Updated Dec. 2, 2021 | by Paolo De Gregorio

Best New Pedals of 2021 | November Edition

It’s time for our monthly recap of the best new pedals released last month (i.e. November 2021)! Previous monthly editions can be found here.

In November 2021 a lot of new pedals saw the light of day. Curiously, there was a remarkable number of fuzz releases, which is why in this edition we decided to create a separate list for that niche of pedals.

You can use the list below to jump directly to the list you are interested in:

Best New Fuzz Pedals
Best New Drive/Distortion Pedals 
Best New Non-Gain Pedals 

Enjoy!

Best New Fuzz Pedals released in November 2021

As usual, mouseover or first tap on the thumbnails will open a description of the pedal, while a click or a second tap will open a video of the pedal.

3717438942
boss FZ-1w
$199 | a modern reinterpretation of vintage fuzz, it features three knobs and two modes (Vintage and Modern) and delivers classic fuzz tones without the “classic” vintage fuzz instability issues. The Tone knob in Vintage mode works in the traditional way, affecting both low and high frequencies, while in Modern mode it acts more like a “presence” control, only pushing the high end without affecting the mids or lows.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
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Reverb Amazon
1491097372
EarthQuaker Devices Hizumitas Fuzz
$149 | a recreation of Boris guitarist Wata's Elk BM Sustainar, a Japanese variant of the “Triangle” Big Muff Pi. It produces a “heavy saturation with a gritty edge and massive bottom” while maintaining a clear and dynamic tone with enough mids and top end. The Sustain control delivers a wide range of saturation while the Tone knob can heavily affect the quality of the distortion.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
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Reverb Amazon
3271347984
Thermion Stone Age
~$215 | an ambitious attempt at creating a fuzz that can do it (almost) all, thanks to its four voicings, Hi and Low EQ knobs, and octave and clean channels with dedicated knobs and footswitches. The fuzz flavors are Single Transistor, Maestro, Face and Thermion. The EQ section has High and Low Cut knobs applying a high Q shelving filter, and can be bypassed via a switch.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1100500607
VS-Audio Pandora Fuzz
~$215 | A highly modified, dual gain, analog Fuzz Face-style pedal featuring a hand-selected NOS AC125 Ge Transistor that allows for a much broader sonic palette than the original, while maintaining its vintage tone. The active Bass and Treble knobs deliver a +/- 20dB boost/cut, while the More footswitch activates a separate clean boost circuit that can add volume into the fuzz or also to your clean signal.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2324534438
Fjord Fuzz ODIN V2
$200 | two separate, non-stackable fuzzes, one with an octave-up and one without, both inspired by the classic Foxx Tone Machine. Removing the tone and clipping stages and adding a louder output stage, these circuits deliver a massive mid-forward fuzz. The left footswitch toggles between octave up and regular fuzz. V2 adds a gain knob for each channel.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
4074802881
MAS Effects Sona Fuzz
$149 | a high gain fuzz that’s more tweakable than it may appear at a first glance. The Body switch can significantly change the fuzz’s personality, by fattening or thinning out the signal going into the effect. Two internal controls add extra versatility: a Fuzz Ceiling trim pot allows you to tame the amount of gain to avoid extreme settings that make the pedal noisy, and a Bias control gives a gated, sputtery sound.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2451397933
Animals Pedal In Oct,3 Foxes talking of dreamy FUZZ
~$100 | an affordable Japanese Foxx Tone Machine-inspired octave-up pedal, but with more flexibility, thanks to the Oct toggle switch that lets you turn off the octave, and to an articulate interaction with the guitar’s volume that allows for a wide palette of tones. The three knobs for Level, Sustain and Tone open up several fuzzy sonic possibilities.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1428179021
black arts toneworks priestess
$189 | dual gain stage fuzz pedal with two EQ knobs: Tone delivers low and high shelving, Mids gives you the metal scooped tone – or boosted mids, if you crank it up. The two clipping diodes can be turned on or off with two separate toggle switches – when off, you get a different kind of distortion (Supa Tonebender-style on one side and Pharaoh-style on the other)
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
30302150
Rare Buzz FUZZ BOB-OMB
$149 | US-made two-knob fuzz with a wide tonal range hosted in a sparkly red compact case. It features a jfet input buffer that feeds a four-stage germanium fuzz core followed by a simple transistor buffer. The two knobs are Output (the big one) and Timbre, which dramatically changes the character of the fuzz by adjusting the balance of the last rectifier stage.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
661998693
Deep Space Devices Dust Fuzz
$125 | a one-knob pedal that seems to do way too many things for having just one knob. Well, it also has an extra knob actually, that loops the sampled note until you release it. So it’s a fuzz and a momentary sampler/looper. The fuzz sound is set to “gnarly,” while the knob controls the length of the playback note in often unexpected ways
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
643980523
Black Mass Missionary Fuzz V2
$145 | a fuzz delivering a varied palette of tones while working well anywhere in your pedal chain. At low pregain and fuzz levels it can also produce overdriven tones.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon

