Surprising Guitar Pedal Brands to Be Thankful For

Sweetwater carries over 100 brands of guitar effects pedals, floor controllers, and pedal accessories! This leads to an amazing number of iconic originals, derivations with unique twists, and entirely new creations. Like Bubba Blue telling Forrest Gump every way to cook shrimp, reciting a list of guitar pedals could go on for days and days. It’s no wonder Sweetwater holds the official record for the world’s largest pedalboard in the Guinness Book of World Records! If you’re looking for something besides the usual suspects to inspire or transform your playing, consider these seven brands that may have escaped notice.

Meris

Neo Instruments

Red Panda

Xotic

Gamechanger Audio

Empress Effects

Beetronics FX

Meris

Rather than building simple, one-trick-pony pedals, Meris develops intricate, inspiring pedals that are instruments in their own right. The company was formed by engineer and Strymon co-founder Terry Burton, Line 6 DSP expert Angelo Mazzocco, and world-class multimedia designer Jinna Kim — all experts passionate about uniting art and engineering. Their pedals provide a deep dive for players who seek to push the creative boundaries of their music and create entirely new and unexpected soundscapes with customizable, ambience-drenched reverb, harmonies, pitch shifting, bitcrushing, modulation, delay, synthesis, arpeggiation, and more. They incorporate 32-bit floating point DSP processing, top-of-the-line features, helpful storage and recall capabilities, tons of MIDI options, and modifiable controls.

Artists who sport Meris effects include Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Misha Mansoor (Periphery), Andy Lloyd-Russell (Flyying Colours), Yvette Young (Covet), Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos/Big Walnuts Yonder), Lee Kiernan (Idles), John Davis (the Folk Implosion), Aziz Ibrahim (the Stone Roses/Asia), and more.

Drive your art into the unknown with Meris pedals and effects.

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Meris Pedals Overview

Neo Instruments

Neo Instruments is a German company that makes pedals and effects for discerning musicians. The company’s founder is Guido Kirsch, who previously created the virtual analog synthesizer VIRUS with Christoph Kemper (yes, that Kemper). Kirsch started Neo Instruments in 2007 after leaving Access Music, and his philosophy is simple: make uncompromising instruments. Neo Instruments’ first pedal was the highly rated Ventilator (now the Ventilator II), a rotary-speaker simulator that authentically emulates the Leslie 122 rotary cab — in painstaking detail. The company has expanded with designs including the Ventilator II’s baby brother — the smaller and simplified Mini Vent II — two flavors of the pedalboard-friendly Micro Vent rotary-speaker simulator, and a heavy-duty Ventilator II remote footswitch.

Their pedals have been used on major tours such as Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, Bob Seger, James Taylor’s All-Star Band, Styx, Chicago, Lenny Kravitz, Daughtry, Steve Miller Band, and many more.

Instantly imbue your tone with lively, expansive depth with Neo Instruments pedals.

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Neo Instruments Ventilator II Rotary Speaker Effects Pedal Review

Red Panda

Curt Malouin founded Detroit-based Red Panda to enable experimental musicians who want to warp, twist, and bend sound in hypnotically musical ways. All their pedal designs provide a complex arsenal of fully MIDI-capable controls, and each model inspires musicians to be creative while still focusing on their playing. Red Panda pedals feature an incredibly diverse palette for fashioning mind-bending, emotionally charged waves of lush and ethereal rhythmic effects. Weave textured soundscapes with a trippy array of tools including delay, modulation, pitch shifting, glitching, time stretching, arpeggiation, stutter, tremolo, reverb, chorus, shimmer, and more.

Red Panda users include Andy Summers (the Police), Juan Alderete (Racer X, the Mars Volta), Henry Kaiser, Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Kyle Sipress (the Devil Wears Prada), Devin Townsend (Strapping Young Lad), and more.

Add intrigue to your music and fashion entirely new sonic environs with Red Panda.

