Top 10 weirdest guitar pedals

Top 10 weirdest guitar pedals from Ultimate-Guitar.com. Some of us relish in the thought of weird guitar pedals. Some people hate weird guitar pedals deeming them unusable. If you love them or hate them, you at least have to acknowledge their uniqueness in the areas of guitar effects.

So what makes guitar pedals “weird”. To me, they generally fall into a couple of categories. Synths/octave/pitch/harmonic styles and glitches/bit crusher styles. Synths/octaves/pitch change your guitar signal into something completely different than a traditional guitar. Of course you can dial things in to still make it sound guitar-like, but these can make your guitar sound like it’s from another planet. Glitch/Bit Crusher, is something you see more and more now-a-days. Fuzzes that are so fuzzed out that they sputter/stutter/pop, etc.. as if something broke inside, is what I would refer to as glitch. Bit Crusher stuff is taking the wave into very simple frequencies and squaring them off – think of old video game sounds, but then add fuzz to make it super nasty. All, can be super fun.

So what did Ultimate-Guitar.com put in their Top 10? Check it out.

So we have the following…

ZVex Candela Vibrophase – I’ve talked about this before on the site. The video doesn’t really show it’s story. The effect is not weird at all. Tremolo based on light. The cool thing about it, is it’s powered by a candle. The light from the candle is used for photo-resistors, the heat of the candle is used to power it, and a magnet is used to slow/resist the motion of the wheel causing the pulse in the trem. Awesome.

Korg Miku – Ugh, lots of fun. Horrible and awesome at the same time.

Industrialectric 4046-M – This is a combo spittly/splitty/bit crushing/weirdness.

Iron Ether FrantaBit – Glitchy bit crusher

MWFX Judder – Analog sampler/repeater with a whole host of things to make things sound weird.

Pigtronix Mothership 2 – The mother of all synth

Rainger FX Dr. Freakenstein Fuzz – I had the pleasure of meeting David Rainger at NAMM 2017. This guy’s brain is something. I love that he really thinks outside of the box on multiple levels. This fuzz is what really put him on the map, but you should definitely check out his other products!

Snazzy FX Tracer City – I’ve mentioned this pedal before. King of weird in my opinion.

Subdecay Harmonic Antagonizer – Simple description is oscillating fuzz. It’s pretty rad.

WMD Geiger Counter – This is a tough one. If I was to describe it, I would call this the Swiss Army knife of weird sounds. Lots of weirdness can be had in this box.

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I think as honorable mention, there could have been some pedals from Earthquaker Devices (Rainbow Machine, Bit Commander, etc) or Malekko Scrutator, etc.

What are your thoughts about weird pedals? Like ’em? Hate ’em? Also, let me know other weird pedals that should get honorable mention by commenting below!