Six of the best: mini effects pedals

The Chinese pedal builder has an exhaustive range of compact Micro pedals, featuring oddities such as EQs and acoustic guitar simulators among the usual suspects.

The EHX Electric Mistress is clearly the ElecLady’s muse, but this is a much tidier flange than its 70s predecessor. If it’s still a little on the large size for your tastes, marvel at the company’s forthcoming Zippo-lighter-esque Spark range...

We said: “70s-style flanging at about one-sixth of the usual size.”

Read our full Mooer ElecLady review

For more information visit the official Mooer website

This UK-made octave effect is passive, meaning it has no LED and requires thoughtful placement in your signal chain.

However, its original germanium diodes do a convincing job of creating the classic octave effect, adding a faux sitar character to clean tones and an extra dimension of vintage goodness to fuzz and distortion.

We said: “It really comes alive in conjunction with an overdrive, distortion or fuzz pedal, or a driven amp.”

Read our full Bigfoot Engineering Octo Puss review

For more information visit the official Bigfoot Engineering website

Since 1966 - when Jimi blew our minds with one - guitarists have resented the Fuzz Face’s mic- stand-base dimensions.

Now Dunlop has enclosed the Fuzz Face’s legendary circuitry in a ’board-friendly housing in three flavours - Silicon, Germanium, and Jimi - while promising meticulously faithful tones.

We said: “The versatility of the original Fuzz Face design with a few modern twists to the recipe.”

Read our full Dunlop Fuzz Face Mini review

For more information visit the official Dunlop website

Hotone’s 10-pedal range takes tiny to the limit: each effect is around a third of the size of a standard enclosure, which would make them difficult to see (let alone stomp on) on stage if it weren’t for the thoughtful inclusion of glow-in-the-dark controls.

The pedal’s format, with multiple dials and buttons on the front and a rotary on the pedal’s top, is space-saving design at its most ingenious.

For more information visit Gear4Music

Tremolo is a great effect, but you may only need it once or twice in your set. Enter the Babyface Tremolo, with set-and-leave controls inside the chassis, providing three tremolo variations (sine, sawtooth and square wave). A great example of why the format is here to stay.

We said: “It gives you three different tremolo variations in not a lot of real estate.”

Read our full Lovepedal Babyface Tremolo review

For more information visit the official Lovepedal website

The Danish audiophiles at TC Electronic have been using their miniaturising ray on quite a few pedals of late, and the HOF reverb, Ditto Looper and Spark Booster are all one-button wonders worth checking out.

But it’s still the PolyTune Mini that gets our vote, thanks to its single-strum polyphonic or regular tuning with Capo and Drop D modes in a Twix-sized wrapper.

We said: "The cutest, best-value tuner for the price."

Read our full TC Electronic PolyTune Mini review

For more information visit the official TC Electronic site