Every year, we like to pause and take stock of the year's best-selling gear. What's hot? What's not? And how do this year's winners compare to previous bestsellers?
We've already explored the best-selling synths and electronic gear and best-selling guitars of 2022. Today, we're looking at the year's top effects pedals and amps.
Our first list shows the best-selling pedals that were new-to-2022. Then, we look at overall best-selling effects, a wider view of the entire pedal market.
We repeat this for amplifiers and then, for the first time in our annual lists, break out the best-selling "non-traditional amps." With so many amp modelers, amps-in-a-pedal, and other devices that players use in place of a traditional amp-and-speaker setup, it's interesting to see how all of this equipment compares.
In 2022, Reverb hosted a number of exclusive (or nearly exclusive) releases, like the EHX J Mascis Big Muff, Keeley Moon Op Amp Fuzz, DBA Exploding Head, JHS 75 Throwback Overdrive/Preamp, All-Pedal Jeff Loomis Devil's Triad, and the, uh… Fart Pedal. All of these sales are not included in our lists below, despite selling in large numbers (yes, even that last one).
Note: All rankings are determined by total order count—that is, the actual number of items sold, not the total price of sold items. Releases that were exclusive to Reverb are not reflected in these rankings. And because Reverb is home to individual sellers, independent brick-and-mortars, and makers alike, our rankings include all sales, whether brand new or used.
2022 was the year of delays, with half of the Top 10 being some form of the effect: Chase Bliss' singular Habit, the reborn Line 6 DL4 MKII, Keeley's Andy Timmons Signature Halo, and both the full-sized RE-202 and compact RE-2 Space Echoes from Boss. All of these approach the effect quite differently, but they were all best-sellers this year.
Overdrives and boosts—from EQD's Special Cranker to MXR's Duke of Tone (a compact version of Analogman's King of Tone) and JHS' ode to DOD's Overdrive Preamp—were big hits too. Another big category this year is amps-in-pedals, with two of Universal Audio's pedal amplifiers, Soldano's just-released SLO Pedal, and the affordable Nux NGS-6 Amp Academy winning spots in the Top 20. (More on these later.)
Honorable mentions: There were a number of pedals released in late 2021 that had strong sales throughout 2022. In order to keep a clean list above, we limited it to just those pedals that were first available for purchase this year.
However, the Boss RC-600 Loop Station, FZ-1W, and SY-200 Synthesizer, the EHX Nano Q-Tron and Intelligent Harmony Machine, Walrus Audio Eras, Gamechanger Audio Bigsby Pedal, and Interstellar Audio Machines Octonaut Hyperdrive all had enough sales to land squarely in the Top 20 above, had they been released in 2022.
Hologram Electronics' Microcosm, a wildly inventive looper, sampler, and multi-effect, was first released in 2020 (and made No. 9 in the new-to-2020 best-sellers list) and shot up to No. 5 in last year's overall best-selling pedals list. Many new fans and players have discovered it this year, and it now leads as 2022's single best-selling effects unit.
With the newly issued amp market being less crowded than the newly issued pedal market, we're only looking at the Top 10 new-to-2022 amplifiers here. Of particular note is the No. 1, the Soldano SLO Mini. It was one of the biggest hits of this summer's NAMM, with initial listings selling out almost as quickly as sellers posted them on Reverb.
Soldano's SLO Pedal—which, like the miniature amp, puts the sound of the company's iconic SLO-100 tube amp into an even smaller package—is already on our new-to-2022 best-sellers list above, despite having only been released this week.
For years now, digital amps like Positive Grid Spark 40, Boss Katanas, and Yamaha THRs have been big sellers, and this trend shows no sign of slowing down. For the second year in a row, Fender's digital Tone Master Deluxe Reverb outsold the tube '65 Deluxe Reverb Reissue, though both made the list.
That overarching trend toward digital aside, the turbulence in the vacuum tube market tube lovers experienced earlier this year has, however, not seemed to have an impact on the year's best-selling amps. The amount of tube amps on this year's best-selling list is about the same as it's been in recent years, with tube-powered Fenders, Oranges, Marshalls, and PRS amps all continuing to find spots in the Top 20.
This is the first time we've put a list like this together, but it's high time we did. With so many players using any number of devices in place of (or alongside) their traditional amps, we wanted to put all such devices together and see how they compare.
This is all thanks to one of our favorite guitar commentators, Philip McKnight, and his fair questioning of last year's amp list, when we included the Mustang Micro and Kemper Profiler Stage in our overall list.
The definition of "non-traditional" amps we're using here is necessarily fuzzy and is still open to debate. For now, it's basically anything that is not some combination of an amp-and-speaker as seen in full-size combo amps and head/cabinet configurations. We're featuring multi-effects pedals that include amp modelers, standalone amp modelers, amps-in-pedals, and also the most popular headphone amps that players use at home.
While this gives an advantage to combo multi-effect and amp modelers like the many Line 6 Helix devices above, you can see the popularity of amp-in-a-pedal units from Strymon and Universal Audio right alongside them as well as standalone amp modelers/profilers from Fractal Audio Kemper, Headrush, and Neural DSP.
What stands out to you on our best-selling lists? Let us know.