Best of Central and South American Guitar Pedals and Pedal Builders

I featured the Pixel Guitar Synth pedal from this maker in my recent Guitar Synth Pedals Overview. Said builder has 12 neat mostly dual footswitch horizontal medium enclosure pedals alongside 4 'System' compacts. Obviously the Pixel here appeals to me the most - but these are consistently high quality design pedals that are worth a look-in - and they have some really great analog circuits here too. They just happened to be mostly in the medium horizontal enclosure - which is only my 3rd or 4th choice of enclosure format after compact, vertical medium and mini!

• Like = Alu9 Bitcrusher | B-Saurio Bass Overdrive/Distortion | Byte 8-bit Bass Synthesizer | Fugu BBD Analog Chorus | Gorila Optical Compressor | Jet FET Compressor | Kam6 FET Overdrive with LED Clipping and Boost | MDT6 Tap-Tempo Tape Delay | Mod FET/LDR Analog Phaser | Pixel 8-bit Guitar Synthesizer | RVO MOSFET Overdrive with Boost | System A37 Bitcrusher | System D60 Compact Tape Delay | System O68 Oscillator | System T57 Tremolo | Tres FET/LDR Analog Tap-Tempo Tremolo

I've come across the Silicon Fuzz Face style BOG Fuzz (Jimi Hendrix 'Band Of Gypsies') on so many pedalboards over the years - that this was an obvious shoe-in here. Deep Trip offers a compact but supremely competent range of roughly medium vertical enclosure mostly fuzz pedals. I probably prefer something a little more compact for my own needs, but there is no doubting the build quality here or the authenticity of the output - a consistently great range of pedals - would that they were more compact!

• Like = BOG Fuzz (Fuzz Face) | Hell Bender Fuzz (MKII) | | Kryptone 60s/70s Blues Overdrive (Claptonesque!) | Malacaxêta Pepeu Gomes Signature Drive | Muffasaur Fuzz (Triangle/Ram's Head) | Pagebender (MKII Jimmy) | Stormy Monday Fuzzy Drive

This is probably the only truly contentious choice here as it was 50/50 decision between this and Brazil's Fire Custom Shop (Carpe Diem etc.). But I really wanted a representative for Chile which has a pretty significant number of active builders. I see the DSM Noisemaker Drive Maker actually as a more feature-rich and more modern alternative to the Carpe Diem as such. DSM only has 4 pedals to its range currently - but they are beautifully consistently high quality with several modern touches which render them sleek and modern.

• Like = OmniCabSim Mini Cab Simulator + DI | OmniCabSim Deluxe Fully Tweakable Cab Simulator + DI | Drive Maker Tweakable Overdrive/Distortion with Boost | Loopster Dual Channel Blender/Booster

I've featured a couple of Paradox's pedals on this site before - The Futura Multiparametric Enevelope Chorus and Terran Re-Voicing Low-End Overdrive - and while these are still sitting high on my wishlist - lack of distribution is a major disincentive here as although you can buy these on Reverb.com - shipping is £57 a pop which is just a non-starter for me - the ultimate disincentive. These really need to get into wider distribution to be properly accessible as there is much to like in this range of 8 compact and medium enclosure pedals.

• Like = Arquitecto Fictional Space Reverberator | Defibrillator Reanimating Shock Fuzz | Fortissimo Ultra Linear Boost | Futura Multiparametric Envelope Chorus | Fuzz-E Feline Fuzzing Modulation | Ionizer Clipping Fuzz Sequencer | Oniric Pseudo-Random Delay Modulation | Terran Re-Voicing Low-End Overdrive

I am somewhat surprised and delighted that Pedal Pal can fully function in Venezuela - considering the ongoing social upheaval there. They nevertheless make some of the very best Marshall Amp-in-a-Box pedals in typically 6-knob vertical enclosures. In fact 4 medium Marshall pedals and one compact Blues Breaker. The one that has lived on my wishlist for a while is the No. 34 Mod Night Overdrive or essentially Slash's Marshall drive tone - made from an authentic circuit replication with transistors in place of tubes. I was first introduced to these courtesy of Phillip McKnight of Know Your Gear fame, but Andy Martin of the Tone Report / Reverb.com further sealed the deal. The only problem really is that these are largely unobtanium - they are rarely available on the official Reverb.com store, and when listed have that really annoying "This seller has not set a shipping cost for United Kingdom." - for the shipping info. These are great pedals for sure that deserve to be on more pedalboards - they desperately need a dealer or two though.

