A clever triple-delay offers infinite avenues to echo bliss.
Mysterious, hazy, and uncommon echo colors. A cool break from the same-old-delay blues. Streamlined design.
Clock noise could turn off some users. Limited numbers available—so far.
$225
Death By Audio Exploding Head
deathbyaudio.com
If you don’t follow the many-splendored musical world of noisy psychedelia, you might be surprised to know that Oliver Ackermann, co-founder of the sometimes psychotic but often thrilling stompbox concern Death By Audio, also helms the equally psychotic and thrilling band A Place to Bury Strangers. If you’ve seen APTBS live, you’ll understand much about what makes Death By Audio pedals unconventional. APTBS is generally a sensory overload experience. They are loud, sonically confrontational, and capable of oscillating between chaos and dark beauty. Last year marked the 13th anniversary of the band’s breakthrough LP, Exploding Head, and,in typically perverse fashion, Ackermann elected to celebrate that most unlucky of anniversaries with a triple delay named in the LP’s honor.
In very relative terms, the Exploding Head seems normal compared to many DBA pedals. It’s three identical delays run in series. Simple, right? But that simplicity belies great range and a deep capacity for weirdness and subtlety. Exploding Head creates washy reverbs, percussive multi-head delay effects, and mutant delays that chatter like rogue tremolos. It can feel quirky and tricky to handle as you get to know it’s weird ways. But mastering just a few simple tricks makes the Exploding Head an engaging, painterly, and even practical effect.
Honed To Honor the Head
Delays arranged in series are one of the coolest ways to mangle and massage sound and time. I often prefer the texture and complexity of two simple delays to traditional delay-and-reverb setups because fewer overtones and harmonics go missing in the wash. In fact, a two-delay setup can actually enhance certain overtones as echoes intertwine and collide. The Exploding Head expands on this concept and enables deep exploration of those interrelationships.
The Exploding Head is effectively an evolution of DBA’s own extinct and much-coveted Ghost Delay—an effect instrumental in creating the blown out, industrial, Jesus and Mary Chain-meets-Isn’t Anything haze of Exploding Head. The Ghost Delay utilized three cascading delays as well, but featured preset wet/dry blends instead of the three independent blend controls on the Exploding Head. That design change, however, makes a big difference.
”The bright, rhythmic underpinning of the echoes makes individual delay lines more distinct as you add in others.“
Controls are superficially simple. There are delay time, feedback, and wet/dry blend knobs, just as you’d see on any delay. But like an analog synthesizer, the interactivity between the three cascading sets of controls makes it hard to replicate sounds precisely, and there are no presets or digital control. Practice and tuning your ear to the pedal’s quirks and tendencies helps you engineer roughly identical setups pretty readily. Still, I was inclined to snap pictures of settings that made my favorite sounds—just in case.
Exploding Head’s infinity switch is another treat that distinguishes it from the Ghost Delay. Engaging it feeds the output from the third delay in the sequence (red) into the first (black), which enables momentary self-oscillation effects. The addition of this option—on top of a delay array that already lives happily at the edge of feedback and creates blurry washes of polyrhythms—makes the Exploding Head a delightful chaos engine if you choose to take it there.
Willows and Hurricanes
The Exploding Head’s chaotic side is a big part of the pedal’s personality. But it can be civilized and subdued, too. It happily generates trad delay textures. And when you get a feel for how Exploding Head works as an organism, you’ll find a varied lot of echo colors that are as familiar as they are freaked out.
While digital, the basic tonality of a single Exploding Head delay line is not worlds apart from a bright analog echo. It’s a touch trebly. There is also perceptible clock noise at many settings, just like an analog unit. This can be jarring at first if you like your delay lush and dreamy, but the bright, rhythmic underpinning of the echoes make individual delay lines more distinct as you add in others, which also has a thickening and darkening effect that blunts the clock noise.
A good place to start exploration of the Exploding Head is to turn all the blend controls to completely dry settings, set the time and feedback controls to near-identical levels (each at high noon is a good place to start,) and then advance the blend of the first delay until it sounds right. As you slowly, incrementally elevate the blend levels of the other delays and shift the other parameters, you’ll hear the signal get thicker and wider. And, depending on your time and blend settings, the pedal will generate wild multi-head patterns or subtler variations that have the quality of tremolo or chorusing.
