The best new pedals of 2024, according to the Guitar.com team
The last 12 months have been another exciting and interesting year in the world of effects pedals. While there have been some not-unfounded questions as to whether we’re suffering a little from pedal fatigue after a pandemic-supercharged explosion of demand has spawned innumerable new brands and turned boutique makers into major brands with huge operations, it seems the industry is showing no signs of slowing down in its quest to provide us with ever more unique and interesting ways of putting some funny noises into a little metal box.
READ MORE: These are the best new acoustic guitars of 2024, according to the Guitar.com team
The pedals below demonstrate that maxim quite clearly. While some of them are not necessarily ‘effects pedals’ in the strictest sense, the fact that amp pedals have exploded in popularity in the last few years now makes them an important subgenre in their own right, and frankly as they live on your pedalboard and have switches on them, we’re going to treat them as pedals for the purposes of this round-up.
So isolate your power supply, peel off that velcro and get perusing our list of the 10 best pedals the Guitar.com team reviewed in 2024 – if you’re looking for something to pair with your best electric guitar and your favourite guitar amp, there’ll be something here to pique your interest.
The Guitar.com team’s top new pedals of 2024, at a glance:
Line 6 HX One
Neural DSP Nano Cortex
Anasounds x Third Man Hardware La Grotte
Strymon Bigsky MX
Universal Audio UAFX ANTI
Walrus Audio Fundamental Ambient
Chase Bliss Onward
Electro-Harmonix POG 3
MXR Joshua Ambient
Boss IR-2
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Line 6 HX One
Image by Adam Gasson / Guitar.com
If there’s one pedal on this list that you can genuinely say that everyone reading this list should buy, it’s probably the HX One. Bringing the proud tradition of the venerable Line 6 M5 right into 2024, this impressive compact multi-effects is the ultimate utility pedal for any board.
You might not be able to justify giving up valuable real estate to a phaser or a ring modulator or some out-there delay when you’re only using it for one song, but with the HX One you can keep all your occasionally used sounds stored and ready to roll in one relatively compact unit. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the sounds are top-notch Helix-derived ones either.
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Need more? Read our Line 6 HX One review.
Neural DSP Nano Cortex
Neural DSP Nano Cortex. Image: Adam Gasson
The first, but not the last, of our amp pedals is Neural’s latest and most divisive unit, the Nano Cortex. Effectively a stripped-down version of Neural’s all-conquering Quad Cortex amp and effects unit, the Nano ditches the fancy screen and the wealth of built-in effects to produce something that’s more overtly focused on the pedalboard amp market.
Fans hoping for a cheaper version of the QC with all of its features were (unsurprisingly) let down, but taken on what it is, rather than what it isn’t, the results are hugely impressive. If you want to have absolutely top-quality amp sounds at the end of your pedalboard (including the option to capture amps of your own), the Nano Cortex is the most intuitive, consistent and customisable amp pedal on the market.
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Need more? Read our Neural DSP Nano Cortex review.
Anasounds x Third Man Hardware La Grotte
Image by Adam Gasson / Guitar.com
Jack White’s Third Man Hardware doesn’t really care about going for mass appeal – they’re producing equipment created to the exacting and individual tastes of the brand’s genius founder, and ultimately he is the sole and final say in whether something deserves his stamp of approval.
The great thing about this wonderfully analogue spring reverb pedal produced with French brand Anasounds is that you can get as weird and esoteric as Jack no doubt does with it, or you can treat it as a quality genuine spring reverb pedal in the traditional sense and it sounds great regardless. A unique and special pedal that everyone should have a go of at least once.
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Need more? Read our Anasounds x Third Man Records La Grotte review.
Strymon Bigsky MX
Image: Strymon
How do you top the most influential and important reverb pedal of the last 15 years? That was the challenge Strymon was facing when they looked to enhance and update their game-changing BigSky pedal in 2024. It’s entirely understandable then, that they didn’t want to mess with the formula too much – but just do more and better.
So all the classic BigSky mojo is here present and correct, but better. The existing sounds are better, you can use two reverbs at once, there’s an entirely new mode, and it includes the ability to load your own speaker IRs and hook everything up via USB-C MIDI control. In short, it’s the BigSky we know and love, but maxed – and that’s very exciting indeed.