• Like = The Breaker Overdrive | Pal 034 Night Overdrive/PreAmp | Pal 800 Gold Overdrive / PreAmp | Pal 800 JCM Emulator PreAmp | 959 Plexi Emulator PreAmp

I was introduced to this builder by a Sean Pierce Johnson article about his favourite pedal of 2018 - the Toxic Fuzz. Retrohead have a really cool small range of extended-range 'tweaker' pedals which numbers just 4 vertical style medium enclosures - all with multiple knobs and switches of course. Cosmic Phaser, Robotic Flanger, Shooter Germanium Octave Fuzz and Toxic Silicon Fuzz (Sub-Octave Harmonic Fuzz). Alas Retrohead is neither on Ebay or Reverb.com - so these are pretty unobtanium on this side of the pond - I'd imaging that shipping charges would be pretty hefty too - which is a real shame as I, as a fuzz fan - would love to be able to get my hands on these fuzzes in particular.

• Like = Cosmic Phaser | Robotic Flanger | Shooter Germanium Octave Fuzz | Toxic Silicon Sub-Octave Harmonic Fuzz

Many of you can't have failed to notice the Funky-Vibe Univibe doing the rounds recently - per Andy Martin's as usual fantastic demo above. These are superbly authentic circuit and component replicas of the very first original Uni-Vibes - and sound incredible, but are alas somewhat over-sized for my preferences. I considered featuring the Tiny-Vibe here instead, but that is not an authentic photocell/bulb style circuit from what I can tell - unlike it's much larger sibling - if only Sabaddius could compact this circuit to more pedalboard-friendly dimensions! That said their whole impressive range is available on Reverb.com and while shipping is high, it's not at Paradox levels of prohibition. Sabbadius specialises in vintage circuit replications - using old stock components and transistors - so the enclosure sizes usually reflect this dynamic too. There's no doubting the credentials and authenticity here, while I personally would prefer a couple more concessions to modernity! Besides the Funky-Vibe, the Triple Treble is actually really rather cool too!

• Like = 80 Overdrive Tone | Arena Germanium Fuzz | Black Mosfet Distortion | Groove Funky Filter Envelope Filter | Funkastic Compressor | Funky-Vibe Univibe | Mastro Synthesizer Fuzz Modulator | Mr White Special Saturation Booster | MTBL Made To Be Loud Overdrive & Distortion | Oct-Up Fuzz Tone | PhasEvolution Phase Shifter | Texas Red Fuzz | Tiny-Vibe Univibe | Triple Trouble Tommy Katona Signature Overdrive/Booster/Fuzz

This Brazilian builder has some reasonable distribution now - and is available via Reverb.com too with actually pretty reasonable shipping. I've featured two of its pedals on this site to date the Amp Germanium Treble Booster, and the Octopus Octave Fuzz - the latter of which is still pretty high up on my wishlist. There are just 8 pedals to the range and an amp - but a number of these are pretty innovative with extended range functions.

• Like = Amp Germanium Treble Booster | Cash Dynamic Fuzzy-Overdrive | Juice 20dB Clean Boost with Tone-shaping | Mother of Fuzz Germanium Fuzz (Fuzz Face) | Mr. Brown Distortion (Brown Sound) | Octopus Switchable Octave Fuzz | Waves Tap Tempo Tremolo | White Widow Silicon Fuzz (Versatile Muff)

COUNTRIES :

I featured all 3 of what I consider to be Argentina's Top Tier Builders - in my Top 9 above - i.e. Dedalo FX, Retrohead FX and Sabbadius Custom Shop. I was considering including BSQ Effects in the top tier too here, but it didn't quite pass all of my criteria - came very close though.