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Best New Gain Pedals released in November 2021

1529007907
Vertex Effects Steel String Supreme SRV
$249 | A version of the company’s D-Style flagship pedal inspired by a variation of the Dumble Steel String amp, which sports a tweaked circuit featuring modified Bright/Deep and Jazz/Rock switches. It delivers an even glassier and warmer tone than the regular version, with which shares the rest of the circuit (dual-channel, EQ footswitch, 6 knobs + 2 toggle switches controls).
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
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Reverb Amazon
1558937339
Electronic Audio Experiments Dagger V2
$199 | a simplified version of the company’s own Longsword op-amp drive, featuring only the original’s gain stages and dual band shelving EQ. It adds a series of improvements, including a Shift toggle that delivers thicker or tighter overdrive. The 2-knob EQ section is based on two classic Baxandall shelving filters.
Perf. Circuit | Reverb | Amazon
1927611511
Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees
~$400 | a solid state overdrive/distortion/fuzz version of the company's Big Trees tube pedal (worth $1,000+), simulating the behavior of an EL84 tube with a JFET transistor. The four knobs deal with Volume, Bass (Root), Treble (Branch) and Gain, and can concot a wide variety of amp-like tones both for the amount of gain (from boost to fuzz) and for the tonal character.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
3420276304
One Control Strawberry Red Overdrive DLX
$TBA | a Deluxe version of a popular overdrive, it adds three extra knobs (Bass, Mids and Presence) for a full-fledged EQ section. While it’s not a clone of an existing circuit, it recreates the sound of high-end amplifiers, their pleasing compression and EQ character, and delivers good tone at all gain settings.
Alt Seller | Reverb | Amazon
1417071729
Mojo Hand FX Sericon
$199 | A tweakable Klon evolution that splits the signal into its two op-amp stages (Gain and Drive controls), featuring different voicings for a variety of harmonic content. The two signals meet again at the third gain stage, aka "Blaze," which is a low-pass filter that, at higher Gain/Drive settings, tightens the low end when turned counterclockwise, or adds more beef and thick saturation when turned clockwise.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
4245695315
Swamp Witch Pedals Silver Birch
$180 | a flexible dual gain stage overdrive voiced after a Sunn Model T amp. The knobs set Volume, Gain Stage I (with more of a mid focus) and Gain Stage II (brighter) on the top row and Bass and Treble on the bottom row. The footswitch on the right switches the relationship of the two gain stages between Parallel and Series (more tube-like the former, tighter the latter).
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2656426881
Matthews Effects The Broker Drive
$199 | Two overdrives in one box voiced after an 808 Tubescreamer (black knobs) and a hot-rodded Blues Breaker (silver knobs). The two Tone knobs work differently to tailor the respective overdrive (active for the TS side, passive for the BB side). The wide range of tones produced by the two circuits is augmented by the sonic scenarios opened when they are both on.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
2517861579
Greer Amps Sure Shot Clipping Boost
$159 | A NOT clean boost that will push your amp into overdrive, and while at it, also push a pair of MA856 clipping diodes, creating what the builder describes as a “layered” drive effect in which both the amp and the pedal are beginning to overdrive. It also works well in front of other boost, overdrive and distortion pedals, adding texture and juiciness.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
626309565
Shnobel Tone Ratatouille
$269 | Like the original, this RAT-inspired original circuit can deliver a variety of tones from low gain overdrive, to distorted, to borderline fuzz when cranked up, adding an extra amount of gain for even more extreme settings. An effort was made to make the circuit sound more "tube-like" and open, and to get it to clean well when at lower guitar volume settings.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2091422211
Groff Firestorm Distortion
$179 | a Plexi distortion running at 9v or 18v for extra headroom. It features the three classic knobs you’ll find on most distortion pedals (Level, Gain, and Tone) and two toggle switches: the Bass switch gives you three settings with different low-end values, while the Clip switch on the right delivers three clipping diodes flavors: Germanium, Silicon or LED.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2849477457
red sun fx Grantler Distortion
$160 | a two-knob, high-gain distortion pedal hailing from Germany based on a 1-watt power amp. The two controls are for volume (“pegel”) and preamp gain (“grant”). An internal switch allows lowering the gain by a factor of 10 which will transform it into more of a crunch kind of pedal.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1934617378
Mod Electronics Seismic Shift
$39 | a JFET Boost pedal of the “non-clean” variety., this is the first release from a new line of DIY pedal kits called Nexus Series, featuring kits with a PCB base rather than the traditional point-to-point wiring kits. It's a recreation of the preamp section of the vintage Echoplex and has a build difficulty of 1 out of 5, making it ideal for beginner solderers.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon

