Finding the best synth pedal that will give your guitar that spacey effect isn’t easy. There aren’t very many good synthesizer guitar effects pedals out there that are specifically designed for this.
I’ve seen a lot of people use other pedals to try to get this effect, but that’s not what we’re after. We want a natural, full synthesizer sound. That’s why we’ve found all of the companies that make effects like this and included the best ones in our list.
Let’s check out the top-rated guitar synthesizer effect pedals that you should add to your pedalboard to transform your sound!
Top 5 Best Synth Effects Pedals in 2020
Contents
Here’s a list of the best guitar synth pedals to make your guitar sound like a synthesizer.
- Electro-Harmonix Synth 9
- Earthquaker Devices Data Corrupter
- Electro-Harmonix Mono Synth
- DigiTech Dirty Robot
- Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine
- Roland GR-55 Guitar Synth
- Boss SY-300 Guitar Synthesizer
Electro-Harmonix Synth 9
Specs, features, and benefits
The Synth 9 by Electro-Harmonix will transform your guitar sound into a synth sound. You just need to plug your guitar in the pedal, just like you would with any other pedal, you don’t need any special cables, pick-ups or similar. The Synth 9 has nine different vintage synth sounds: OBX, Profit V, Vibe Synth, Mini Mood, EHX Mini, Solo Synth, Mood Bass, String Synth, and Poly VI. – You can access these with the rotary switch in the upper right corner. The pedal also has four control knobs.
The four control knobs are Dry Volume level control knob, Synth Volume control knob, Control 1, and Control 2. The two “Control” knobs play a different role for each synth voice. For example, the OBX sound uses the Control knobs for Tone shaping, and Octave level, while the Profit V uses the same knobs – the Control 1 as an Envelope filter, and Control 2 for changing the intervals of the top synthesizer voice.
The Synth 9 has two outputs, Dry, and Synth. This is a great feature if you want to make your guitar sound richer. You can plug your Dry signal into one amp, and the Synth signal into another. The Synth 9 works great for bass guitar players too!
Pros and Highlights
- Great sound – The Synth 9 sounds incredibly convincing! You’ll get great synth sounds from this pedal!
- Versatile – Nine different synth sounds inspired by real vintage synths! And they are all tweakable!
- Separate Dry and Synth outputs – Your band finally has a synth player! But you can’t see it on stage! Where is it? Under your foot!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- No cons!
Bottom line
Electro-Harmonix is great at making this kind of pedals. The Synth 9 pedal sounds great, it is versatile, it is great at tracking, and it will make your audience jaw-drop! It is also a great pedal for bass players.
Earthquaker Devices Data Corrupter
Specs, features, and benefits
The Data Corrupter by Earthquaker is a true masterpiece of guitar pedal art.It takes the signal from your guitar, it amplifies it to a high level, making it a square wave fuzz tone, and then it multiplies it, it divides it and modulates it. The Data Corrupter is one of the wildest pedals ever!
On the pedal, you can find four clusters: Master Oscillator, Frequency Modulator, Subharmonic, and Voice Mixer. The Data Corrupter works this way, the Master Oscillator takes your signal by the way you set it with the Root control knob (Unison, -1 Octave, or -2 Octaves), and then you add harmony and start building your preferred sound with the Master Oscillator eight-way rotary switch.
Then you can set the pitch of your sound with the Glide/Vibrato switch and the Rate control knob in the Frequency Modulation cluster (this is something like a pitch-bend wheel you can find on synthesizers). Then, we move to the Subharmonic cluster, where the real madness begins. First, you set the Root switch, which gives you two options Unison, and Oscillator.
The Unison will exclude the Master Oscillator Harmony and the Frequency Modulation cluster, and leave only the Square Root, while the Oscillator option will let you design some out-worldly sounds – this is where you can start experimenting with the Master Oscillator rotary switch, and the Subharmonic rotary switch, – and fine tune both of them with the Frequency Modulation controls. That’s not all.
With tweaking the Square control knob in the upper left corner, you will get one more oscillation – the Square control knob lets you blend in the note you are playing on your guitar in its original octave as a fuzz-fueled Square-wave sound. The other two knobs on the top let you set the levels of the Oscillator and the Subharmonic waves. Of course, the big Level control knob in the top-right corner lets you set the level of the whole thing.
Pros and Highlights
- Amazing sounds – You will definitely amaze the audience with this pedal!
- Handmade! – Earthquaker makes their products by hand in Akron, Ohio!
- Even the sky is not a limit – If you like to experiment a lot with music, you will find this pedal as a true goldmine of inspiration. You can tweak it endlessly, and come up with new sounds every single day…
Cons and Potential Flaws
- No cons!
Bottom line
If you like to experiment with new sounds, you will absolutely love the Data Corrupter pedal by EarthQuaker. It is a sturdily built, versatile synth pedal that will amaze your audience. Works for bass, guitar, and synth too! Great pedal!
