A micro-pedal start in 2010.

Mooer is a guitar-effects company from Shenzhen, the manufacturing city in southern China’s Guangdong province. Its legal name, as printed on its websites, is Shenzhen Mooer Audio Co., Ltd.; in Chinese it is 魔耳, characters that read roughly as “magic ear.” The company’s English website says Mooer “burst onto the music products scene in 2010 with the original micro-sized guitar effects pedals,” and that the idea came from four friends “passionate about the combination of music and technology.” It does not name them, and we found no source that does, so this guide does not either.

The company’s own accounts differ on detail. Its Chinese-language page also gives 2010 as the founding year but names the first product as the GE-50, a digital multi-effects unit, with the Micro and Spark ranges of single pedals following. It describes the firm as a maker and seller of electronic instruments and audio equipment, with in-house engineers working on synthesizer, wavetable and digital-effects technology. The earliest archived copy of mooeraudio.com, captured by the Internet Archive in October 2011, uses almost the same language — “researching, manufacturing and marketing electronic musical instruments” — and invites visitors to see Mooer at Frankfurt’s Musikmesse and at Music China that year.

What made the name was the Micro series: very small pedals, each with one large central knob and two or three smaller ones. English Wikipedia counts about 60 of them and says many were made to be similar to well-known pedals, giving the Ninety Orange phaser and the Green Mile overdrive as examples that echo the MXR Phase 90 and the Ibanez Tube Screamer. A smaller Spark series followed, then the stereo Twin series in 2014, and at the NAMM Show in January 2015 a compact wah, the Wahter, whose foot bars fold away for storage.

From copies to collaborations.

Mooer’s reputation for close copies has one documented legal chapter. In January 2019 MusicRadar reported that Electro-Harmonix, the New York pedal maker, had won a copyright case against Mooer in the Chinese courts after almost two years. The case concerned two Mooer pedals, the Mooergan and the Tender Octaver, which according to the report “included exact copies of the software” used in EHX’s C9 Organ Machine and Micro POG; Mooer was “also said to have copied” the Electro-Harmonix copyright notice embedded in that software. EHX’s president, Mike Matthews, said the courts had awarded “a nearly six-figure judgement.” The report did not name the court or carry a response from Mooer, and we found none. The dispute was about software; MusicRadar noted that analogue circuits are difficult to protect by copyright. Separately, in October 2017, Mooer revived the Tender Octaver as a MkII with three new algorithms, MusicRadar reported; that article did not mention the dispute.

The company’s later story is about digital products and artist work. Its website dates its first artist collaboration to 2016: the Ocean Machine, a delay, reverb and looper pedal developed with the Canadian guitarist Devin Townsend, which MusicRadar tried after NAMM 2017 and called the company’s “most heavily featured stompbox yet.” A second version, the Ocean Machine II, followed in September 2024, extending the looper from 44 to 120 seconds, Guitar World reported. Mooer also dates the Micro Preamp pedals, the GE200 multi-effects unit and the Radar speaker-cabinet simulator to that period, and the Preamp Live modeller and Truck pedalboard units to 2018.

Multi-effects units are now the core of the catalogue. The GE range runs from compact units such as the GE150 to the touchscreen GE1000, and the Prime P1, announced in March 2022, is a handheld effects unit and audio interface controlled by a phone app, Guitar World reported, likening it in concept to the Boss Pocket GT. In April 2024 MusicRadar, reviewing a rival unit, listed the Mooer GE200 among the multi-effects pedals competing for beginner guitarists, alongside models from Line 6, Hotone and Vox.

Design and documentation.

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.

Pedals, then guitars and amps.

Since 2021 Mooer has also sold instruments. In May that year it launched its first guitar, the GTRS S800, through Indiegogo: an S-style guitar with a basswood body, a roasted maple neck and built-in effects, drum machine and looper controlled by a “Super Knob,” Guitar World reported. Conventional guitars followed under the Mooer name; reviewing the MSC10 Pro in April 2025, Guitar World said its feel and build were “definitely at the top end” of the sub-$200 guitars its reviewer had played. The website now lists amplifiers, basses, wireless systems and audio interfaces alongside the pedals.

On where its products are made, Mooer describes itself as a manufacturer as well as a seller, and its 2011 website said the same; we found no independent account of its factories, so we give that as the company’s claim. English Wikipedia describes the company as private, and it still uses the Shenzhen company name on its websites. Its Chinese page says it has distributors in more than 40 countries and regions, and that in April 2015 it signed Chen Lei, guitarist of the Chinese rock band Tang Dynasty.

For a design guide, Mooer shows how a hardware brand can be built on a format — a family of tiny, uniform enclosures — before it is known for a sound of its own. Compare Electro-Harmonix, the New York maker that took Mooer to court, and Boss, whose colour-coded compact pedals are the best-known small-box format of all. For this guide we use graphite, orange and off-white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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