I’ve been playing the guitar since I was 13, but I haven’t taken it seriously in over a decade. I decided to change that in 2025 and dedicated myself to playing at least a little bit nearly every day. Part of what makes playing the electric guitar so much fun is getting great tones, and for that you need at least a decent amp and probably a few effects pedals. For my money, the $300 Keeley Dark Side was just the tool to give myself a huge variety of sounds that reference Pink Floyd’s legendary guitarist David Gilmour.
You don’t need to be a Floyd fan to enjoy this pedal, despite its name. One side has an outstanding fuzz / distortion channel that’s flexible and responsive to changes in volume and picking intensity. You can dial in anything from light gain to fat, heavily distorted tones, and a three-way toggle switch lets you further adjust the fuzz characteristics. The other side of the pedal offers a multi-head tape delay effect that lets you dial in some extremely fun rhythmic echo effects. Or, you can choose between four different modulation modes: rotary speaker, flanger, univibe or phaser. My favorite is a blend knob that lets you mix together the rotary and flange, or the univibe and phaser to get sounds with the characteristics of two effects. It’s not the only effects pedal most guitarists will want or need. But for my money I can get a ton of great sounds out of it that work across a variety of genres. — Nathan Ingraham, Deputy Editor