Updated Mar. 13, 2018 | by Paolo De Gregorio

Best New Guitar Pedals 2018

After this year’s NAMM (which we covered in this über-thorough gallery of new pedal releases), we published this Best of NAMM 2018 aggregate list, compiling the “Best of”s published by 5 sites.

We then decided to ask our readers, through this poll, what they thought were the most intriguing new stompboxes of 2018 from the list of the pedals that made the aggregate list. We got nearly 3k votes!

Well, the results of that poll are in!

Here are the top 10. You can find the full list—featuring 46 pedals—here.

  1. Electro-Harmonix 95000 Looper
  2. Dunlop 535Q Mini-Cry Baby
  3. Line 6 HX Effects
  4. Empress Effects Zoia
  5. Ibanez Nu Tube Screamer
  6. JHS Pedals Bonsai
  7. Catalinbread Epoch Pre
  8. Ernie Ball Expression Tremolo
  9. Alexander Pedals Colour Theory
  10. Keeley Ecco Delay

The pedals on positions 11–46 can be found here. Here’s an interactive gallery of the top 10:

4153891390
EHX Super Looper 95000
6-track looping station which functions almost as mini on-the-fly studio. Each track features an individual volume slider and panning knob for live mixing and manipulation. The 6 footswitch control Loop Up and Down, Stop/Start, Record/Overdub, Undo, and Track toggle. Fully Midi-capable.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1098016091
Cry Baby Mini 535Q Wah
$149 - At half the size of a standard wah, this pedal provides the perfect balance of wah control and pedalboard-efficiency. The Range Selector lets you choose one of the standard 535Q Wah’s four most popular sweep ranges. With the Q control, you can shape the wah’s response, from a narrow bandpass that emphasizes high-end harmonics to a wide bandpass that emphasizes lower end ones.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
ncjd
Line 6 HX
optional
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
4198864631
Empress Zoia
$499 | A compact, stereo grid of musical anything with virtual modules that can be used to construct instruments, effects, utilities. Save patches as supermodules to speed up creation or randomly create functions. Ongoing updates (new modules!) keeps it fresh. It includes MIDI i/o, CV & clock in and can send CV out on the ring of a TRS. There's also a Eurorack version of it.
Perf. Circuit | Reverb | Amazon
https://reverb.grsm.io/OliviaSisinni?type=p&product=ibanez-nu-tube-screamer
Ibanez NTS Nu Tube Screamer
$139 | Equipped with a Korg Nutube vacuum tube, it’s even more versatile than the original, with a mix control for blending your dry tone with the overdriven sound.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1679736285
JHS Pedals Bonsai
$229 | A painstakingly encyclopedic take on the Tube Screamer clone that offers (reportedly) exact replicas of nine rare, classic, and must-have tube screamers from over 41 years of green overdrive history - and the usual three knobs to tweak them. "Is it analog?" we hear you ask. Yes, it is! The company goes as far as saying: "When you plug into the Bonsai, you're playing through the exact same circuitry as the original pedals."
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
https://amzn.to/2w3rC1p
Catalinbread Epoch Pre - Preamp Buffer
Emulates the preamp of the Echoplex Bandechoes, featuring both variations of the vintage model. Internal 22 Volt circuit allows large headroom. It also features a switchable buffer.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1504331255
Ernie Ball Expression Tremolo
$199 - A tremolo built inside an expression pedal, which can control the effect's depth, speed or both. Five waveforms to choose from, and an added reverb just because.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
1592050533
Alexander Pedals Colour Theory
$199 - It combines a versatile eight-step sequencer with a powerful effects processor that gives you from tremolo and pitch shifting to synthy octave and oscillation, creating rhythmic combinations seldom heard outside of a rack of synths. Each step in its sequence is a new pathway to adventure.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2258244620
Keeley Ecco Delay
An innovative stereo echo with tap tempo, presets capability, runaway feedback triggered with the footswitch, and modulation on the repeats only.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon

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