Another year, another tough list. In 2025, Andy Martin demoed more pedals than he could count, and—as always—his Top 5 isn’t about specs or sales numbers. These are the pedals that genuinely inspired him to play differently and dig into new sounds.
This year’s standouts leaned hard into depth and personality. The Death By Audio Crossover Fuzz rethought what fuzz can be by splitting your signal into high and low bands for parallel clean-and-dirty textures and expressive filter sweeps.
The Hamstead Soundworks Redwing explored the blurred lines between chorus, flanger, vibrato, and rotary effects, packing an enormous range of analog modulation into a deceptively simple control set. Reverb also had a big moment, with the Keeley Andy Timmons Nocturne Reverb translating Halo-style bloom into lush spring and plate spaces, complete with presets and MIDI for players who want to go deeper.
Elsewhere, the Benson Amps Deep Sea Diver collaboration stood out for pairing fuzz and delay in unconventional orders, dramatically changing the feel of repeats and distortion. And at the top of the list, the Crazy Tube Circuits Orama connected on a more personal level—capturing the thick, chewy response of a less-commonly cloned ’70s amp circuit and delivering a sense of feel and low-end bloom that sealed its spot as Andy’s #1.
Watch the full video above for Andy’s full breakdown, then check out the complete list of gear, all available on Reverb, below.