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Red Panda Effects Pedals Brand Story

Xotic

It’s an iconic story of a man named Hiro Miura and his soldering iron. It’s 1996 in a small San Fernando Valley garage. He’s alone, building bass guitars and bass preamps. An idea strikes for an innovative, three-in-one expression pedal. Fast-forward two years, and the first Xotic pedal is offered to the world, delivering boutique-quality tone and handcrafted quality. Players snatch it up, and a company is born!

Xotic users include Dave Grohl (Nirvana/Foo Fighters), Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day), Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), Andy Timmons (Danger Danger), Maddie Rice (Saturday Night Live Band), and more.

Add quality innovation, functional durability, and attention to tone to your pedalboard with Xotic pedals.

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Xotic SP Compressor Pedal Review

Gamechanger Audio

Since debuting Gamechanger Audio’s first pedal at WNAMM 2017 — a high-quality sustain pedal for guitar and any other melodic instrument — founders Ilja Krumins, Kristaps Kalva, Martins Melkis, and Didzis Dubovskis and their team have been creating inspiring music-making tools. You won’t find anything traditional among their mind-boggling creations. From crafting the piano-style sustain pedal for guitars to creating heavy distortion by amplifying an audio signal to 3,500 volts and inventing a spinning motor synthesizer, each offering seeks to live up to the Latvia-based company’s name with surprisingly musical results.

Gamechanger users include Joe Perry (Aerosmith), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit/Marilyn Manson), Adam Jones (Tool), Mick Thomson (Slipknot), Justin Chancellor (Tool), Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age), Jay Ruston (Anthrax), and more.

Add innovative flair and call attention to your music with Gamechanger Audio pedals and processors.

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Gamechanger Audio Overview – InSync

Empress Effects

After a music store ordered 10 tremolo pedals originally designed for a friend, musician and engineer Steve Bragg recognized there was a clear demand for high-quality, innovative pedals with an intuitive user experience and a pedalboard-friendly footprint that were focused on providing a universe of sounds to explore. Thus, in 2005, Ottawa-based Empress Effects entered the world. You’ll find no copycats in their circuit designs — everything is built from the ground up to arm you with cutting-edge features and a realm of sonic possibilities.

Empress users include Taylor York (Paramore), Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck/Nine Inch Nails), Aaron Marshall (Intervals), Adrian Belew (King Crimson), Buck Dharma (Blue Oyster Cult), Ricky Tillo (Lady Gaga), Adrian Eccleston (Drake), Andy Summers (the Police), Paul Gilbert (Mr. Big/Racer X), Tim Stewart (Lady Gaga/Britney Spears), and more.Build your pedalboard with flexible, ear-pleasing tonal heavy hitters from Empress Effects pedals.

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The Fantastical World of Empress

Beetronics FX

Los Angeles-based Beetronics FX designers have fun making their unique pedals by hand — no two are exactly alike. Founder Filipe Pampuri didn’t originally intend to start a company. He just wanted to enjoy building his own pedals, but he eventually gave in to a bass-playing friend’s persistent requests and sold his first pedal. Within a week, his pedals were in demand with other musicians. So, his architect wife designed the enclosures, his brother created a website, and a friend designed a logo. The hive started humming, and the buzz keeps growing.

Beetronics users include Tim Commerford (Rage Against the Machine), Tim Lefebvre (David Bowie), Robin Finck (Nine Inch Nails), Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Tim Stewart (Lady Gaga/Britney Spears), Sarah Lipstate (Noveller/Iggy Pop), and more.

Check out buzzy tones and expressive modulation from Beetronics FX pedals! 

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Beetronics FX Zzombee Filtremulator Demo

Get the Inside Scoop

Looking to enhance your setup or catch your next wave of inspiration? You won’t regret giving any of these solid brands a try. Reach out to your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700 for personalized recommendations.

Wonder what’s Sweetwater’s best-selling pedal in our entire history? Here’s the answer!
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