(Editor’s Note: As stated, this is Part Two! You can check out the first half here – no particular order was involved because… well, math rock.)
At this point we’re almost used to getting up to November or December and suddenly realizing, “shit, we’ve got an entire year to review.” And we’re also getting used to being “absolutely gobsmacked” as our UK friends say when looking at the amount of amazing music released in the space of twelve months.
But this is only our second year with a dedicated Gear section, so, in short, we’re NOT used to it when looking through the last three hundred and sixty something days worth of pedal and/or plugin releases. It’s a whole industry as opposed to a niche genre… yet we persist.
Maybe it’s our history with music retail. Maybe it’s Holiday-driven familial avoidance syndrome. All we know is that it can’t be stopped – this year’s list has us absolutely stoked for new sound in general. If you’re seeing it here, you know it doesn’t just sound good, it’s got high potential for creative math rock.
What does that mean? We’re not always sure. But we’ll do our best to explain, and this year we’ll start with the pedals then finish off with some plugins in part… three? Perhaps – when it’s ready you can check it out here. There were just too many sick pedals to choose from this year, so we’re gonna break this part into two parts and see what happens. Let’s get to it.
12 NOKILL Pedal Co– Bork Bork Bork
Wait, didn’t we already do 12? Eh, NOKILL Pedal Co’s monstrous 2025 offering is a bit of an odd dog anyway, and you know us – if we can give a dog a bone, we’re gonna do it. You sort of have to see it to believe it – check it out here. The Bork Bork Bork yields an intimidating trifecta of known-quantity fuzz units, and a three-in-one fuzz is cool enough, but it’s the CV ports on top of those circuits that catapult this pedal from good to great. We’re not sure what it does yet other than industrial levels of fuzz, but we have a feeling we’re going to be seeing it more and more as people experiment with it, assuming they don’t blow themselves up with BBB’s sonic bark.
11 Amir’s Noise Devices – Djinn Flame
Everywhere we’ve seen this pedal since its release, we’ve had to stop what we’re doing and listen as closely as possible. The market has been dying for an updated take on sitar sounds for guitar, and Amir’s Noise Devices added a whole new dimension to the idea by including a sensitive octave circuit that, despite mountains of fuzz on tap, can subtly enhance the airiest of signals from clarinet and harp to finger-style guitar. It’s almost a ring mod sound at times, but with the zesty attack of a sitar, so we can’t wait to hear it enter a musical lexicon again whether it’s for finger-style, fretboard tapping, single-note leads, or even synth.
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10 Boss – XS-100
An unexpected quantum leap for some in terms of pitch-y expression pedals, the Boss XS-100 almost feels like two pitch pedals in one. It’s got harmonies galore on tap which we always epmplore people to get more into, but it’s also got an unexpected advantage when it comes to controlling the pitch via expression. While a lot of pitched-up sounds in guitar land seem to impart inescapable organ / shimmer tone, the XS-100 feels a bit more girth-y and bass friendly. It’s no secret that math rock enthusiasts love playing with pitch, so we’re hoping the XS-100 makes it onto boards asap and yields even fatter tones and better tracking to the frenzy.
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9 Benson – Deep Sea Diver
When pedals embrace even remotely aquatic themes, you tend to think of seasick sine waves and warbling chorus. Benson took a different approach here by incorporating sonorous echo and pressurized walls of fuzz, resulting in a device far truer to the sea’s undulating chaos than we anticipated. If somehow that doesn’t give your tone enough hydrophobia, you can also switch the order of the two effects for absolute maximum immersion.
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8 Bleak District Electric – ORBITS
This interstellar sandbox of granular delay sampler is one of the years deepest offerings, and what makes it special isn’t just the sonic sculpting on tap, it’s the way the presentation makes you take advantage of the possibilities. Cleverly laid out in an orbital fashion, BDE’s distillation of the sheer chaos that is granular manipulation actually makes things quite simple without obscuring the magic involved – you just freeze the sample with the right button and spaghetti-fy your tone with… well, everything else.