Like any delay, you can use short delay times, dry blends, and long feedback levels to approximate reverb textures. These are a great addition to composite delay images in any position. But I found that situating reverb-like textures in the middle position enables the most ambient colors. The middle delay can also be critical in creating polyrhythmic echoes. Mating a delay-forward blend setting to an odd subdivision of the first delay generates complex percolating repeats that vary in volume. It sounds a little like a multi-head delay arranged via William Burroughs cut-up method—disorienting but also a source of sound poetry that shifts your perspective dramatically.
The Verdict
It seems preposterous to try to assign ratings to the Exploding Head. Some players will find great utility in the pedal, readily encounter beauty in theintermingled echoes, and get blissfully lost exploring the interactive controls. Other players will be baffled. Given that, a prospective customer should be prepared to round up or down—particularly where the tone and ease of use scores are concerned.
One thing all users will agree on, though, is that the Exploding Head sounds colossal. And with a loud amplifier, it sounds wonderfully alive. In the absence of presets, you’ll have to be pretty fearless to make changes to the controls on the fly. But perhaps a chain of Exploding Heads is the answer? That would be an expensive proposition. But it might actually result in few exploding heads, too.
Fuzz, octave, and odd intervals co-mingle and clash with bizarre, mangled, musical, pretty, and often shockingly unpredictable results.
Scores of tones that span the musical and the ridiculous. Fun and ferocious fuzz. Octave can be used independently. Often intuitive in spite of its complexity. Tracks pitch shifts without glitches
Easy to get lost in the weeds if you don’t do your homework.
$249
Keeley Octa Psi
robertkeeley.com
I’d venture that most guitarists instinctively regard fuzz as a brutish, brainless effect (which is funny given how much energy in our community is dedicated to dissecting the nuances and merits of different fuzz types). Keeley’s Octa Psi, however, transcends mere troglodyte status by combining a fundamentally nasty fuzz voice in three switchable variations, and a web of octave and interval tones that transform the Octa Psi into a synthesizer capable of textures ranging from soaring to demented to downright evil.
Crush of the Space Invader
It’s no mistake that the little figure adorning the face of the Octa Psi looks like a sinister cross between a Space Invader and a Cylon. The Octa Psi often evokes the 8-bit, synthy sounds of ’80s arcade games. But the fact that the Octa Psi’s sounds range to cartoonish extremes shouldn’t suggest to a potential user that the Octa Psi is anything less than musical. And the smart, if complex, control layout ensures you can span both extremes with ease.
The Octa Psi is effectively made up of an analog fuzz and a digital octave section. The knobs on the fuzz side are no-brainer stuff: fuzz, master level, and tone. The 3-position toggle, however, expands the potential of those three knobs exponentially. In each mode the fuzz has a cool, snorkel-y, almost filtered essence, with hints of cocked-wah snarl. The punch voice features a bass-heavy profile that’s cloaked in pea-soup fog at the extreme treble-cut/bass-boost ends of the tone control’s range, but crushes like a Tony Iommi-operated wrecking ball in the middle section. The psi mode is even thicker and doomier, though not just heavier in the bass. There’s also more midrange presence that lends extra definition and makes the fuzz feel more explosive under the fingers. The scoop setting, in very relative terms, sounds almost thin compared to the other two. But no voice is exactly short on power here, so perhaps it’s best to call it focused. Each of these modes, which already have heaps of tonal range thanks to the versatile tone knob, can be altered dramatically by the octave section.
Getting a feel for the octave options definitely takes practice. And though intuitive exploration of the possible combinations is rewarding, it’s essential that you do your homework if you want to maximize the pedal’s potential and avoid musical muddles. The Octa Psi’s complexity is largely down to the fact that it gives you much more than just a few octaves up or a few octaves down to work with. First, you can blend in the amount of octave signal. Then there are eight pitch modes available via the rotary switch. Each of these modes shifts in character, depending on whether you select the octave up, octave down, or dual octave setting with the toggle switch. But you can also reshape the tone by pressing and rotating the blend switch, which, depending on where you’ve set the other octave controls, will add octave intervals, like sharp ninths, stacked fourths, and major and minor voicings. Additionally, each of the preset modes will save your settings in dual mode—even after you unplug.
