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I’m not sure anyone was really asking for an AI guitar pedal. But it was inevitable that someone would build one. One of the first to take the plunge is Polyend, a well-respected music gear maker with a reputation for building niche, idiosyncratic devices. The company has built grooveboxes around old-school trackers and a multi-effect pedal that you can step sequence. So there was at least some hope that if anyone could do an AI effect pedal right, it would be Polyend.

Polyend’s Endless is a $299 programmable guitar pedal running an ARM processor. It’s paired with Playground, a number of interconnected AI agents that turn any text prompt into a functioning guitar effect. If you have an idea, you don’t have to hope that someone’s already built that pedal; you can simply prompt it. Maybe there’s a specific combination of effects that you’ve always wanted, but no company sells it because there’s no demand for a combination ring modulator / auto-wah. I’m not convinced this is what guitarists are yearning for, but it’s a well-intentioned first attempt to marry an effect pedal to an LLM.

Dozens of free effectsUser-friendly AI PlaygroundReasonably pricedHonest effort at “ethical” AI

Iterating and testing effects takes timeFirmware quirksOther custom effects pedals offer more control

To be clear, the AI isn’t actually in the pedal. Instead, Polyend trained a custom LLM to code effects you can then load onto the pedal. You can also build effects yourself in C++, but most people will either download existing free Plates (as Polyend calls the effects) from the community site or prompt them in Playground. You can also pay $20 for a physical faceplate to pair with a downloaded effect.