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Best New Non-Gain Pedals released in November 2021

801666335
Demedash T-60
$295 | an analog, stereo, compact, lo-fi modulation with tap tempo delivering stereo Vibrato, Chorus & Flange, voiced after the worn-out effect of stretched tape. Two LFOs operate at once: a Random LFO and a Periodic LFO (a mix of Sine and Triangle waves). The Random knob sets the ratio of the two LFOs, while Chop makes the random wave less smooth. Ramp can be fine-tuned through the alt functions.
Perf. Circuit | Reverb | Amazon
1885209134
JHS 3 Series Hall Reverb
$99 | a simple, large ambience reverb with a modulation toggle. The amount and size of the reverb can be controlled through the Verb and Decay knobs, while the effect can be darkened via the Dampen control. The modulation is applied to the wet signal only and can be turned on and off through a toggle switch.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
1182868437
JHS 3 Series Flanger Pedal
$99 | Voiced after classic effects like the Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, the Tycobrahe Pedalflanger, and the MXR M117 Flanger, the JHS 3 Series Flanger is a bread and butter, 3-knob pedal that can deliver the sound of those classics at a fraction of the cost. The traditional Blend, Rate and Intensity knobs are joined by a toggle switch that will deliver a more tape-like effect.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
1989575123
JHS Pedals 3 Series Phaser
$99 | Inspired by the classic phaser circuits of the 1970s, the JHS Pedals 3-Series Phaser is a simple compact mono pedal capable of delivering all the standard phase tones you would expect, and more thanks to the Blend control and Feedback toggle switch, opening up a wider range of tones.
Zzounds | Sweetwater |
More
Reverb Amazon
3859963066
SolidGoldFx Ether
$209 | a cavernous, ambient reverb followed by a 3 mode modulation circuit (Vibrato, Tremolo and Harmonic Tremolo). The reverb has controls for Level, Decay, and Color, and an optional Shimmer mode that - in this pedal - sounds less angelic and slightly more dissonant, devolving with the reverb's decay. The modulation can follow thre LFO shapes: Sawtooth, Sine and Special.
Alt Seller | Reverb | Amazon
3884701721
Pedal Pawn Chicken Quiff
$230 | a faithful clone of the rare Cesar Diaz Texas Tremodillo, a legendary, discontinued pedal that sells used for around $1k USD. Hand-made and painted, it features two controls for Rate and Dwell (depth) and a second footswitch to accelerate the speed of the tremolo, Leslie-style.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1562284040
red witch Empress Chorus
$245 | Used by Andy Summers for the Police reunion in 2007, this stereo chorus features a Voice control that lets you change the delay time of the chorus, which allows creating infinite chorus variations. The Deus version adds a "Dark" mode that simulates the high roll-off of the Boss CE-1, and extends compatibility to 15v PSUs for extra headroom.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
3005111790
NATIVE AUDIO PRETTY BIRD WOMAN
$299 | a two-knob mono digital chorus/vibrato with four presets. Its "less-is-more" approach to controls prioritizes quality tones and yet provides enough functionality for a palette of sonic options. The values of Depth and Rate were engineered differently for the Chorus and Vibrato in order to optimize their range and action.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
1863137280
Supro Flanger
$289 | an all-analog, full-stereo modulation employing four MN3009 Bucket Brigade chips to deliver a rich effect with plenty of headroom.The Width knob sets the intensity of the effect and its stereo “opening.” The Sweep control sets the delay time of the flanger, allowing for tonal variation, while the Dimension toggle switch cross-feeds the two channels into one another, creating a double-flanger effect.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
3715374020
Dophix Galileo Tremolo
$349 | optical tremolo with tons of features: Attack delays the beginning of the effect to preserve note legibility; Smooth makes the LFO wave smoother or harder, producing square to sine LFOs; Symmetry changes the shape of the waveform in asymmetric ways, creating extra LFO variations. The Speed Mod toggle triggers three modes in which the speed is applied to the LFO.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon
2365229755
MojoHandFX Clarity Compressor
$139 | a simple, two-mode DSP-powered compressor. Slope mode is linear and natural-sounding, with fast attack and smooth response. Envelope mode is more aggressive, with a punchier compression that responds dynamically to attack and produces pumping with pleasing harmonics. Both modes can be tamed reintroducing the clean signal through the Mix knob.
eBay | Reverb | Amazon

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Previous editions of this monthly list can be found here.

 

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