Controlled Chaos
There is another reason the video game correlation implicit in the Octa Psi logo is appropriate: At times, using it can feel like the sky above your moon base is raining laser bombs and you’re being menaced by alien aircraft from all sides. It can be really chaotic, particularly if you’re finding your way by ear rather than consulting the extensive pitch matrix in the manual. Chords are sometimes rendered into atonal glop, and, like any octave fuzz, it’s often easiest to stick with single-note lines.
But for all the mayhem Octa Psi can unleash, finding a clear musical path can be easy and feel like striking gold. Plus, the pedal is, in its way, quite forgiving. It tracks pitch changes well, and rarely collapses on itself—even when executing whole step bends colored by dissonant intervals. You can also use the octave without the fuzz, which yields conventional sounds like pretty faux-12-string, watery chorus tones, and subtle harmonies for clean leads.
The Verdict
The Octa Psi’s power and tonal vocabulary is impressive. You’ll have to be brave or have a very good memory to move between radically different settings on a dimly lit stage. And we didn’t even mention the wealth of “advanced” settings that include volume tilt, pitch ramping, effect order shifts, and more. But the bounty of smooth-to-sick sounds here means the Octa Psi could be a difference-maker in a studio or recording environment when you’re reaching for tone colors and moods that break norms. And though the Octa-Psi could, on the surface, seem nichey, it’s fun to think about the many musical styles and applications where its sounds could find a home—from doomy Sabbathoid chug, to film scores, to glitchy hip-hop hooks, to video-game sound design.
D'Addario's new Bridge Pin Puller and Tour-Grade Peg Winder are designed to make string changes a breeze.
The Bridge Pin Puller is designed to be the fastest, easiest, and safest way to remove bridge pins from an acoustic guitar. Small enough to fit in your pocket, the standalone bridge pin puller is a great way for acoustic players to avoid fumbling with bridge pins during string changes and maintenance. The ergonomic design comfortably fits in hand but won’t place extra pressure on the instrument or bridge during use. Best of all, the clamp design encloses the pin, keeping it secure inside the puller until it’s released.
The Tour-Grade Peg Winder offers next-level performance for luthiers, techs, or anyone who wants to change strings with maximum speed and ease. The multi-tool design brings together a ball bearing, non-damaging socket for smoother winding, molded grips, and a spring-loaded bridge pin puller, delivering an all-in-one option to handle most standard string changes.
From the straight-forward simplicity of the Bridge Pin Puller to the all-around convenienceof the Tour-Grade Peg Winder, D’Addario has your string changes covered.
For more information, please visit daddario.com.
On this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast, we’re talking about our favorite Lukather tracks, from his best rhythm parts to his most rippin’ solos. And even though he spends most of his playing time with the biggest names, we’ve managed to call up a few deep cuts.
Steve Lukather is one of the most documented guitarists in the hit-making biz. He grew up as an L.A. teen with a crew of fellow musicians who would go on to make their livings at the top of the session scene. By the time Lukather and his pals formed Toto, they were already experienced chart-toppers. The band went on to success with hits including the rockin’ “Hold the Line,” breezy, bouncing “Rosanna,” and the timeless “Africa.”
As a session player, Lukather’s reign in the ’70s and ‘80s extended from Olivia Newton-John to Herbie Hancock to Michael Jackson. And alongside Michael McDonald—whose “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near)” included Lukather’s distinctive rhythm riffage—Daryl Hall and John Oates, Kenny Loggins, Peter Cetera, and Christopher Cross (among many others) he may have earned the title of yacht rock’s number one guitar player.
On this episode of the 100 Guitarists podcast, we’re talking about our favorite Lukather tracks, from his best rhythm parts to his most rippin’ solos. And even though he spends most of his playing time with the biggest names, we’ve managed to call up a few deep cuts.
This episode is sponsored by EMG Pickups.
Use code EMG100 for 15% off at checkout!
Learn more: emgpickups.com
Nashville session and stage MVPs craft an aural wonderland with their genre-defying instrumental album, In Stereo.
Working from a shared language of elegance and grit, Nashville guitar domos Tom Bukovac and Guthrie Trapp have crafted In Stereo, an album that celebrates the transcendent power of instrumental music—its ability to transport listeners and to convey complex emotions without words.
