Pedals in 2026 are, in a way, modules that are more modular than eurorack(?)by Fullofkittens 03/19/2026, 8:26am PDT
In that they come with their own enclosure and they can be swapped in and out of a signal chain even more easily than a eurorack module can.
I initially came around to using pedals because my favorite delay algorithm in the Soundtoys Echoboy plugin was the Memory Man algorithm, which sounds really nice with synthesizers in my opinion, and since that's modeled after a guitar pedal, I decided to get one of those with the same thought process behind buying a hardware synthesizer: playing with physical toys is more fun than using a computer for everything.
Of course, then I had to figure out how to do fx loop routing through my DAW/interface so that I can get my synths playing with the pedal, which worked out fine, delay pedal sounds great, I'm happy.
But as with any hobby, money starts looking for somewhere to go, and thus my eyes fell upon the Chase Bliss Generation Loss Mkii pedal, which seemed purpose-built for my Haunted Lakes project:
...and there the collection starts growing. My favorite pedal companies at the moment are Chase Bliss and Kinotone, which both make extremely deep, boutique-y pedals, are both based in the city of Minneapolis, and which both seem to have realized that you can sell what is essentially a synth fx module for $400 in huge numbers if you just enclose it in a guitar pedal because guitar dads outnumber synth dads by thousands-to-one (and also they already spend huge money on guitars and amps so maybe the pedals don't seem as expensive?).
Here's a video Kinotone made to hype up their Ghosts pedal that came out last year, I think this is indicative of the kind of rabbit hole we are down:
...and here's another one by YouTube's pedal queen, harpist Emily Hopkins, with her friend Courtney Swain, showing what's possible when you start combining these things together:
