Rich's recommended guitar effects pedals for under 50 bucks
I have another post where I recommend 6 guitar pedals, and I admitted that you should not go cheap when it comes to pedals, so the ones listed there are on the higher end of the cost curve.
This post however specifically concentrates on guitar effects pedals that are less expensive. Every single pedal you see below sells new for 50 dollars or less right now, meaning they could go up in price in the future. But at the time I write tihs, they are all at 50 dollars or less.
To get more pricing information and more details, just click on any pedal below.
This analog delay has what's best described as an echoey sound, which of course is great for vintage-style tone. Also works for more modern guitar tones as well.
This is a very basic chorus pedal. All you have to work with here are the knobs Rate and Depth, and that's it. When you want a no-frills chorus pedal that's built right and can take the punishment of being used on stage, Rogue's offering works well here.
"Vintage" here means "potentially noisy", but that depends if you're feeding in other signals like distortion, overdrive, chorus, etc. In any case, this is a true compressor and gets the job done.
DigiTech DDM Death Metal Distortion
When you want a lower-priced pedal that has the metal tone, this is it. Tons of distortion with a 3-band EQ for low, mid and high - and priced right.
The Bad Monkey, while an inexpensive pedal is used by many professional players because it has "that overdrive sound" that a lot of players like. The thing you have to remember here is that this is an OVERDRIVE pedal, meaning NOT DISTORTION, meaning this is good for vintage tones and rock BUT NOT METAL. As long as you're aware of that, the Bad Monkey is an awesome pedal to have.
This pedal is good for those who jump back and forth between blues, rock and metal because this one can do all three. It's not as "hot" as the Death Metal pedal, but then again the Death Metal pedal can't exactly operate "dirty clean" like the Grunge pedal can.
It's tough to describe what this pedal sounds like in words, but I can best describe it as an in-between pedal between the Bad Monkey and the Grunge. For some of you, this may be the "just right" pedal you were looking for.
Want to see more pedals? Be sure to check out my original top recommended 6.
Published 2012 Jan 31