Electro-Harmonix Mono Synth
Specs, features, and benefits
The Electro-Harmonix Mono Synth pedal lets you easily dial eleven different monophonic synth sounds from the legendary seventies and eighties.
The pedal has:
- Guitar input, Footswitch port, Synth output, and Dry output
- Two footswitches, Preset, and Bypass
- One rotary switch for setting the synth type (it has eleven types of synth sounds)
- Four control knobs – Dry Volume (controls the volume of the Dry signal at the Synth output), Synth Volume (controls the Synth volume at the Synth output), Sensitivity (controls how your playing-dynamics trigger the pedal), and Control (controls one or two parameters for each synth type)
With the Mono Synth pedal by Electro-Harmonix, you have these synth sounds under your foot: Xbox, Wub, Tinker, Lair, Ghost, Blister, Nu Wave, Unison, Blast, Twin, and Bass. With holding the Preset knob for two seconds you can save up to eleven presets (one for each synth type) – when the LED next to the rotary switch starts to blink red, release it, and your preset is saved.
Pros and Highlights
- Easy to use – Four control knobs, and a Rotary switch – these are all the control you need to tweak to get the synth sound of your dreams. Pretty easy, right?
- Save presets – Having your pre-set sounds on the fly is a very good thing. Especially for live shows.
- Versatile – You’ll have a lot of different synth sounds with this pedal.
Cons and Potential Flaws
- No cons!
Bottom line
If you like to experiment with synth sounds – the Mono Synth Pedal from Electro-Harmonix is a good starting point. It is easy to use, it is versatile, and it has cool features, such as the Preset saving feature, the two outputs, etc. Adding a footswitch is always a good idea – It will let you tweak your sounds on the fly without any hassle.
DigiTech Dirty Robot
Specs, features, and benefits
The Dirty Robot pedal by Digitech is a simple, and easy-to-use synth pedal. It is a stereo pedal – it has two inputs and two outputs.
On the pedal, you can find one two-way toggle switch, seven control knobs, and of course – a footswitch. Pretty impressive for such a small-sized pedal, right? The toggle switch lets you choose between V1 (Classic Synth sound) and V2 (Formant). The seven control knobs are Mix, Modulation, Drift, Start, Stop, Sensitivity, and Time. With the Drift knob, you can choose what kind of wave you want to have – Square, Sub, or Octave.
We are not going to get in details here about how every knob on the pedal changes the sound, but we are going to help you with one single advice – play with it! You can get a lot of interesting sounds out of this pedal. It might be small-sized, but this pedal is one versatile beast. Great job on this one, Digitech!
Pros and Highlights
- Affordable – The Digitech Dirty Robot is pretty affordable compared with the other pedals on this list. It won’t hurt your wallet!
- Flexible- You can get a lot of different sounds out of it! Just tweak around the knobs – who knows, you might fall in love with it.
- Sturdy – The Dirty Robot is a very compact and sturdily built pedal;
Cons and Potential Flaws
- There are better ones – If you ask me (and you are not asking, but I will still tell you my opinion), there are a lot of better sounding synth pedals in this list. Yes, the Dirty Robot is versatile, but not as some of the other pedals on this list are. I suppose, that if you are looking for a good synth pedal, you can probably spend a little more than $150 and get something that has a lot more versatility than the Dirty Robot.
Bottom line
The Dirty Robot by Digitech is a very compact, sturdily built Synth pedal. It is a versatile one too. It tracks great – performs without glitches. Works great for guitar, and for bass too.
You should definitely check it out if you are on the search for a synth pedal. You might like it!
Electro-Harmonix Superego Synth Engine
Specs, features, and benefits
The Superego Synth Engine is another awesome pedal by Electro-Harmonix. This pedal takes the sound/chord that you are playing and “freezes” – it creates long sustained soundscapes, similar to the one a keyboard can do. Amazing, right?
It has four control knobs, Speed, Glissando, Dry, and Effect. It also has a three-way toggle switch, that lets you choose between Latch mode, Momentary mode, and Auto mode. With the Latch mode, the pedal takes the signal from your guitar, and plays it infinitely – you can layer multiple sounds and play over them. The Auto mode changes the “freeze” as you change what you are playing. There is also a Momentary mode, which freezes the sounds only when you step on the footswitch.
Another cool feature of the Superego Synth Engine pedal is that it has its own Effects Loop jacks (Send/Return), which means that you can add more effects to the freeze, and have them only on the Superego, which is notable with a single input and output.
Pros and Highlights
- Great for soloing – One-man-band or a full-blown band, the Superego Synth Engine is an awesome tool for soloing!
- Great for ambient music! – Turning the Effect knob all the way to the right, and turning the Dry knob all the way to the left, and it creates interesting Volume swell sounds!
