This one's for guitarists who enjoy messing with tones, but spend way too much time trying to lock in the perfect sound. Groundhog Audio claims its tech can match the tone from any song and drop it into a compact pedal at your feet – no knob twiddling necessary.
The year-old company says it's built a proprietary engine that isolates the guitar track from audio files that you upload to its mobile app, and reconstructs the full effects chain – including the amp, cab, reverb, and pedals.
The system also takes into account what sort of axe you're plugging into the pedal, so it can factor in your guitar type and pickup selection when building a tone.
Once it's done, the app will beam that to a deceptively conventional-looking pedal over Bluetooth that lets you scroll through saved tones, as well as multiple tones within a song, so you can faithfully reproduce the entire track in your performance.
The pedal only needs to be paired with your phone while you're transferring tones to it; after that, it can operate without a wireless connection, and can hold up to 100 tones. You can also create and edit tones on the app, choosing from a range of gear for your signal chain.
I really like the idea behind this gadget: it goes beyond the current bunch of amp profilers that can authentically capture the impulse response of a real amp and let you use that through a digital interface.
That said, this is likely going to be a better fit for hobbyists than professional musicians; the latter will need more control over their sound for performances and recording.
I'm also not entirely sure about the promised app experience, which claims to work like a streaming music player with over 100,000 songs on tap. That's a lot, but it's also certainly not remotely close to the 100 million songs-strong library that Spotify offers. Groundhog doesn't specify how and where it's sourcing its tracks from. And while it's great that you can import any song in MP3 or AAC format that you have handy, those aren't as widely available as before the streaming era.
I also listened to the tone samples Groundhog has posted on Instagram and YouTube. They sound fine, I guess, and the showcased tones each include a bunch of different effects. However, I haven't heard any high-gain tones that might come in handy for rock and metal, or an especially juicy tone that makes a guitar truly shine, a la Neural DSP's desktop-based plugins. The demos also don't give you much of a sense of how this works as a multi-effects pedal without the tone extraction, so it's hard to say whether it's ready to replace your analog pedalboard – even if you just like to jam at home.
Groundhog Audio is still perfecting its pedal and hopes to begin shipping the OnePedal in March 2026. So the team does have a little more time to nail the experience and ensure the hardware is durable enough to handle being stomped on. It's a great concept, albeit an awfully ambitious one to execute for a new company.
The OnePedal is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, where the gadget is being discounted from expected $550 retail price down to $499 at the time of writing. All crowdfunding campaigns carry an element of risk, and this is Groundhog Audio's first product, so you'll want to keep that in mind if you choose to back this campaign. However, it's vastly exceeded its funding goal with more than 340 backers on board. If all goes to plan, orders are slated to ship worldwide next March. Shipping within the US is free, while international orders will cost extra depending on location.
Check out the OnePedal campaign over on Kickstarter.
