12 Excellent Cheap Guitar Pedals (an expanded list)

Adding cheap guitar pedals can be really helpful, perhaps even as helpful as many of the expensive ones.

In my experience, the usefulness and value of guitar pedals is highly contextual, meaning that the right player in the right situation can make use of a lot of different effects. The issue of price is almost always secondary.

This means that even cheap guitar pedals can have a lot of value if planted in the right scenario.

For this article, I'm choosing pedals based on the following criteria:

1. Price (under $100)
2. Have personal experience (I've actually used it or know someone who has)
3. Brings enough quality/features to the table to be worth the $ amount

Choosing a list of guitar pedals based off of these criteria will give you some reliable direction.

From there, I'll try and help you contextualize each pedal to see if it would be a good fit in your situation.

Let's get started.

The Phase 90 from MXR houses analog circuitry which gives off a warm, vintage tone, closely resembling Eddie Van Halen's use of the effect.

Since the number of phase stages is hard-wired into the circuits (I believe it's four stages in the Phase 90), the only control mechanism you'll have is speed, which is really all that's necessary, since the pedal sounds great out of the box.

You just don't need to change much about the Phase 90 to get a good sounds out of it. 

It's one of my favorite phaser pedals for all skill levels and musical styles.

This Stylish fuzz by Donner boasts a true bypass circuit (preserves your clean tone) while also sounding  really thick and aggressive.

It surprised me, because cheap fuzz pedals can sometimes be a little weak and anemic, but this one is strong, edgy and puts out a lot of sustain.

Beginner to intermediate electric guitar players who are into grunge, rock or even metal will find plenty of use for it.

The KLIQ Tiny Tune is small pedal tuner but responds quickly to your picking and tunes accurately over a chromatic interface (detects and displays pitch in real time).

Since tuner pedals are a utility and not subject to sound quality concerns, you can get away with cheap guitar pedals more easily in this particular category. KLIQ's tuner does its job well and can be useful in any guitar player's context, regardless of style or musical preference.

TC Electronic's Dark Matter distortion is one of my favorite distortion pedals to recommend, primarily because it does such a good job of balancing between a vintage and modern gain flavor.

It has a good low-end "chunk" to it, but can also get thinner with more bite, kind of like an AC/DC solo through a brighter Marshall setting.

It houses a true bypass circuit which preserves your clean tone with the pedal off. 

At the price, I think it's a steal that could easily be $20 to $30 more expensive.

Behringer's economy pedals are cheap but also sound quite good, considering such a low price tag.

I like these pedals for beginners or those who just want to experiment with certain effects to see how often they might use them. The VD400 is a classically-voiced delay pedal designed to imitate vintage tape delay sounds, which makes it applicable to a wide range of skill levels and playing styles.

At the price, this one makes a great gift, especially for guitar players who are just getting started.

TC Electronic's Ditto looper is an easy-to-use looping pedal that works with electric, acoustic and bass pedalboards alike, with a single-button interface, high-end interior components and a single loop level knob.

The pedal runs a true bypass connection and a real analog circuit, both of which you don't typically see in guitar pedals under $100. You also get the expected functionality of a guitar looping pedal like overdubbing and undo/redo.

The single button control takes some time to get used to, but once you do it's extremely easy to operate.

TC Electronic's Spark Mini booster is affordable, easy to use and boutique, providing 20 db of boost in an analog circuit that sounds really smooth and transitions well between on and off volume swells.

It just makes your clean tone sound better, even if you're not necessarily wanting to boost your signal.

They throw in true bypass to sweeten the deal, which I believe is true of nearly all TC Electronic stompboxes, regardless of price. In the sub-$50 range of pedal retail, this is one of the absolute best deals available, provided you're in the market for a signal booster.

The EC200 chorus, considering its price, boasts solid sound quality.

It's especially good when used as a simple layer of modulation, to add some extra flavor and "body" to your guitar's clean tone.

It has four different controls allowing you to shape the chorus effect as light and shimmery or deep and aggressive. I found that the EC200 - and chorus pedals in general - sound better on more subtle settings that don't use as much depth.

For the price, it's a great way to start stocking your pedalboard without overspending. 

Like the Behringer Vintage delay, this one makes a great gift or a starter pedal for beginners.

Joyo's take on an overdrive pedal is surprisingly versatile, as the JF-01 can put out a lot of heavy gain and plenty of sustain to match.

The low-end frequency sounds smooth and full, while single coil pickups will easily pick up the high end bite and sparkle of the distorted tone, even with the drive knob down.

It's widely applicable, cheap and sounds more than decent for what you pay.

Again, we have a cheap guitar pedal with true bypass, which should probably be a prerequisite for getting on this list.

The Gunslinger by DigiTech is yet another distortion pedal that outperforms its own price tag, delivering a nicely compressed, heavy distortion sound that can be cut back for more subtle, bluesy playing.

On high gain settings, the distortion sounds tight and defined, without any excess noise.

This is a great buy for beginners and intermediates alike. 

I should point out, if you dig into the components of the Donner Yellow Fall, it's not actually an analog circuit.

The digital chip emulates an analog tone, but it's not a truly analog pedal. Still, the Yellow Fall gives off a resonant tone that sounds quite good, with thick rhythmic echoes that don't feel thin or anemic. While the pedal itself doesn't cost much, the crispness and responsiveness of the delay certainly out-paces its own price tag.

Echoes have a sleek shimmering quality to them and sound great through nearly all of the pedal's settings.

Turning the TIME knob to the right slows the delay down for a more reflective and modern tone (similar to what you hear The Edge from U2 always playing) while cutting down the TIME knob creates a much faster fluttering kind of delay, similar to a rockabilly sound.

Donner's take on distortion is usually a type of overdrive.

The Morpher is a bit more modern and versatile, with a switch that allows you to select one of three distortion voicings; natural, tight and classic.

It's a high-gain distortion pedal that's sized to conserve space, making it a great add-on for a beginner or intermediate player's pedalboard, especially if they're into more modern distortion and playing styles.

Other Guitar Pedal Buying Resources

We’ve published a lot of other guitar pedal buying guides that are designed to help give you some direction when you’re looking for new gear.

Here are a few that you might find useful if you aren’t seeing what you need in the above cheap guitar pedal listings:

• Best Guitar Pedals Roundup
• Typical Guitar Pedal Dimensions
• How to Use a Distortion Pedal
• How to Use a Pedal Tuner
• How to Use a Wah Pedal

Which ones make the cut?

Effects need three basic things to be valuable. First, they need relevancy, meaning a guitar pedal should be reputable, useful and longstanding within the guitar playing community at large. In other words, it has proven to be useful to a wide range of players.

Second, as the title of this article would suggest, it should have a low price tag. And third, a high level of functionality and sound quality.

The combination thereof, gives us optimal value.

Primarily I've used these three things to decide whether or not I would include a pedal here. In short, this is a list of cheap pedals that I would recommend based on discernible metrics. Because a low price, on its own, doesn’t do you any good. You need something worthwhile in return.