Other Argentinian Pedal Builders of Note include:

• Æffects (Turkian) - AEffects.weebly.com
• BSQ Effects - BSQEffects.com
• Cajita Stompboxes - CajitaStompboxes.wixsite.com
• D'Amico FX - DamicoEfectos.com
• Efectos Cluster - EfectosCluster.com.ar
• Estrella Roja - Estrella-Roja.com.ar
• Jake Amps - JakeAmps.com.ar
• Johnny Audio Design - facebook.com/Johnny.AudioDesign
• JVC Amps - jacebook.com/JCVAmps
• Lee De Forest Pedals - LeeDeForest.com.ar
• Max Control - MaxControl.com
• Maza FX - MazaFX.com.ar
• Plugged It! - PluggedIt.com.ar
• Senger Efectos - SengerEfectos.com.ar
• Shenier - Shenier.com
• Sherman Efectos - ShermanEfectos.com.ar
• SonAR FX - SonarFX.com.ar
• Sonomatic Efectos - reverb.com/brand/Sonomatic-Efectos
• Sonus FX - SonusFX.com.ar
• Sur Pedals - facebook.com/SurPedals
• Sweet Noise FX - SweetNoisefFX.com
• VZ Tec FX - VZTecFX.wixsite.com

Obviously I included Deep Trip and Stomp Audio Labs in my Top 9 above and left out Fire Custom Shop in favour of Chile's DSM Noisemaker. Besides Fire Custom Shop I consider Monstro Effects to be Top Tier also, and should at least include mention here of Beetronics FX which is of course now based in Los Angeles, USA, but run by the Brazilian Pampuri family.

I really consider this an American brand now - otherwise it would get top-billing here - it's been featured several times on this site. Run by the two Brazilian Pampuri siblings and partners and based in Los Angeles now - this is one of my favourite Fuzz purveyors and I have 3 of their excellent pedals to date - the Royal Jelly Dual Overdrive/ Fuzz Blender Flagship, custom Octahive Octave Fuzz and brand new Swarm Hamonizer PLL Fuzz - all are exceptional - as is the design aesthetic and attention to detail across the whole range - fantastic pedals really - albeit possibly a touch over-sized to the slightest degree!

• Like = Buzzter Boost/PreAmp | Octahive High Octave Fuzz | Overhive Overdrive | Royal Jelly Overdrive/Fuzz Blender | Swarm Harmonizer PLL Fuzz | Whoctahell Low Octave Fuzz

This one just missed out on a Top 9 listing per the above - obviously most famously the home of the Carpe Diem Overdrive which most of us have encountered courtesy of That Pedal Show. Units seem to be rather farther and fewer between nowadays - and the supply line does not appear to be as consistent - but there are some very decent pedals in this range.

• Like = AB Box Highway Booster | Ariete Booster | Bash Busher PreAmp | Bobber Wah Classic | Carper Diem Overdrive | Hill Billy Drive | Kronos Delay | Loop Trail A/B Swicher | Overdrive | Phaser Vibrato | Power Booster | Sirius Chorus | Sweet Chilly Overdrive | Time Trek Delay | Trip 'N' Fuzz Gated Fuzz | Ultimate Distortion

This is a quite incredible wide-ranging selection of 56 pedals - all with beautifully consistent pop-art graphics. I had intended to do a Matamp Style PreAmp feature but struggled to find sufficient current candidates - while the Monster Bat Amp is obviously one of the best of its kind (Green Matamp) - I may still do that overview some day - we'll see. In the meantime 'Monster' has one of the most extensive ranges of pedals in South America - particularly in the are of Drives, Distortions and Fuzzes - well worth a look-in!