- It has its own effects loop! – Just image pairing this pedal with a delay pedal…
Absolute awesomeness!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- It is more a Freeze pedal than a Synth pedal – Don’t get me wrong, the Superego Synth Engine pedal is one awesome pedal! What I’m trying to say, is that the Superego creates what we know as a freeze effect, and not an actual synth sound…
Bottom line
The Superego Synth Engine is an awesome pedal. And if it’s what you are looking for, go buy it, don’t hesitate. It is capable of taking your performance to a higher level! It is not a Synth pedal by definition, it is rather a “freeze” pedal, but it definitely belongs in this list. Try it; you might want to marry it!
Roland GR-55 Guitar Synth
Specs, features, and benefits
The GR-55 by Roland is a versatile Guitar Synth! It is a guitar processor, loaded with effects, amp modeling, and guitar synthesis. It comes with a GK-3 Pickup, which you must use in order to play with the GR-55.
It has over nine hundred Synth sounds, twenty-three guitar amp models, seventeen bass amp models, twenty types of multi-effects, forty-two preamp modes, fourteen types of modulation effects, seven types of delay, five different reverb types, etc.
The GR-55 has two hundred and seventy guitar patch memory presets, plus over two-hundred and ninety user guitar patch presets, and ninety Bass patch memory presets (297 user Bass presets).
On the control panel of the GR-55, you can find four footswitches for scrolling through the presets bank, for activating the tuner and controlling the built-in looper. It has a Volume/Expression pedal, an Output level control knob, and a bunch of buttons for saving, storing, and editing presets. It also has an LCD display, so you know where you’re at.
On the back panel, you can find the power switch, the USB port, the Midi Input and Output, the Headphones out, the Left/Right Outputs, the Guitar Output, and a GK input.
Pros and Highlights
- Versatile – The GR-55 offers really a lot! You’ll have hundreds and hundreds of different sounds out of this unit!
- It is a Roland! – And Roland makes synths and guitar synths for decades! They know how to do this kind of stuff!
- Works both for guitar and bass! – The GR-55 works for bass too!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- Difficult to use – The GR-55 is not intuitive at all, you must study the user manual very carefully. Also, there are all sorts of problems with it, like poor tracking, the limited functionality of the footswitches, horrible sounding factory presets…
- We don’t recommend this processor for live playing. Well, there are guitar players that do love this unit, and they play it live, but please be sure to try it before you buy it and do a proper research, in order to avoid disappointment.
Bottom line
You might love it, and you might also hate it. One thing is for sure with the Roland GR-55 – it is definitely not for everyone. Our best advice is to apply the holy rule of “trying before buying”. Good luck.
Boss SY-300 Guitar Synthesizer
Specs, features, and benefits
The Boss SY-300 is a versatile polyphonic guitar synth with all the features an analog synth has, such as Wave-shaping, Filtering, LFO, Step-Sequencing, etc. After designing your synth sounds with the oscillators and everything, you can apply some onboard effects, that of course, sounds amazing. It also has effects for your guitar sound, such as Delay, Reverb, Distortion, Modulation, etc. You can use the Boss SY-300 as a guitar multi-effects unit too. To use this guitar synth, you need to plug in your cables, just like you would in an ordinary guitar pedal.
The Boss SY-300 has four footswitches, LCD display, four control knobs for adjusting the parameters that show up on the display (such as oscillators, effects, etc.), Output level control knob, Synth/Effect push button, Blender push-button, Write-button, Menu button, Exit push-button, Select/Enter switch/knob, and left and right Page buttons. On the back of the unit, you can find the power switch, Footswitch port, Midi Input, and Output ports, Sub Output jacks, Main Output jacks, Effects loop ports, and Input jack. The Boss SY-300 has seventy factories presets, and you can save up to ninety-nine user patches.
You can connect the Boss SY-300 with the Tone Studio Software on your computer, through the USB port, and edit, create, and download even more patches!
Pros and Highlights
- Great sound – Very convincing synth sounds, great guitar effects…
- Endless possibilities – Extremely versatile! It is one of the most versatile guitar synths ever!
- Glitch-free – The Boss SY-300 is great at tracking. Try it and see for yourself!
Cons and Potential Flaws
- You need to spend some time learning the unit – This might not be a problem for the younger generation. But, if you are not a millennial, you might find yourself confused with the unit.
Bottom line
If you are looking for a versatile guitar synth, that doesn’t need a special pick-up to be used, you might want to check out the Boss SY-300. It has a ton of features, synth sounds, multi-effect presets… The possibilities of tone shaping are endless with this guitar synth. However, you might find it a little overbearing if you are older than thirty-five, or if you are not comfortable with using modern technology.
What We Recommend and Why
We recommend the EarthQuaker Data Corrupter! It is a versatile, great sounding guitar synth pedal. It is very user-friendly, and it is inspiring in the same time. We recommend this pedal to everybody that wants to play experimental sound. Great job, EarthQuaker!