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Need more? Read our Strymon Bigsky MX review.
Universal Audio UAFX ANTI
Image by Adam Gasson / Guitar.com
A lot of amp pedals aim to give you as many sounds as you could possibly want to choose from (see the Nano Cortex above) but there is another though process, and it’s one that Universal Audio have been championing for some time now – you probably don’t lug more than one amp to your gig, so why would you need more than one amp in your pedal?
The ANTI is perhaps the finest of the UA amp pedals to date, and it’s also their most extreme – channelling the authentic vibes of a Peavey 5150 amp with a tube screamer in front of it. It’s the recipe that has been the bedrock of a huge amount of modern metal, and with that built-in TS it’s arguably a full metal rig in one pedal.
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Need more? Read our Universal Audio UAFX ANTI review.
third man
Walrus Audio Fundamental Ambient
Image: Walrus Audio
Walrus Audio’s ultra-affordable Fundamental series pedals have been one of the most impressive new launches of recent years – the very idea that you can get a US-made boutique pedal for under a hundred bucks in some cases feels like a magic trick, and that vibe is only increased when you happen to play the things.
The Ambient pedal breaks from the formula of keeping things very simple in the range – drive, delay, fuzz, etc – and instead offers a hugely affordable route to ambient reverb sounds that honestly would not be out of place on a high-end big box pedal. It’s the most musical and inspirational Fundamental pedal yet, and a wonderful route into ambient soundscapery.
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Need more? Read our Walrus Audio Fundamental Ambient review.
Chase Bliss Onward
Image: Chase Bliss
Chase Bliss has a not-undeserved reputation for making some of the most interesting and inspirational pedals ever, but with the caveat that you probably need some sort of professional qualification to really understand what you’re doing with them.
The Onward flies in the face of all that – it’s extremely straightforward to use and offers exactly the sort of fun, weird stuff Chase Bliss is famous for – a rapid route to creating glitchy, atmospheric ambience in a wonderfully creative and expressive way.
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Need more? Read our Chase Bliss Onward review.
Electro-Harmonix POG 3
Image: Richard Purvis / Guitar.com
Electro-Harmonix’s latest iteration of its legendary polyphonic octave generator is a very ambitious piece of kit. Ambitious in the multi-layered stereo soundscapes it wants to help you create; ambitious in its sheer complexity; and ambitious in how much of your money it wants.
It’s certainly a lot more expensive than previous POGs, but it justifies this pricetag by being a uniquely weird pedal that makes it easy to get going with the simple stuff yet rewards deeper exploration. It’s sophisticated but has a lo-fi heart, and sounds especially powerful in a stereo setup.
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Need more? Read our Electro-Harmonix POG 3 review.
MXR Joshua Ambient Echo
Image by Adam Gasson / Guitar.com
MXR has a long history of creating compact delay pedals – the Carbon Copy being a standout example – but the Joshua is something altogether more ambitious. Inside, it’s attempting to recreate those classic 1980s rackmount stereo delay tones, in a pedal small enough to squeeze onto even the most compact of boards.
The size is one thing, but the fact that they’ve managed to squeeze so much into this pedal while also making it so fun and inspirational makes this pedal far more than an impressive technical exercise. Everything from simple grunge slapbacks to complex rhythmic patterns wrapped up in waves of swirly modulation, and epic widescreen octave atmospherics are available here if you want them to be.
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Need more? Read our MXR Joshua Ambient review.
Boss IR-2
Image: Boss
In a world where pedalboard amps are broadly speaking very expensive or very complicated or both, Boss as usual has decided to offer a third way. The IR-2 is a scaled down version of the IR-2000 amp and cab simulator, but what they’ve managed to retain from its big brother is the impressive part.
The IR-2 packs 11 amps, and while they might not have the sheen of the super-high-end stuff featured elsewhere in this round-up, the sounds are extremely good when you consider the pricetag. If you’ve been tempted to dip into the world of pedalboard amplification, this is a superb and accessible entry point.
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Need more? Read our Boss IR-2 review.
Special Mention
For the actual best pedal of 2024. The greatest pedal of all time, in fact. A pedal so good we couldn’t even review it. It is of course, the Meowdulator.
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