuzz pedal that was gnarly yet retained some smoothness and clarity, the Analogwise Pedals Dead Man Walking is a mid-gain fuzz enclosed in the company's unmistakable dark wood and unpolished metal signature case. Hand built in Polland, this is a rather tweakable device,…Click on the title for more

Analogwise Pedals Dead Man Walking Fuzz