Amazon is now making guitar pedals

AmazonBasics, the private-label brand of Amazon.com, has expanded its product catalogue to include guitar pedals.

This month, the retail giant began listing a range of seven mini pedals – including a booster, compressor, delay, distortion, looper, overdrive and tune – on Amazon.com.

Each is being offered at a remarkably low price point. Bar the delay and looper – which are priced $48.16 and $46.02, respectively – you can pick up an AmazonBasics guitar pedal for just $26.75.

Although customers initially cast doubt on the quality of these stompboxes, some, including Amazon user Modern Millennial, were surprised.

“I went into this hoping to find a low-quality product,” Modern Millennial wrote in their user review of the AmazonBasics compressor. “At the end of playing with this thing for a few hours, hat in hand, I admit I was converted.”

“I was expecting to find a cheap knock-off of a micro pedal with low-quality components and overall lower quality sound issues. But, I’m here to eat crow. This was a really solid piece of gear and for the price point it is practically unbeatable.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the pedals bear striking resemblance to many other cheap micro-pedals available on Amazon. YouTuber Gear Gods went to the lengths of opening one up, and discovered the brand name Nux on the circuit board – take a look below. If you’ve ever searched for a guitar pedal on Amazon and sorted by price ascending, it’s likely you’ve seen a Nux pedal – perhaps even under a different name. And now, Amazon itself is one of the names Nux is making pedals for.

Mini guitar pedals – which emphasise both a smaller footprint and lower price tag – are nothing new to the guitar world. However, the move from Amazon might suggest the scale at which customers are now purchasing musical equipment online – perhaps due to COVID-19 – rather than in-store.

Back in July, e-commerce site Gear4music reported an 80 per cent rise in sales from a similar period last year. Similarly, Fender is on track to have a record year in terms of sales. Even the beleaguered Guitar Center, which may potentially file for bankruptcy, has experienced strong sales at its Hollywood outlet during the pandemic.

See the AmazonBasics guitar pedals here.

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