WE’VE RECEIVED LOTS OF NEW PEDALS SINCE THE NAMM show last January, and after reviewing many of them over the past few months, we wound up with an assortment of boxes that included some slick new distortion and fuzz units, a fresh take on the Cry Baby wah, and a rotary-speaker simulator.

While the sheer number of new pedal releases can induce symptoms of stress—including acute indecision when it comes to figuring out what to add to your pedalboard, and a propensity for dryness of the mouth upon realizing that the spigots on your power supplies are used up—the good part is that with some much R&D going on in the stompbox scene it’s getting hard to find pedals that don’t make a pretty good case for their existence.

Guitar players who are looking for a greater variety of sounds have it especially good now, as many well-known companies are vying to create pedals that can deliver some pretty radical effects that are still completely useable—as is the case with the Electro-Harmonix’ new Ring Thing and the Soundblox Pro Series distortion pedals that we’ve included in this roundup.

We tested these pedals using a Gibson Historic ’59 Les Paul, a PRS 22, and an Epiphone Wilshire, and we played them though several different combo amps, including a Fender ’65 Deluxe Reverb, a Dr. Z EZG 50, a Fryette Memphis 30, a Victoria 20112, and a Rivera Venus 6.