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7 Death By Audio – Crossover
General sonic destruction is the name of the game when it comes to Death By Audio, and it’s been that way for many years, so you’d be forgiven in thinking this one was just another DBA flavor. But you’d also be wrong. Too wrong in fact for us to let you think that, so if you’re looking for a fuzz with a unique take on EQ, this one lets you split your signal into low and high sections like two separate bands, placing it high on the list. Bonus points if you spring for their LIGHT SENSITIVE Photo Modulator Controller, which should have qualified for it’s own spot on this list, but what the hell, you can see both in glorious action below.
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6 Puremagnetik – Laps
Some people think that loopers have pretty much been exhausted in terms of possibility, but Puremagnetik had another idea this year, and it’s one of our absolute favorites on the list. By letting users record three separate loop lines, we’re already kind of in crazy town in terms of what a person might do, but once they do it, the Laps lets you mix the signals to create a secret… fourth thing, often assembling different scenes entirely. It’s reminiscent of the magic of old-school Robert Fripp tape experiments, but from a totally different angle, so for your next ambient masterpiece, definitely take a look at the Laps.
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5 Digitech MonoNeon Signature Whammy
This new edition of Digitech’s Whammy took us by surprise, and at first, we really didn’t know what to think. Sure, it had some cool intervals, but the Hypersonic mode actually puts things up to 3 octaves above the root, and while cats everywhere are sure to be pissed, extended range and alternate tuning enthusiasts are sure to rejoice. Similar to the XS-100 from Boss, it also gives you unprecedented control over what the heel, toe, and middle positions actually do, so get ready for fresh pitch madness in 2026. We’ll be listening.
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4 Dirty Sock Effects – Dot / Matrix
This zany little lo-fi box feels like a lost little radio unit floating through space thanks to its uncanny but friendly ring-mod circuit, and there are few more mental images that feel more math rock than that. The Dot / Matrix converts textured guitar playing via intuitive envelope features, allowing your sound to become altered completely without getting buried. Sometimes ring-mod gets stuck in this incomprehensible space where no matter what you play, it sounds like a robot having a panic attack, but Dirty Sock have side-stepped this in a major way with the Dot / Matrix.
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3 Flower Pedals – Hosta V2
In math rock, there’s a lot of clean tone, and while that’s rarely a bad thing, it could often be a better thing. And yeah, people can make their sounds more consistent with compression and gain pedals, but you know what we’re always rooting for? Something like the Hosta V2 instead, which creates subtly superb wah-sounds without the need for a separate expression pedal. While a phaser or chorus will do that just fine, the Flower Pedals’ take on auto-wah feels just as juicy, air not even more so when the right settings are applied. There’s an old-school phase feel to it, but it’s far more dependent on what you bring to the input signal, so we can’t wait to see what odd subdivisions sound like when math rockers get a hold of it.
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2 Mentha Works – Monk Echo
The Monk Echo almost falls into the category of retro-futurism with it’s unassuming cream aesthetic – hell, some would say it even looks like a plug-in come to life. But sitting neatly on top of this echo / verb box is one of the coolest LED setups we’ve ever seen, and we could see ourselves, as well as thousands of others, becomingly deeply entranced by the shapes and motion of the Monk Echo. To top it off, the reverb on tap is made to sound specifically like vocal pads, so truly, there’s a whole other world in this pedal and we’re thinking math rockers are going to be some of the first to embrace it.
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1 Color Audio – Cassette Preamp
We can’t believe it either – a boost-type pedal at #1? Well, as we pointed out in the intro, there wasn’t a special order to this year, but the Cassette Preamp was indeed one of the first pedals that came to mind when making this list. Funny enough, we weren’t the biggest fans of the cassette saturation trend this year, but the pure ubiquity and clarity available with Color Audio’s venture into different territory altogether, almost verging on the hallowed grounds of the BBE Sonic Maximizer or even the Harmonic Percolator. While the Cassette is lo-fi friendly, we see an even bigger application for math rockers recording into a DAW.
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