Best guitar pedals under $100

The DS-1 is the reference point for what a cheap pedal should be, and the reason is not the circuit — it is that BOSS publishes the specification, builds it in a die-cast enclosure with a switch mechanism that does not wear out, and backs it for five years.

The single Tone knob scoops as it brightens, which is the pedal's real limitation. A DS-1 into an already-scooped amp is the classic way to disappear under a band. Used with the tone low and an EQ after it, it is far more capable than its reputation.

At 10 mA it will run off anything, including a daisy chain shared with three other pedals.

Loopers get bought for practice and abandoned because the interface is too complicated to use without thinking. The Ditto has one footswitch and one Level knob, which means the interface never gets in the way.

TC publishes 24-bit uncompressed recording with an analog dry path, true bypass, and five minutes of recording time. Nobody has ever run out of five minutes on a practice looper.

It has no rhythm track, no USB, no stereo and no saved loops. If you need those, you need a different looper and a different budget.

This is a Tube Screamer-style overdrive at roughly a fifth of the price of a TS9, and the honest position is that the circuit is close enough that most listeners could not pick them apart in a mix.

What is different is everything you touch. The footswitch, the jacks, the pot shafts and the enclosure are where a budget pedal saves money, and those are the parts that fail. For a bedroom or a practice room this is a non-issue. For a gigging board it is the whole issue.

No electrical data is published, which is itself a difference from the pedals above — you are trusting the category rather than a spec sheet.

Analog delay circuits are cheap to build and this is a real one — three knobs, short maximum delay time, and repeats that darken as they decay.

The limitation is the delay time, which is short even by analog standards. This is a slapback and short-repeat pedal. If you want long ambient repeats or tap tempo, no analog pedal at this price will do it and you are looking at a digital delay at three times the money and thirty times the current draw.

No power supply is included and there is no battery compartment, so budget for a supply.

Nobody puts a power supply in a 'best pedals' list and it is usually the highest-value purchase on a small board. Individual 9 V adaptors are the most common cause of hum, and batteries are a false economy the first time one dies mid-set.

The 1 SPOT delivers 1,700 mA from a single non-isolated output and accepts 100-240 V, so it works anywhere. Daisy-chained across four or five analog pedals it is silent and costs less than most single pedals.

It has no isolation at all. Every pedal shares a ground, which is fine for analog pedals and is precisely the condition that produces hum once you add a digital delay or reverb. Isolated vs daisy chain covers when you have outgrown it.

We are not picking this one, and it is a well-made pedal. The Micro Amp does exactly what it says: adds clean gain, with no tone shaping at all.

The problem is what people buy it for. A boost gets bought to make a thin tone fuller, or a quiet amp louder in a mix, and it does neither — it makes whatever comes after it work harder. Into a clean amp that is just volume. Into a distorting amp it is more distortion, not more clarity.

If you want a lead lift with a tone change, a low-gain overdrive does more for the same money. If you genuinely want clean gain with no color, the Micro Amp is fine — just be sure that is the problem you have. Overdrive vs boost works through the three cases.