Monarch Pedals - New ZealandSave Shop

Thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

You’ve found something different. Something unique. Something new and original in a world full of clones and copycats. We’re bringing something different to the landscape from way down here in New Zealand.

We have an ethos: Keep it simple. We know that a pedal with 16 knobs, 3 switches, and 2 screens is jour de rigueur but we seem to spend more time tweaking the thing than getting back to what it’s all about: playing guitar and having fun. If we can make one thing that makes you play guitar for 10 minutes longer we’ve done our job. We want you to fall in love again, remind yourself why we all invest so much time and energy into this crazy hobby: the self-expression, the love, the unparalleled joy of playing a huge riff with your friends and pulling a stupid face as you pull off a solo at the dusty end of the neck.

Simple enough right?

Our story starts the usual way. A pedal breaks. Fixing it seems like some occult mystery locked away in dusty tomes or secret knowledge held under lock and key, only to be handed out to a very select few. Screw that. Dive in, mess it up. See what’s going on. If it’s already broken then it can’t get worse.

That was 2009, learning to fix a busted wah the hard way, then adding mods, some of which were successful and some that weren’t quite as successful. But it was always fun and that’s always been the point hasn’t it? Then fixing a fuzz, then circuit bending a DS-1, then fixing other people’s pedals, maybe even changing some filter caps on amps. That’s how it began. After some R&D, some trial and error, playtesting, road-testing, player feedback, refinements, then more refinements, we produced our own circuits that became the foundation on which Monarch Pedals was built. The original Fuzzboy from 2009 still exists on a shelf in the workshop and it still sounds rad. Looks like hell, though.

You’ve probably seen that we’re in New Zealand. We make all the circuits by hand in a small workshop in Auckland, the biggest city of 1.7m people yet not the capital (that’s Wellington). Every part, LED, jack, switch, wire is connected by hand by a husband and wife team of 2, sometimes with some extra help, and a shopdog called Bess who lets us know when the courier is here.

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here. Make a good noise.

Shop Website

Tax Policies