The 7 best and the 7 worst EarthQuaker Devices pedals.
Akron's most prolific boutique builder. Every catalog has a few unrepeatable masterpieces and a few pedals that needed another round of revisions. EQD has both.
EarthQuaker is the rare boutique brand that prints its identity into every pedal. Hand-drawn graphics. Weird names. Distinctly characterful circuits. It's the closest thing the modern pedal market has to a record label — you can almost hear which builder is on which release.
That said: a label this prolific is going to have B-sides. The pedals where the EQD personality lands hard end up canonical (Avalanche Run, Plumes, Westwood). The pedals where the personality is the only thing happening end up traded second-hand inside a year. Here's the honest split.
Column · The best
The 7 that earn their slot.
EarthQuaker Devices · Avalanche Run V2
The reverb-delay combo that turned a category into a sound.
Avalanche Run is a stereo reverb-delay with a shoegaze-leaning algorithm and a swell function that's the secret sauce. The pedal isn't just two effects in series — it's a single ambient instrument that EQD designed end-to-end. Every modern reverb-delay combo is, on some level, trying to be an Avalanche Run. The V2 added MIDI and ratio control without losing the original character.
EarthQuaker Devices · Plumes
The best Tube Screamer variant under $200.
Plumes is a three-mode TS-style pedal: low-gain (more headroom, cleanish boost), mid-gain (the classic TS sound), and a fat-fuzzy high-gain (further from a TS than the others). All three modes are usable. The mid-gain mode is competitive with a Bonsai's TS9 setting at half the price. Plumes is the EQD equivalent of an everyman OD — every player I know who owns one keeps it.
EarthQuaker Devices · Westwood
The transparent OD with a Baxandall EQ that actually sweeps right.
Westwood is what every transparent overdrive wishes it were — clean at low gain, full-bodied at high gain, with a treble and bass control that lets you shape the response in a way TS-style pedals fundamentally cannot. The Bluesbreaker DNA is unmistakable; the Baxandall EQ is the elevator on top. The first OD I'd buy a stranger who asked for a 'better Tube Screamer'.
EarthQuaker Devices · Disaster Transport SR
A modulated delay that paints with feedback.
Disaster Transport SR is two parallel delays with independent modulation, taps, and feedback paths. The pedal is the closest thing to a Roland RE-201 with proper sync support. The 'spin' control turns delay repeats into pitched glissandos. Used carefully it's a delay; used wildly it's an instrument. EQD discontinued it; the second-hand market has appropriately priced it as a cult.
3 rebuttals filed
EarthQuaker Devices · Hizumitas
Shigeo Naka's Sustainar fuzz, faithfully resurrected.
Hizumitas is EQD's clone of Shigeo Naka's Sustainar — a Japanese cult fuzz from the early 70s. The original is a $3000 collector item. The Hizumitas is $199 and it nails the sound — sustaining, woody, with a saturated bloom on chords that most fuzzes flatten. Buy this instead of a Big Muff. Tell your friends.
2 rebuttals filed
EarthQuaker Devices · The Warden
An optical compressor that doesn't squash the life out of the signal.
The Warden is the rare compressor that adds presence without removing dynamics. Six controls — including separate attack/release and a tone shaping circuit — make it as flexible as a studio-style outboard. Best paired with a clean amp where the squish stays subtle; on its own it works as a sustain pedal for solos. Underrated.
EarthQuaker Devices · Astral Destiny
An octave reverb that turns chords into chorales.
Astral Destiny is a polyphonic shimmer reverb in the lineage of Strymon's BigSky cloud algorithm, but with EQD's signature lean — wilder, weirder, less polished. The 'sub' mode subverts the usual shimmer formula by adding an octave below the dry signal. For non-shoegaze players this is the rare shimmer pedal worth owning. For shoegaze players it's the canonical answer.
Column · The worst
The 7 I'd sell first.
EarthQuaker Devices · Special Cranker
A mid-gain OD that doesn't outshine a $50 Boss SD-1.
Special Cranker is an iteration on the Speaker Cranker, with more gain and a more compressed feel. The pedal is competent, fine, forgettable. EQD's strength is personality and the Special Cranker is the EQD pedal with the least of it. At $179 the comparison set is brutal — a Boss SD-1 plus a Klone clone plus dinner.
EarthQuaker Devices · Talons
A high-gain OD that the Friedman BE-OD already does better.
Talons is EQD's Marshall-stack-in-a-box. The Friedman BE-OD does the same idea with more refinement at not-quite-the-same price. Talons is fine. 'Fine' is a hard pitch when the BE-OD is $20 more and the JHS AT+ is in the same room. The Talons pedal makes sense if you already own everything else EQD makes; outside that context, it's a B-side.
EarthQuaker Devices · Bit Commander V2
An analog octave-synth that costs more than software does.
Bit Commander is a sub-octave synth pedal — square wave, sub-octave generator, blended dry. The sound is distinctive. The use case is narrow — bass tone for a guitar that wants to be a bass for one song an hour. At $229 the math is harder than the math on a polyphonic synth plug-in that costs $50.
EarthQuaker Devices · Pyramids
A flanger overshadowed by an MXR M117R at a quarter the price.
Pyramids is a stereo flanger with five algorithms, presets, and tap tempo. The pedal sounds good. The category — flanger — is one where the MXR M117R is the canonical answer at a quarter of the Pyramids' price. Stereo doesn't save the day for a flanger; flanger character does, and Pyramids' character is 'flanger pedal'.
EarthQuaker Devices · Sea Machine V3
A chorus that fights the Boss CE-2W without winning.
Sea Machine is EQD's flagship chorus — six knobs of modulation parameters, vintage-feeling under the fingers. The CE-2W is a Waza Craft Boss pedal that does the same job at $179 with a faithful CE-1 mode included. Sea Machine V3 is $229. Chorus is a hard category for premium pricing; the CE-2W is the right answer here, even for the EQD-loyal.
EarthQuaker Devices · Erupter
A single-knob fuzz that demands the right amp to make sense.
Erupter is a Fuzz Face homage with one knob and a small footprint. The pedal is reverent to a fault — it sounds like a Fuzz Face into the wrong amp. Erupter's one-knob simplicity is a feature in marketing, a limitation in practice. If you want a Fuzz Face, a Dunlop reissue is $99 with three knobs and the same circuit lineage.
EarthQuaker Devices · Levitation
A reverb eclipsed by EQD's own Avalanche Run + Astral Destiny.
Levitation is a hall-reverb-with-mod pedal that EQD positioned between the Avalanche Run and the Astral Destiny. The problem is that the pedals on either side of it are EQD's strongest reverbs. Levitation is a fine middle entry that doesn't quite have its own reason to exist in the EQD reverb lineup.
EarthQuaker is the catalog where character is the design. The best column is them at the top of their game. The worst column is them being a normal pedal company. — Johnny
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