The Best Multi-Effects and ModelersBuying Guide

Multi-effects pedals are units that give you a wide range of effects in one box. Some are just a little bigger than a standard pedal while others are the size of an entire board; there are even some that have been designed to sit neatly on your desktop for recording or jamming at home. In recent years, multi-effects pedals have started offering players even more options by including amp modeling technology alongside traditional effects.

Amp modeling technology seeks to digitally recreate the sound of another amp—usually a sought-after, expensive, or rare model, and often a tube amp. Modeling tech has developed and improved quite quickly in a relatively short amount of time, and profiles these days are getting very, very close to the real thing—not only in terms of sound, but also in how they react to your playing.

Amp modeling multi-effects units are great for a number of reasons. Primarily, they give players more options than they would normally have. With these pedals, you can switch between nearly any type of amp and effect and experiment with new combinations with total ease. You can turn up to a show with just your guitar and your multi-effects unit and play an entire set covering all genres without the need for a van full of gear.

There will always be players out there that claim amp modelers aren’t as good as the "real thing," and it’s easy to understand where they’re coming from. Is the sound, feel and response of these digital processors the same as the tube amp they’re modeling? In most circumstances, no, but some of the more high-performance units like the Neural DSP Quad Cortex and Kemper are incredibly close—most advanced players can’t tell the difference in a blind test.

There are different ways to use multi-effects/modeling pedals—you can run them straight through an amp, through an effects loop, through a PA system or powered cab, or even just with headphones for silent practice. There’s a whole world of modeling amps, which usually have a raft of effects built-in, but we won’t be looking at those here. Instead, we’ll be looking at the best multi-effects and amp modeling pedals, split down into multi-effects pedals (with no amp modeling), multi-fx/modelers, high-performance multi-fx/modelers, and desktop modelers.

If you’ve got a nice tube amp and a nice guitar but want to augment your sound with a selection of effects, then a multi-effects pedal without any amp modeling might be the way to go. Of course you can go down the route of buying individual effects pedals, but the following multi-fx units give you more options and will most likely take up far less space and cost less overall.

Depending on the unit, there are usually dozens—if not hundreds—of different effects all with various tweakable parameters, from overdrives and fuzzes to modulations and different types of reverbs. While many multi-effects also feature amp modeling technology, these can color your sound and take away from the tone created by you, your guitar, and your amp.

Without having to navigate any amp modeling options, these units are often fairly simple to use and give you the experience of having a bunch of effects pedals laid out in front of you, all contained within one handy unit.

With amp modeling becoming more and more popular in recent years, many multi-effects units now pack a wide variety of amp styles alongside a bunch of traditional effects. This gives you a massive scope for creating different sounds. Go from a sparkling, Fender-style clean sound combined with huge reverbs and delays to a chunky, mid-scooped high-gain tone at the press of a switch.

Multi-effects/modelers are incredibly useful for gigging, especially if you’re using house backlines. You can turn up to a show and use the clean channel of whatever amp they have there as the baseline of your tone, or (if the amp has an effects loop) you can choose to use that. Many multi-effects and amp modeling pedals have impulse responses and cabinet simulators, so you can even just plug straight into the PA system and get a good sound.

They allow you to get a more consistent tone night after night, when the equipment you’re using in various venues may be different. Multi-effects modelers can also be great for beginners. They allow those just starting out to learn about different amp and effect types and find the sound that’s right for them.

The following multi-effects modelers are aimed at beginners and intermediate players (though experienced players will also have a lot of fun with them). We’ll look at some more advanced units separately. As you might expect, the more you pay, the better these things tend to sound, generally speaking, so some at the cheaper end don’t sound completely authentic—though they will give you a good ballpark tone. That said, because technology has come on so much over the last few years, modern examples are sounding better than ever.

Recently, we’ve started to see amp modeling and multi-effects being taken to the next level. You’ll see professionals on some of the biggest stages in the world using these high-performance modelers, and a few of them have become industry-standard recording tools.

Many of these multi-effects and modeling units go much deeper into getting the digital tones to sound more like their original source. Many manufacturers go into component-level detail to find out why an amp or effect behaves and reacts in the way it does so that they can then digitally recreate it. This makes these high-performance multi-effects and modeling pedals sound much closer to the real thing. You’ll find that these react better to your playing dynamics as well—overdriven sounds will clean up with a lighter touch, and clean tones on the edge will break up when you dig in etc.

Regardless of the kind of music you play, you’ll be able to dial in some incredible sounds. If you’ve always wanted a massive collection of vintage and modern amps, you can grab one of these high-performance modelers and get a bunch of them in a pedal format, ready to hit the stage or the studio.

As you might expect, having a massive range of effects and amp models all contained within one unit makes these modelers and multi-effects units incredibly useful recording tools. As such, there are plenty of different models out there that are designed to sit on top of your desk, or are installed in a rack (of course, you can take rack gear out on the road if you’ve got a good road case for it).

Some of these may allow you to play through a cab, but many are geared towards plugging directly into your computer, thus ridding the need to mic up a guitar amp. Desktop units are often laid out a little differently to their pedal counterparts and usually allow for deep-diving into different sounds and settings, without the need for instant recall with your feet.