Every week in 2023, we've shared our weekly Most Watched roundup. Now, we're compiling all the museum-quality models, unique finds, and straight-up great deals that Reverbers have Watched the most this year.
Check out our cross-category The Most Watched Gear of the Year, and below, find the Top 20 effects and amps of 2023. You can also dive into the Top 20 synths, keys & electronic gear, Top 20 electric guitars, acoustics & basses, and Top 20 pieces of recording gear from earlier this week. Come back tomorrow for the Most Watched drums.
Click any link below to visit the listing and learn more. Please note: All lists in this series exclude new gear from this year that Reverb helped market via launch campaigns.
Taking the overall top spot in our Most Watched effects of the year category is this huge collection of Boss compact pedals on offer from Ninja Pedals. While it'll cost you five figures, it is a complete collection featuring every Boss compact pedal ever produced (including some duplicates and model variations), each with its original box.
While this wasn't the only pedal collection to make the list this year, our number 12 spot here carries a bit of an asterisk. For those who missed the Bad Monkey Saga this spring, JHS' Josh Scott posted a video on YouTube back in March that stacked the exceedingly affordable DigiTech Bad Monkey against Klons and other massively hyped (and prohibitively expensive) circuits. The Bad Monkey held its own, and Scott's point was that players should trust their ears more than the hype that leads to inflated prices of specific circuits.
However, the video ironically led to the outcome of exactly what it was arguing against. Prior to the video, DigiTech Bad Monkeys sold on the used market for around $50. After the video, buyers started paying closer to $200. Scott, who loves to stir the pot, then listed this "complete Chinese logo set" of eleven DigiTech pedals from the early 2000s—for nearly $55,000. Scott eventually removed the listing, but not before it gathered enough Watchers to make our list this year.
Scott's jokey listing isn't his only representation here—the Electro-Harmonix Lizard Queen took spot number two, which is a nano-sized version of the big box creation Scott designed as an homage to the best of EHX in the '70s. The only brand to be represented in more than one spot, the Andy Summers Walking On The Moon Analog Flanger (No. 8) and EHX Nano Q-Tron (No. 13) also made the list.
While our Most Watched of the Year lists in the guitar categories tended to trend more vintage, this list is the exact opposite, featuring a lot of pedals that were newly released in 2023. In addition to those already mentioned, there's also:
- Strymon Cloudburst (No. 2)
- Karma ODR-10 (No. 6)
- Boss DM-101 Delay Machine (No. 10)
- Ampeg SGT-DI Bass Pre-Amp (No. 11)
- Keeley Parallax Spatial Generator (No. 16)
- Echo Fix EF-P2 Spring Reverb (No. 17)
- Hiwatt Filter Fuzz Mk. II (No. 19)
Only one vintage pedal placed on this list (aside from the Boss collection)—this 1979 Roland RE-150 Space Echo at number 15. Of the remaining pedals, most of them were released within the last couple of years, and none of them are older than 2010.
- Beautiful Noise Effects WTSE (No. 4)
- Browne Amplification The Carbon (No. 5)
- Crazy Tube Circuits Unobtanium (No. 7)
- ProCo RAT 2 (No. 9)
- Boomerang III Phrase Sampler (No. 14)
- R2R Electric Pre-Amp (No. 18)
- EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine V2 (No. 20)
Our Most Watched amps list kicks off with a super cool Marshall Origin Series 20-watt head in white tolex with gold accents in the number one spot. Marshall was the most Watched amp brand overall, with six total placements.
- Marshall Limited Edition 40th Anniversary DSL 100 JCM2000 head and matching cab (No. 5)
- 1963/'64 Marshall JTM45 MKII Coffin (No. 6)
- 1968/'69 Marshall JMP Model 1992 Super Bass Stack (No. 14)
- 1971 Marshall JMP 50 Half Stack (No. 16)
- 1965 Marshall JTM45 MKII (No. 17)
Fender and Dumble tied for the second Most Watched brand with two placements each, plus something of a shared third with this 1962 Dumble-modded Fender Deluxe (No. 3). A Dumble clone by Bootlegger Guitar also placed at number 10.
- Dennis Harding's 1970s Dumble OD-50W Overdrive Special head and cabinet (No. 2)
- Fender '64 Custom Princeton Reverb (No. 4)
- Fender '68 Custom Pro Vibro Champ Reverb (No. 9)
- Fender '68 Custom Princeton Reverb (No. 12)
- Eric Johnson's Dumble Manzamp Preamp & Odyssey Concert Amplifier (No. 15)
Other than a super cool 1965 Silvertone Twin Twelve 1484 in the number 11 spot, most of the rest of the heads and combos to make the list are relatively newer models:
- Orange Super Crush 100w Head (No. 7)
- Krank Krankenstein+ 120w Head (No. 8)
- Vintage Sound Amps Vintage 15 Combo (No. 13)
- Verellen Meatsmoke 300w Head (No. 18)
- Two Rock Classic Reverb Signature (No. 19)
- Electro-Harmonix MIG-50 (No. 20)