• Like = '70 Silicon + Germanium Fuzz (Fuzz Face) | 808 (Screamer) | Axis 69 Fuzz (Fuzz Face) | Bat The Amp PreAmp (Green Matamp) | Big Smurf Fuzz (Big Muff) | Blackface '65 Overdrive | Black Wizard Distortion (Sabbath) | BlowerBox Drive | Day of the Titan Overdrive | Direct Drive Overdrive | Dirty Rat Distortion (LM308) | Distortion Plus Distortion | El Sagrado Baixo Booster | Evil Dog Overdrive | Ezekiel 25:17 Fuzzy-Drive | FlyBuzz Fuzz (BumbleBuzz) | Fuzz Garagem 60s Shin Ei Fy2 Fuzz | Fuzzrite Fuzz | GloryDay Overdrive | Golden Sun Overdrive | Kraken High Gain Distortion | LD-1 Hot Box Buffer | Mad Nitro High Gain Distortion | Madman Bass Harmonic Shaper | Mars Attacks! Clean Boost | Megalithium Doom Fuzz | Metalbox Heavy Distortion | OrangeFactor \72 Drive PreAmp | Parallel Logic Gated Oscillated Fuzz | Pinhead Silicon Fuzz | Plexiglas 800 Distortion | Psychor Chorus | Punch Bass Compressor | Rangemaster Germanium Treble Booster | Rectifier High Gain PreAmp | Riff Maker Distortion | Ritual Fuzz | Rocket Boost | Rotten Body High Gain Distortion | Russian Muff Fuzz | Shooter Fuzz | Shred Metal Distortion (Marshall) | Sonic Noise Gate | Stereoid 2 Channel Splitter | Supercollider Fuzztortion (Russian Muff) | Swamp Thing Deluxe 500ms Analog Delay | Tone Bender Germanium Fuzz MKII | Tuber Overdrive | Ultra Lord Fuzz | Univox Unidrive Overdrive | Up! Octave Up Fuzz | Vintage 30 Loudspeaker Cab Simulator | Vox Repeat Percussion Tremolo | Warhead X2 High Gain Amplifier PreAmp | Watch The Fuzz

Other Brazilian Pedal Builders of Note include:

• AMB Pedais - AMBPedais.com
• AS Company - ASCompany.com.br
• Beggiato Instrumentos Musicais - Beggiato.com.br
• BFFX Boutique Pedals - BFFX.com.br
• Black Bug Acoustic - BlackBug.com.br
• Darta Effects - DartaEffects.com.br
• DMT Custom Shop - facebook.com/DMTCustomShop
• EFX Custom Effects - EFXPedais.com
• Fuhrmann - Fuhrmann.com.br
• Guitartech - Guitartech.com.br
• Hot Stomp Custom Pedals - facebook.com/HSPedais
• JL Pedais Analógicos - JLPedais.store
• JoyFX - JoyFX.portfoliobox.net
• JRMod - JRMod.com.br
• Landscape Audio Systems - LandscapeAudio.com.br
• Meteoro Amplifiers - AmplificadoresMeteoro.com.br
• MG Music - MGMusic.com.br
• NIG Music - NIGMusic.com.br
• Onerr - Onerr.com.br
• Orangotone - Orangotone.blogspot.com
• Pedais BrTech - facebook.com/BRTech.Oficial
• Pedais Gritto - PedaisGritto.com
• Pedais Uchoa - PedaisUchoa.com
• Pedrone - PedroneShop.com
• Ray's Pedals - RaysPedals.wordpress.com
• Star Dust Pedals - StarDustPedals.com
• Synapse Effects - SynapseEffects.com.br
• Targino Custom Pedals - TarginoCustomPedals.blogspot.com
• TMiranda - TMiranda.com
• Tom Tone FX - TomToneeFX.com.br
• Top Tone Custom Effects - TopTone.com.br
• Trefilio Pedais - TrefilioPedais.com.br
• VTR Effects - VTREffects.com
• Waldman - Waldman-Music.com

Much like I excluded Beetronics FX from the Top 9 here, I felt the same about Darkglass Electronics - which although it is run by Chilean Douglas Castro - I consider it very much a Finnish brand, and included it in my recent Nordic Countries overview. So as with Beetronics I will mentioned Darkglass here, but wanted to give prominence to local brands - which is why DSM Noisemaker was singled out in the Top Tier - as above.

