A Shenzhen parent founded in 1997.

NUX is not a stand-alone company but a brand. Its website says NUX “is one of three brands owned by Cherub Technology Co., Ltd.,” and that it “made its industry debut in 2006.” The name, it says, is pronounced “new X” and stands for “new experience, new work, new inspiration, and new potential.” The website describes a wide range, from multi-effects units and single pedals to amplifiers, wireless systems, electronic drum kits and digital pianos.

Cherub itself is older. An archived version of its Chinese website, captured by the Internet Archive in May 2022, says the company — 蔚科 in Chinese — was founded in Shenzhen in 1997, and the copyright line on NUX’s website also runs from 1997. Its headquarters are in Shekou, in Shenzhen’s Nanshan district, in a creative-industries park called Nanhai E-Cool. That page names the group’s three brands as Cherub, “little angel” in Chinese, which covers tuners, metronomes and drum tuners; Musedo; and NUX. Neither the company’s websites nor any other source we checked names Cherub’s founders, so we leave them out.

Every Cherub address we found is in Guangdong province: the Shenzhen head office and a “Cherub Hi-Tech Park” in the Zhuhai High-Tech Zone, across the Pearl River estuary. The archived Chinese page also lists a Zhuhai subsidiary, offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an, a research centre in Shanghai, a company in Zhongshan, an American arm and a Japanese subsidiary, and puts the staff at more than 450; the text counts 21 years since 1997, so that figure probably dates from around 2018. NUX’s website today adds branch offices in Torrance, California, in Dubai and in Ho Chi Minh City.

Modellers, Mighty amps and wireless.

In the guitar press, NUX is best known for three things: compact digital modellers, small “Mighty” practice amplifiers and plug-in wireless systems, all priced for players on a budget. Guitar World has variously called it a “Chinese pedal maker” and a “Chinese pedal and instrument maker.”

The modellers run on what NUX calls TSAC, “True Simulation of Analog Circuit.” When it introduced the MG-300 in 2020, NUX called it “dollar-for-dollar, the best multi-FX on the market,” Guitar World reported in January 2021, announcing the follow-up MG-30. At the NAMM Show in April 2023 it showed the Trident, a floor unit in a die-cast aluminium chassis built around a TSAC-4K algorithm that NUX said was twice as complex as earlier versions. Reviewing the MG-400 in April 2024, MusicRadar described it as “aimed squarely at the beginner guitar player market” and judged it “a great choice for beginner guitarists,” while preferring the presets on the MG-300. The unit packs 25 amp models, 25 cabinets and 48 effects, plus a looper and 60 drum patterns for practice, and the reviewer noted the debossed NUX logo on its rubber-topped expression pedal, where the wordmark is pressed into the rubber rather than printed.

The Mighty line covers small amplifiers and the Mighty Plug, a headphone amplifier that plugs straight into the guitar. The Mighty Plug Pro, launched in July 2022, added 21 amp models, cabinet impulse responses including two by ChopTones, app control and a USB-C audio interface, Guitar World reported. The B2, a 2.4GHz wireless guitar system announced in November 2017, “works like a guitar cable,” as the launch announcement carried by Guitar World put it, and wireless systems remain a large part of the NUX catalogue.

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.

“New X”: new experience.

NUX pedals often wear their references openly. The Horseman, a $69 mini pedal announced in August 2019, combined the “Gold” and “Silver” Klon Centaur voicings in one enclosure, Guitar World reported; the NDD-7 Tape Echo of 2022 was presented as a homage to Roland’s 1974 Space Echo RE-201; and the Cerberus multi-function pedal of 2017 paired a “Blues Breaker style” overdrive with a “Brown Sound” distortion, according to the company’s launch text. In each case the reference was stated in the launch coverage, and we found no documented legal dispute over any of them.

On manufacturing, the archived Chinese page says Cherub concentrates on the research, development and production of digital music equipment, and the company lists its Zhuhai park among its sites. We found no independent account of which plant makes which NUX product, so we give that as the company’s claim. Nor did we find any record of NUX changing hands since its debut: in the sources we checked it has always been Cherub’s brand, and in the United States it is supported by Cherub’s own office in California.

For a design guide, NUX shows how a parent company can run a guitar brand beside others under a separate name and look — Cherub for tuners and metronomes, NUX for guitar electronics — and tie it to a clear promise of features for the money. Compare Line 6, the Californian modelling pioneer, and Positive Grid, whose app-driven Spark amplifiers sell into the same practice-amp market as the Mighty range. For this guide we use graphite, red and pale grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep NUX’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.