Best All-in-One Shoegaze Pedals

Jan 9, 2024

Shoegaze is a music genre that’s all about creating beautiful but aggressive walls of sound.

It should make you wanna close your eyes melancholically but at the same time make you wanna jump around and bang your head.

The typical shoegaze sound is created by combining distortion, reverb and sometimes modulation to add even more movement.

Luckily, there are pedals out there that excel at exactly that. Here are three of my favorite all-in-one shoegaze pedals.

Walrus Audio - Melee

The Walrus Audio Melee has the most fun user interface in my opinion. Walrus reduced the controls to only the essentials but added a giant joystick that simultaneously controls the amount of distortion and reverb.

Key features:

Classic RAT-style distortion, melds perfectly with the reverb
3 different reverb algorithms (all can be modulated): octave-down similar to the Slö or Slöer, “plain” ambient reverb and reverse reverb (my favorite)
Toggles to control the distortion TONE, reverb DECAY and most importantly effect ORDER (distortion into reverb or reverb into distortion)

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Twist more knobs in the full demo

Old Blood Noise Endeavors - Screen Violence

OBNE’s Screen Violence has a few clever twists added to it that make it stand out.

The SCREEN knob seems to control several parameters of the wet side of the pedal. There are modulation and time-based effect that are wonderfully woven together. I’m not exactly sure what it does in detail but the more you turn it clockwise the more movement and space seem to be added to the mix.

Key features:

Wide range of modulation and time-based effects control by the SCREEN knob
Amp-like distortion that can be dialed in from subtle to aggressive
Stereo in and out. This thing sounds awesome with headphones!
FIRST controls the order of the effects (distortion into reverb or reverb into distortion)
Both sides can be bypassed individually

Links:

Listen to even more sounds in the full demo

Beautiful Noise Effects - When The Sun Explodes

The When The Sun Explodes has more of a classic vibe to it. You get a spring-like reverb paired with a unique distortion circuit that sounds phenomenal (its little brother, the Exploder, is one of my all-time favorite distortion pedals).

The standout feature to me is the clever choices for the momentary function. You can get the WTSE to self-oscillate by holding down the feedback button. There is tremolo added to the momentary feedback that makes this a super satisfying button to step on.

Key features: