Intro
While 2016 may not be remembered as the year of guitar effects pedal innovation, it will be heralded as the year of refinement: DigiTech expanded the 2015 best-in-show-winning Trio, Boss brought back a classic and Dunlop shrunk a load more stompers.
We’re seeing more high-end amp manufacturers – including Friedman, Morgan and Supro – wade into the pedal waters, too. Whatever the background, we can’t wait to get our hands on this lot this year…
Boss VO-1 Vocoder
A combined guitar and vocal pedal, the VO-1 delivers classic vocoder tones, plus talk box and more contemporary sounds – just plug in a mic, a guitar and go.
DigiTech Trio+
DigiTech has listened to its customers and expanded its innovative Trio format, adding a loop function, additional presets with SD card storage, plus additional genres and an option to simplify its basslines.
DOD Looking Glass Overdrive
This stunning-looking pedal is a collaboration with Shoe Pedals, and gives you natural amp-style class A FET drive, while its handy input buffer helps to dial in different guitars and pickups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1ZiCZB3N6c
Electro-Harmonix Lester-G and Lester-K
This pair of leslie sims had us very impressed when we gave them a listen at the EHX stand – the G features a built-in compressor for guitarists to enhance the rotary effect, while the K is a stripped-down version aimed at keyboard players.
Electro-Harmonix Soul POG
The Soul POG combines two of EHX’s most popular effects: the Soul Food overdrive and Nano POG pitch-shifter – the two can be reordered, while an effects loop allows you to add more pedals to the chain.
Ibanez Mini pedals
The Tube Screamer Mini was a huge success, and we can’t wait to get our hands on the latest classy-looking trio from the Japanese guitar giant: the classic Analog Delay, Chorus and Super Metal all get the shrinking treatment
Of particular note is the Super Metal’s stacked knobs – now, that’s space efficient.
Keeley Workstations
2016 looks set to be a monster year for Keeley, with four multi-function pedals, which combine existing pedals – first up is the Tone Workstation (Compressor, Red Dirt, 1962 Overdrive, Katana Clean Boost).
Mod Workstation fuses the 1962 Overdrive, Oxblood Overdrive plus eight modulation effects, including chorus, harmonic tremolo, flanger and rotary.
The Super Mod Workstation focuses on modulation exclusively, serving up double tracking, phase, rotary, chorus, reverb, delay, tremolo, auto filter and more.
Finally, the Delay Workstation features two delay and reverb engines, with eight sounds apiece – tap tempo rounds of the feature set.
More Keeley!
Also on the way is the Compressor Mini, which comes in at a cool $99 and features a blend control and treble boost.
The Gold Star Reverb offers three studio-grade reverbs, which promise Wall of Sound-style effects.
The 30ms V2 updates the 30ms Double Tracker with dual outputs for mixed signal operation.
Finally, the Seafoam Plus provides unmodulated chorus and three modes, each with a dedicated bass mode.
Mooer Mini Wahs/Expressions
We can expect three new mini wahs and expression pedals from Mooer this year, each with pull-out feet supports – the Lemwah delivers a smooth, mellow wah tone for funk and blues.
As you might expect, the Leveline gives full control over your volume, with no signal loss.
The oddly named Redkid aims to replicate talking, vocal effects – this will not be your ordinary wah.
Stone Deaf Warp Drive & Kilptonite
One of many new Stone Deaf releases, the Warp Drive claims to articulate high gain like a proper high-gain amp, with parametric EQ control over the full frequency range, from 35Hz to 6kHz, plus a built-in noise gate.
The Kliptonite, on the other hand, is a dual fuzz and overdrive pedal with Mirror Mix control that adjusts the mix of the two sounds from 50/50, 75/25 or 25/75, and can be flipped over using the footswitch.
Stone Deaf PDF-1
The successor to Stone Deaf's flagship PDF-1 parametric equalizer, the PDF-2 lowers the noise floor and adds an adjustable gain knob and dual footswitch for clean and dirty channels, plus expression input controls.
Stone Deaf Syncopy & Tremotron
An analogue delay and tremolo with digital control, both pedals offer four presets, plus expression and MIDI options.
Strymon Zuma and Ojai
This year, Strymon brought a pair of good-looking power supplies, which provide optically isolated feedback and advanced multi-stage filtering – these should be very quiet, indeed.
Z.Vex Candela Vibrophase
The talk of the show was Z.Vex’s bonkers Candela Vibrophase, the world’s first candle-powered guitar effects pedal. Zachary Vex explains the device’s workings in the video below.
