I bought my first tube amp last year, after playing guitar for about 25 years. Before then I’d been completely reliant on solid-state amps and digital models. It was a revelation. And then a few weeks ...

For guitar players, pedals are a way to create and adjust their guitar's sound to make it just right — maybe you want to bring in a reverb effect, or you want to add fuzz or distortion to your sound.

The world of guitar effects is weird. It’s a place where old-school analog gear and crazy high-tech digital pedals are both fetishized with the same amount of zeal. Some companies, like Empress ...