The sound of reverb has shaped electric guitar tone from the beginning. Whether a product of a cavernous, reflective studio, a tank, or a pedal, it can make you feel like you’re wrapped in a warm blanket or lost in an underground cave of crickets. EarthQuaker’s Afterneath, dubbed an “otherworldly reverberation machine,” is among the latest creations to emerge the Akron, Ohio-based shop. And like most of EarthQuaker’s stomps, the Afterneath is a forward-thinking design that will deliver the unexpected.
Ghost In the Machine
Typical of EarthQuaker, the pedal is housed in a very rugged enclosure with a busy but comfortably spaced, group of six controls. Right out of the box, the knob that intrigued me the most was the drag control. This knob brings out the stuttering delayed signal that’s buried deep inside. Set the drag to 10 o’clock and a very rhythmic, but not overpowering, delay appears in the mix.
It’s not strong and pulsing enough for Albert Lee-style runs, but it gives droning shoegaze riffs rhythmic punch. As you turn the knob clockwise the delay fades away and an ethereal, lush reverb replaces the stuttering repeats. Moving the knob while a spacey suspended chord rings creates a very cool warping sound that has elements of a revving car engine or a vinyl record slowly rotating to a stop.
Ratings
Pros:
Able to cover extremely spacious and interesting sounds. Very responsive to pick dynamics.
Cons:
No expression pedal function.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$225
EarthQuaker Devices Afterneath
earthquakerdevices.com
Length and dampen control the decay time and tone, respectively. You may need to turn up the dampen control up to about 3 o’clock in order to cut through in louder band situations. And given all the hidden (and not so hidden) nuggets, artifacts and overtones that live within the reverb signal, I tended to keep the length control a bit higher than I would with a normal reverb—giving the Afterneath more room to bloom and reveal its surprises.
The reflect control can be subtle at times and wildly out of control at others. At medium settings, the result is a beautiful ambient wash that hints at the more unwieldy noises lurking at the edges. At 9 o’clock the oscillation gets stronger, and with the control maxed a deluge of sound floods the output. Both the reflect and drag controls beg for expression pedal functionality, though, and it’s tantalizing to imagine how much more effective these controls could be with the extra control.
The subtlest control is the diffuse knob. By adjusting the spread of the reverb it gives the output a bit more edge to it without changing the EQ. On the upper end of the spectrum it gave the already spacious sounding reverb an almost three-dimensional. Think of this as the difference between bouncing sound around a room with no corners and one with plenty of pointy surfaces. I tended to keep this knob and adjusted depending on how much decay I had dialed in.
The Verdict
The Afterneath rewards creative approaches to what a reverb pedal can do. The controls are very interactive and beg you to explore the far-reaching extremes that other reverb pedals simply can’t muster. That said, it’s capable of subtle textures, and while it’s probably not the reverb for someone that wants to replace their old-school tank reverb, if you want to option to take your reverb beyond, the Afterneath is hard to beat.
Revv G3 Purple Channel Preamp/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal - Anniversary Edition
The Revv G3 revolutionized high gain pedals in 2018 with its tube-like response & tight, clear high gain tones. Suddenly the same boutique tones used by metal artists & producers worldwide were available to anyone in a compact pedal. Now the G3 returns with a new V2 circuit revision that raises the bar again.
If 3 Were 6
With six times the controls found on the 1 and 2 versions (if you discount the original’s on/off slider switch,) the LPB-3’s control complement offers pre-gain, boost, mid freq, bass, treble, and mid knobs, with a center detent on the latter three so you can find the midpoint easily. A mini-toggle labeled “max” selects between 20 dB and 33 dB of maximum gain, and another labeled “Q” flips the resonance of the mid EQ between high and low. Obviously, this represents a significant expansion of the LPB’s capabilities.
More than just a booster with a passive tone, the LPB-3 boasts a genuine active EQ stage plus parametric midrange section, comprising the two knobs with shaded legends, mid freq and mid level. The gain stages have also been reimagined to include a pre-gain stage before the EQ, which enables up to 20 dB of input gain. The boost stage that follows the EQ is essentially a level control with gain to allow for up to 33 dB of gain through the LPB-3 when the “max” mini toggle is set to 33dB
A slider switch accessible inside the pedal selects between buffered or true bypass for the hard-latch footswitch. An AC adapter is included, which supplies 200mA of DC at 9.6 volts to the center-negative power input, and EHX specifies that nothing supplying less than 120mA or more than 12 volts should be used. There’s no space for an internal battery.
Power-Boosted
The LPB-3 reveals boatloads of range that betters many linear boosts on the market. There’s lots of tone-shaping power here. Uncolored boost is available when you want it, and the preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.
“The preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.”
I found the two mid controls work best when used judiciously, and my guitars and amps preferred subtle changes pretty close to the midpoint on each. However, there are still tremendous variations in your mid boost (or scoop, for that matter) within just 15 or 20 percent range in either direction from the center detent. Pushing the boost and pre-gain too far, particularly with the 33 dB setting engaged, can lead to some harsh sounds, but they are easy to avoid and might even be desirable for some users that like to work at more creative extremes.
The Verdict
The new LPB-3 has much, much more range than its predecessors, providing flexible preamp, boost, and overdrive sounds that can be reshaped in significant ways via the powerful EQ. It gives precise tone-tuning flexibility to sticklers that like to match a guitar and amp to a song in a very precise way, but also opens up more radical paths for experimentalists. That it does all this at a $129 price is beyond reasonable.
Electro-Harmonix Lpb-3 Linear Power Booster & Eq Effect Pedal Silver And Blue
