A company that dates itself to November 2012.

Hotone is often grouped with the effects makers of Shenzhen, but its own website points somewhere else. The copyright line on hotone.com names Changsha Hotone Technology Co., Ltd. — 长沙幻音科技有限公司 — based in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. The site’s own description says that “Changsha Hotone Audio Co., Ltd. was founded on November 5, 2012.” MusicRadar agrees on the province, calling Hotone “the Hunan, China-based pedal maker” in a 2025 review. We found nothing in the sources we checked to support a Shenzhen head office or an earlier founding date, so we use the company’s own.

In Chinese the brand is 幻音 (Huanyin), the name it uses on WeChat, Weibo and Bilibili. Its website calls the company “a comprehensive group company integrating R&D and design, manufacturing, and promotion and sales.” Its English “About” page speaks of “a highly experienced international team” whose goal is to “create hot sonic tools.” It names no founders, and we could not identify them from sources we could check, so this guide names none. The website names no parent company or outside shareholder either, and we found no report of an acquisition. One link is visible, though: the Chinese-language website of Valeton, another effects brand, carries the same Changsha company name in its footer, under the same Hunan website-licence number, which indicates that the two brands are run by the same company.

The first Hotone products to reach the Western guitar press were very small. MusicRadar reported in November 2013 that it had first seen the Skyline series at NAMM, and that “each pedal is hardly bigger than a pair of nine-volt batteries.” The range covered delay, chorus, tremolo, boost, compression, overdrive, distortion and fuzz, under names such as Eko, Choir, Trem, Komp, Chunk, Fury, Grass and Whip. Reviewing them in January 2014, the magazine noted zinc-alloy cases, a metal bar to protect the knobs, glow-in-the-dark controls and true bypass switching. Some pedals reached openly for famous sounds: the Grass, MusicRadar wrote, had “a tone based on” Dumble amplifiers, and the Trem was “inspired by” the optical tremolo of the Fender Twin.

From tiny pedals to touchscreens.

By late 2016 MusicRadar could say that Hotone was “best known for its mammoth catalogue of tiny pedals.” That year it released the Xtomp, first shown at the Winter NAMM show in 2015: a pedal with an “iPhone-sized footprint” and six unmarked knobs ringed by coloured halos, which loaded digitally modelled effects from a phone app. It went on sale at £179.99, or $249.99, and a Bluetooth Xtomp Mini followed in 2017. The Binary series of dual-footswitch pedals with OLED displays, and the Loudster floor power amplifier, arrived in 2018.

The product that changed Hotone’s standing was the Ampero, unveiled at NAMM in January 2019. MusicRadar listed 64 amp models, 60 cabinet simulations and more than 100 effects, and presented it as a cheaper rival to Line 6’s Helix, at around €400 or £350 in early listings. The Ampero II Stomp followed in November 2021, with 87 amp models, 68 cabinet simulations, more than 60 effects, a four-inch touchscreen and 20 Celestion speaker impulse responses “powered by Celestion Digital,” the magazine reported, setting it against Line 6’s Helix Stomp, Headrush’s MX5 and Mooer’s GE300 Lite. The Ampero II floorboard and the Ampero II Stage came next; reviewing the Stage, MusicRadar concluded that “for its price point, it’s hard to fault.”

Hotone’s recent products spread wider still. The Pulze modelling amps include the Pulze Mini, a five-watt desktop amp with 52 amp models, which MusicRadar reviewed in August 2025 as a challenger to Positive Grid. The Verbera reverb pedal, with 120 built-in impulse responses, received five stars from the same magazine in 2025, which called it “a stunningly good reverb pedal that sounds and operates like one twice the price.” In 2024 the funk guitarist Cory Wong partnered with Hotone on the Wong Press, a combined volume, expression and wah pedal. In 2026 the company’s news page announced “NAM A2 Now Supported,” and MusicRadar’s Ampero II Stage review notes compatibility with NAM A2, a format of the open-source Neural Amp Modeler.

Chinese guitar gear, documented.

The seven brands in this guide sell affordable guitar gear, much of it online. Six are Chinese companies; the seventh is the house brand of a German retailer.

Most are in Guangdong province. Mooer is the brand of Shenzhen Mooer Audio, created in 2010, according to English Wikipedia. NUX says it is one of three brands owned by Cherub Technology, which lists its headquarters in Shenzhen and an industrial park in Zhuhai; NUX dates its debut to 2006. Joyo’s website names Joyo Technology, in Shenzhen’s Bao’an district. Donner belongs to Guangzhou Rantion Technology, according to its own press material and the Red Dot award records.

Two brands come from Changsha, in Hunan. The Chinese-language websites of Hotone and Valeton both name the same company, Changsha Hotone Technology, in their footers. Valeton says its team spent more than ten years designing and building products for other brands before launching its own.

Harley Benton is different: it is the house brand of Thomann, the music retailer founded in 1954 by Hans Thomann Sr. in Bavaria and still family-owned, according to English Wikipedia. Thomann GmbH, of Burgebrach, runs the brand’s website. Not all of its guitars are made in China; MusicRadar listed one 2026 model as made in Indonesia.

Few of the companies’ websites we checked name a factory; where a country of manufacture is documented, it is usually in reviewers’ specification lists.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Hunan company with a global catalogue.

Hotone’s products are made in China. Its website describes a group that includes manufacturing, and MusicRadar’s specification for the Pulze Mini gives its origin as China; we found no source naming a particular factory, so we go no further. In China, the website names a separate company, Hunan Moge Instruments, as its general distributor. Abroad, Hotone sells through distributors and large retailers; MusicRadar’s reviews quote prices at Thomann and Gear4music.

The brand’s look has changed with its products. The Skyline pedals were defined by their size and glowing knobs, the Xtomp by its halo-lit controls, and the Ampero units by touchscreens in slim metal cases. Hotone publishes no brand book or colour codes that we could find, and its website gives the name in capitals, HOTONE; we do not reproduce its logo.

For a design guide, Hotone shows how a maker of tiny pedals can grow into a modelling brand while keeping its name and its prices in reach. Compare Line 6, whose Helix the Ampero was measured against from the start, and Positive Grid, the smart-amp brand the Pulze Mini set out to challenge. For this guide we use graphite, a halo amber and a cool screen blue with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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