In Stereo also honors Trapp and Bukovac’s friendship, which ignited when Trapp and Bukovac met over a decade ago at Nashville’s 12 South Taproom eatery and club—an after-hours musician’s hangout at the time. They also sometimes played casually at Bukovac’s now-gone used instrument shop, but when they’re onstage today—say at Trapp’s Monday night residency at Nashville’s Underdog, or at a special event like Billy Gibbons’ BMI Troubadour Award ceremony last year—their chemistry is obvious and combustible.
“Guthrie is very unpredictable, but for some reason our two styles seem to mix well.”—Tom Bukovac
“It’s like dancing with somebody,” Bukovac says about their creative partnership. “It is very easy and complementary. Guthrie is very unpredictable, but for some reason our two styles seem to mix well, although we play very differently.”
As Pepé Le Pew probably said, “Vive la différence.” While they’re both important figures in Nashville’s guitar culture as badass, in-demand session and live players, Trapp also points out that the foundation of their respective careers is on opposite swings of that pendulum. Bukovac’s reputation was built on his studio work. Besides his touring history, he’s played on over 1,200 albums including recordings by the Black Keys, Glen Campbell, Keith Urban, Stevie Nicks, Bob Seger, and Hermanos Gutiérrez. And Trapp considers himself mostly a stage guitarist. He emerged as a member of the Don Kelly Band, which has been a Lower Broadway proving ground for a host of Nashville 6-string hotshots, including Brent Mason, Johnny Hiland, and Redd Volkaert. In recent years, you may have seen him on the road with John Oates. It’s also possible you’ve heard Trapp on recordings by Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, and Roseanne Cash, among others.But back to In Stereo. “This record is truly for the love of music and not giving a shit what anybody else is going to think about it,” relates Trapp, as he, Bukovac, and I sit and talk, and they noodle unplugged on a Danocaster and an ES-355, respectively, in the warm, instrument-filled surroundings of the Cabin Studio in East Nashville. The album was recorded there and at another studio, simply called the Studio, with Brandon Bell engineering.
“When we started working on the album, it was very loose,” explains Bukovac. “I never wanted to bring in anything that was complete because the key is collaboration. So, I knew better than to come in with a complete song. And Guthrie didn’t do that either. We would just come in with a riff for an idea and then let the other guy finish it—and that’s the best way to do it.”
“It’s got enough humanity—real playing—mixed with the cinematic side of it.”—Tom BukovacAll of which helped make In Stereo’s 11 compositions seamless and diverse. The album opens with a minute-long ambient piece called “Where’s the Bluegrass Band,” which blends acoustic and electric guitars, feedback, and keyboards with generous delay and reverb—telegraphing that listeners should expect the unexpected. Of course, if you’ve been following their careers, including their estimable YouTube presence, you’re already expecting that, too. So, a soulful composition like “The Black Cloud,” which builds from a Beatles-esque melody to a muscular and emotive power ballad of sorts, comes as no surprise. “Desert Man” is more of a mindblower, with its dark-shaded tones and haunting melodies. “Cascade Park” is an unpredictable journey that begins with delay-drenched piano and leads to Trapp’s acoustic guitar, which evolves from contemplative melody to feral soloing. And “Bad Cat Serenade” and “Transition Logo Blues” balance the worlds of country and jazz fusion. Overall, the music is timeless, emotional, and exploratory, creating its own world, much as Ennio Morricone did with his classic film soundtracks.
Tom Bukovac's Gear for In Stereo
Tom Bukovac and his ’58 Les Paul sunburst—one of just a handful of guitars he used to record In Stereo.
Guitars
- 1958 Gibson Les Paul ’Burst
- 1962 Stratocaster
- Harmony acoustic rebuilt by James Burkette
- Jeff Senn Strat
Synth
- Roland XP-30
Amp
- Black-panel Fender Princeton
Effects
- Nobels ODR-1
- Strymon Brigadier dBucket Delay
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL’s (.010–.046)
- Fender Mediums
“It’s a lot to ask somebody to sit and listen to an instrumental record,” Bukovac offers, “so I was just trying to make sure—and I know Guthrie did the same—it doesn’t get boring. When I finally sat and listened to this thing in its entirety, which was many months after we actually recorded, I had forgotten what we’d even done. I was overwhelmed. I love that I never got bored. It moves along and has moments where it gets into sort of a trance, in a good way, but it never stays there too long. It’s got enough humanity—real playing—mixed with the cinematic side of it.”