Darkglass is obviously mainly a bass pedals and amps builder - and it's really only the Duality Dual Fuzz Engine and Hyper Luminal Hybrid Compressor which interest me here - so just the briefest mention of said builder here, and DSM Noisemaker is obviously featured in the Top 9 above.

Other Chilean Pedal Builders of Note include:

• CGM Custom Shop - CGMCustomShop2.blogspot.com
• Emma Dangers - EmmaDangers.wordpress.com
• Fuse Electronics - Fuse.cl
• Humboldt Endemic Pedals - HumboldtElectronics.net
• Mad Dog Pedals - MadDogPedals.com
• Pedales Animal - PedalesAnimal.cl
• Ruz Guitar Gear - RuzGuitarGear.blogspot.com
• Tesla Electronics - TeslaElectronics.cl

I could not find evidence of too much activity in Colombia - just a couple of internally-focused builders:

• Lovell Music Lab - LovellMusicLab.com
• Rockerbox Music & Audio Devices - Rockerbox.net

Research into Costa Rica revealed alas not the existence of cloned dinosaurs or too much pedal activity - the sole local effects builder I managed to unearth was eQ.Circuitos:

• eQ.Circuitos - eQCircuitos.bigcartel.com

The Dominican Republic is home to one of the great unsung pedal innovators - Copilot FX - as featured in the Top 9 above. It also has up-and-comer Baldera Pedals - whose aesthetic approach at least reminds me of Bearfoot FX - some interesting pedals in development there:

• Baldera Pedals - BalderaPedals.com

There does not appear to be too much activity in Ecuador either - I could only find DFZ Pedales who solely have a Facebook page by way of representation - but some interesting graphics along the way though. This brand could develop into something formidable.

• DFZ Pedales - facebook.com/DFZ-Pedales-276060365787258

I really expected Mexico to be more active in the pedal stakes - particularly considering its size of population and rich musical heritage. But this has not translated fully into guitar electronics yet - although Mexico is home to the very impressive Paradox Effects - featured in the Top 9 above - they just need to improve their distribution!

Other Mexican Pedal Builders of Note include:

• Antiphon FX - facebook.com/AntiphonFX
• Elephant Electronics - ElephLab.com
• Emexis Pedals - EmexisPedals.com
• ZHN Custom Pedals - ZHNCustomPedals.com

Not too much activity found in the land of the canal either - all I found active here was up-and-comer Belatone - which currently solely has a Facebook page and by the looks of it just a couple of guitar effects pedals to its name to-date:

• Belatone - facebook.com/BelatoneInstruments

This is the one anomaly here - despite a sizeable population I was unable to find any active pedal builders in this locality? The ones generally listed in directories seem now defunked and long gone. Would love it if someone could contribute something of note here - but looks like Peruvian pedal fans are compelled to buy imports for now!

There's nothing Top Tier in Uruguay yet although we do have up-and-comers ManecoLooper the switching specialist, and more generalist MB Electronica. Both of these need to make some concessions to the International market to move up a step or two here - but are obviously serving their local market well:

• ManecoLooper - ManecoLooper.tripod.com
• MB Electronica - MB-Electronica.com

As mentioned above I'm really surprised that Pedal Pal can function, let alone thrive in a place undergoing such political upheaval and civil unrest - hyper-inflation etc. It's a testament to ingenuity and tenacity that these builders can survive even in some of the toughest environments in the world. I've noted that supply here can be haphazard, and currently nothing is listed for sale on their Reverb.com store - but per the above Top 9 feature - Pedal Pal well deserves its placing here. Like several others on this list - I just wish they had better deliverability and distribution.