Ariel Posen pedalboard on a budget2021 documented board rebuilt for ≈ $816

This position tunes and mutes, and the TU300 does both accurately for twenty dollars. It is the smallest saving on the page and the easiest decision.

Trade-off. No polyphonic mode, so it is one string at a time rather than a single strum, and the display is harder to read under stage light. Thomann lists it at six to eight weeks.

Worth being blunt about this one: the ML5 is already cheap for what it is. Five true-bypass loops under MIDI control for $199 is good value, and the only way to save real money is to give up MIDI entirely. The Tri Loop does that - three loops, three footswitches, half the price - and keeps the drives in their published order.

Trade-off. You lose two loops and all recall. On the original, one MIDI message reconfigures the whole board between songs; here every change is a foot on a switch, and two of the five pedals have to live permanently in the chain rather than in a loop. Note also that at $193 a Moen GEC8 JR gives eight loops with presets - only $6 below the ML5, which is another way of saying the original is not the thing to save on.

Both are octave-up fuzzes with a clean level alongside the fuzz level, which is the control that makes an octave pedal usable rather than a novelty. Setting direct under fuzz and playing above the fifth fret gets you into the same territory.

Trade-off. The Octaland is a hand-built circuit with its own gated character and a far better octave tracker. The Behringer is voiced for bass, so on guitar the octave is weaker on low notes, and the enclosure is plastic.

The Secret Machine is a three-germanium-transistor homage to the Zonk Machine MKI with a bias control for the sputter, and the Fuzz Bender is a Tone Bender-lineage circuit with a bias control for exactly the same reason. Same family of circuit, same knob doing the same job.

Trade-off. Germanium is the point of the original and the Behringer is silicon, so the temperature-dependent, uneven character that people wait months for is not there. DanDrive sells direct with a waiting list of several months; this is also the only unit here priced in euro and converted. Thomann lists the Behringer at six to eight weeks.

What this position gives the board is a recallable gain and EQ stage that is always on. The Preamp Model X2 is the cheapest thing that does the recallable part - two channels, stored presets, full EQ - for an eighth of the price.

Trade-off. These are not the same kind of device. The Automatone is an analogue Benson preamp whose motorised faders physically move to recall a setting; the Mooer is a digital model with a stored patch. You lose the analogue path, the fuzz range at the top of the gain control, and the thing the pedal is famous for, which is watching the faders move.

One of the Duellist's channels is built on the builder's reference TS808, and the Green Mile is a Tube Screamer-lineage circuit with two voices on a toggle. Low gain and high level puts it in the same place.

Trade-off. Two independent footswitches become one toggle, so the two voices cannot be stacked the way the original stacks them. The dip-switch voicing options have no equivalent.

The Broadcast is a console preamp used as an always-on colour, and the part of that a cheap pedal can reach is the clean lift with tone shaping. The Pure Boost gives up to 20dB with treble and bass shelving, which covers the job if not the character.

Trade-off. This is Posen's own signature pedal, built on a 1960s recording-console circuit with a transformer, and pushing it hard is where it becomes an overdrive and then a fuzz. The Pure Boost stays clean and then clips unpleasantly. If any single position on this board is worth saving for, it is this one.

The Hydra is a stereo reverb and a tremolo in one box. The R7 X2 answers the reverb half in stereo with stored presets, which is the half this position spends most of its time doing.

Trade-off. The tremolo is gone. Mooer's Triangolo at $67 would bring it back, but that is another position and another $67 - and it would not be stereo. The Hydra's three-and-three mode pairing, where a reverb and a tremolo are recalled together, has no cheap equivalent at all.

Both are delays with stored presets and stereo outputs, and the D7 X2's analogue mode is the darkest of its seven, which is nearest the Thermae's bucket-brigade voice.

Trade-off. The Thermae is not really a delay, it is a pitch-sequencing machine that happens to repeat: its two intervals and glide turn repeats into arpeggios and dives. The D7 X2 does none of that. This swap keeps the echo and drops the reason the pedal is on the board.

The Beebo's job here is to host whatever effects the analogue chain does not cover and to take the board from mono to stereo. The Prime M1 does both, with presets and stereo out, for a fifth of the price.

Trade-off. The Beebo is a modular platform - you patch modules together on a touchscreen and build effects that do not exist as products. The Prime M1 hands you a list of effects someone else designed. That is the whole difference, and it is not a small one.

This position is the final studio reverb in stereo with recallable programs. The A7 Ambiance is a seven-mode stereo reverb with stored presets and long decays, which covers the shape of the job at a tenth of the price.

Trade-off. The CXM 1978 is a Meris-built model of a Lexicon 224, and that specific reverb is the reason it costs $899. The A7 is a good ambient reverb and not that. The motorised faders go too, which on this board is not decoration - it is how a program is recalled and then adjusted by hand.