“It’s like a $1500 piece of outboard gear in a pedal” – see Earthquaker Devices' Afterneath Retrospective film and special editions revealed

What a time to be alive as an effects pedal hoarder! Every week there's something new tempting us into an overdraft. But amongst the vast swathes of pedals that have emerged in the last decade from big brands and one-man bands, there's a few that absolutely deserve recognition as modern classics. And the Earthquaker Devices Afterneath Enhanced Otherworldly Reverberator is right up there.

So much so it now has a whole movie dedicated to it. 

The Akron pedal maker calls its 2014 unit the "little pedal with the big, cavernous sound." An inspiring, boldly adventurous reverb pedal with a made-up word as its name that arguably inspired a whole niche market of ambient pedals, it inspired Tool engineer 'Evil' Joe Barresi to liken it to "a $1500 piece of outboard gear in a pedal." And Joe knows his outboard gear.

EarthQuaker Devices

(Image credit: EarthQuaker Devices)

The new Retrospective film above takes you from the “happy accident” EQD founder and lead designer Jamie Stillman discovered while experimenting with the code that would become th Afterneath algorithm. The makers also talk to several longtime EQD employees, player Afterneath fans including Nels Kline, Robin Finck and Yvette Young, as well as artist Matt Horak whose 'Wizard in a Cave' graphic adorns the pedal.

EQD is also releasing a special limited edition colourway of both the Afterneath v3 pedal and Afterneath Eurorack module featuring black print on a raw silver enclosure. 

More info at EarthQuaker Devices

EarthQuaker Devices' Jamie Stillman interview: “The way I voice the pedals is just how I like a guitar to sound”

Rob Laing
Guitars Editor, MusicRadar

I'm the Guitars Editor for MusicRadar, handling news, reviews, features, tuition, advice for the strings side of the site and everything in between. Before MusicRadar I worked on guitar magazines for 15 years, including Editor of Total Guitar in the UK. When I'm not rejigging pedalboards I'm usually thinking about rejigging pedalboards.