Trapp picks up the thread: “If you’re in Nashville for a long time and you’re paying attention at all, you understand this is a song town. No matter how you slice it, it’s all about the vocal and the lyric and the song. So, it doesn’t matter if you’re making an avant-garde instrumental guitar record. That influence is pounded in your brain—how important it is to trim the fat and get down to the song. A song is a song. It doesn't matter if it’s instrumental or not. It’s a ‘Don’t get bogged down and get to the chorus’ kind of thing.”
“A song is a song. It doesn’t matter if it’s instrumental or not. It’s a ‘Don’t get bogged down and get to the chorus’ kind of thing.”—Guthrie Trapp
Which alludes to the sense of movement in all these compositions. “It’s very important that every section of a song delivers every transition,” Bukovac adds. “When you go into a new room, when you open that door, it’s got to be right. That’s what I think about records. And there’s a lot of shifting on this record. We go from one field to another, and were very concerned about making sure that each transition delivers.”
Guthrie Trapp's Gear for In Stereo
Guthrie Trapp recording with his Danocaster Single Cut, made by Nashville’s Dan Strain.
Guitar
- Dan Strain Danocaster Single Cut
Amps
- Kendrick The Rig 1x12 combo
- Black-panel Fender Princeton
Effects
- Strymon Brigadier dBucket Delay
- Strymon Lex
- Nobels ODR-1
- Xotic RC Booster
- T-Rex Tremster
- Boss TU Tuner
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL’s (.010–.046)
- Medium celluloid
That kind of thoughtful development—the set up and delivery of various compositional sections in songs—isn’t exactly a lost art, but it’s certainly rarer than in earlier decades. Listen to Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road to hear how Davey Johnstone sets up verses, choruses, and bridges—or anything by David Gilmour—for reference. It’s also a goal best accomplished with a team of exceptional players, and, of course, Trapp and Bukovac enlisted some of Music City’s finest. The cast includes steel-guitar legend Paul Franklin, keyboardist Tim Lauer, bassists Steve Mackey and Jacob Lowery, and drummers Jordan Perlson and Lester Estelle.
“Don’t tell my mom, because of course we all want to make a living, but playing music that has integrity is at the top for me.”—Guthrie Trapp
“We recorded the basics—really, most of the tracks—live on the floor,” says Trapp.
“We kept a lot of the original throw-down/go-down solos,” Bukovac adds. “There were very few fixes and overdubs. One of the best moves we made was letting an outside person objectively sequence it, because you can get a little bit too inside your own thing. It’s like … if you’ve ever done a photo shoot, if you let somebody else choose the photo, it’s never going to be the one you’d choose, and it’s probably a better choice.” That task fell to bassist and singer Nick Govrik.
The terrain Bukovac and Trapp cover on their first album together is expansive and transporting—and packed with impressive melodies and guitar sounds.
The shipment of In Stereo’s vinyl arrived shortly before Trapp, Bukovac, and I talked, and while Bukovac released his first solo album, Plexi Soul, in 2021, and Trapp put out his releases Pick Peace and Life After Dark in 2012 and 2018, respectively, they seemed as excited to listen to it as teenagers in a garage band unveiling their debut single. That’s because, despite their standing and successes, playing guitar and making music is truly in their blood. What they play is a genuine expression of who they are, ripped from their DNA and presented to the world.
“Don’t tell my mom this, because of course we all want to make a living, but playing music that has integrity is at the top for me,” says Trapp. “These days, with AI and people worried or insecure about where the music business is going, and all these Instagram players who just are fixing everything with Pro Tools so they sound like they’re in a studio, I don’t worry because we’re not selling bullshit. We have 35 years of real experience between us, and when we do social media, we’re just reaching for a cell phone and posting it. It’s organic. That, to me, is a big difference. At the end of the day, I can sleep well knowing that I have earned the respect of the people that I respect the most. It’s just authentic music made for the very reason we got into this in the first place. We love it.”
YouTube It
Guthrie Trapp and Tom Bukovac practice their live chemistry together at Trapp’s standing Monday night gig at Nashville’s guitar-centric Underdog.