We've all been there. You see that bubblegum pink guitar pedal from across the room – but man, what does it do?
Such is with all creative pursuits, sometimes your next idea just won't land. Too soon, too different, too "out there" altogether... whatever it is, it's an outcome all but unavoidable making creative work.
We sat down with Jamie Stillman and Julie Robbins of EarthQuaker Devices to talk all about their work, vintage chorus effects, DIY pedal projects, Andy from ProGuitarShop.com, and how often it's about the journey rather than the destination.
Russo Music: How do you feel about some EarthQuaker Devices pedals being misunderstood?
Stillman: How do I feel about it? I kind of expect it. I wish it wasn't the case. I do find, a lot of times, it's always the same pedals. It's the Rainbow Machine, it's the Data Corrupter, it was Arpanoid, which turned out to be a lost cause, trying to explain that one... (laughs) Afterneath to some degree, but simultaneously, these are also some of our most popular pedals. So, I feel like the fact that they're kind of hard to figure out and that they do a lot of different things is also very intriguing for people. Blessing and a curse, I guess?
RM: Do you guys have an EQD pedal that you seem to like particularly more than other people might?
Robbins: I'd say all the pedals that are in our Platform Series, like the Ledges and Silos and Spatial Delivery... Time Shadows, Aurelius. I feel like those are not as really well-received as we thought that they'd be or that they should be. They're really cool pedals that sound great, they have a lot of awesome functionality but are simple to use. Maybe they're a victim of being at wrong time to be introduced, something like that.
Stillman: Yeah, I mean, I would say the same thing. I think in the cases of those pedals, Aurelius in particular, chorus is not really an attractive product category. But also, chorus had a resurgence? Like coincidentally when the Aurelius came out, like five other chorus pedals came out within three weeks of it? That pedal has a bunch of hidden quirks with it where it turns into a vibrato pedal, it turns into a flanger, it does a really good rotary chorus for guitar.
RM: What was it about existing chorus pedals that inspired the Aurelius?
Stillman: For me, the whole thing, the whole inspiration for that, was the CE-1 and all of its quirks. You know, those are vintage pedals and every one of them is different. Mine, in particular, is really dirty and kind of sounds like a flanger, it doesn't really sound like a chorus. I really like that about it so I incorporated elements of that into the first two modes of Aurelius, but the third mode is the rotary setting. I'm a fan of it – the kind of Leslie speaker sound.
RM: You mentioned vintage Boss choruses, do you think it's that element of vintage dirtiness that modern choruses are missing out on?
Stillman: Yeah, I think a lot of times that sound that got people "against" chorus is just that pristine, '80s multi-effect processor, crystal-like chorus. Which has its place, there are a lot of people who really like that sound. There are some bands that I like that use it, but personally, it doesn't appeal to me. I like the dark, warm, meant to simulate a Leslie speaker or a twelve-string-type-tone, just the dark, warm side of that stuff.
RM: Is there anything you can recommend using the Bit Commander for outside its primary use case?
Stillman: It sounds really cool when people use it on bowed instruments, any kind of violin or cello, things like that. This goes for all of the pedals. They kind of take on a different life when you use a synthesizer, they can become completely different things. I feel like the Bit Commander is pretty cool with that. Also, the "rules" are: Use the neck pickup and play above the twelfth fret. That's gonna track the best, but also, it makes really cool, disgusting sounds when you don't follow those rules.
RM: What other EarthQuaker Devices pedals would you recommend the violinists of the world go out and try?
Robbins: I feel like all the really gnarly fuzzes sound so cool on orchestral instruments. I also feel the Grand Orbiter, a cool modulation, is really unexpected and awesome.
Stillman: All those, the Astral Destiny good for that too.
"It's kind of a very experimental design that maybe should only happen once... once is enough." - Jamie Stillman, on the EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine
RM: The lasting, sustained reverb, building pads and that kind of stuff?
Stillman: That's another pedal you could use it and be over the top and like, (disgusted sound) "This is cartoony garbage." But when used tastefully, it produces very cool, very symphonic sounds on its own. When you actually use symphonic instruments through it, it takes it up a level.
RM: How did Gary come to be?
Stillman: So, the long story is, Lee (Kiernan, of IDLES) had been using the (EarthQuaker Devices) Gray Channel for quite some time. He had been asking our artist rep at the time a bunch, "Hey, can you make me one that just has the features that I use?"
Eventually, it got back to me. They were playing in Cleveland, and I was like, "You know what? I'll make this thing for him," because it would be really easy to do and he had done some videos for us totally unprompted and I thought that was really nice. That was the first time we had seen them and within a minute of them starting, my brain was melted. I could not believe I had not seen this band before – so up my alley. We went back and talked to them after the show and he kind of pitched, "What would you think about making this? I've got a perfect name for it." He just had the right pause and just the right delivery of it. He was just like, "Gary." I was like, yeah. I'm sold.
After that, it was another year of talking about that. It shouldn't just be a clean boost, what else could it be? He had a pedal in mind, it was an older boutique pedal, when you turned it on, it made your guitar sound like garbage. That's what he really liked about it, but he wanted something maybe a little more controllable. The aspect he really liked is that it sounded like the guitar had a broken cable and it would cut out and come fading back in. That's not really the kind of stuff that I make, but was like, "Well, okay, I'll try."
The first attempt at it, I knew it wasn't all that great, but I sent it to him anyway, because I was already thinking about the next attempt, which was what the final product became. It's a pulse-width modulation fuzz, which there aren't a ton of those out there. Real nerds will know that there's an old DIY project that was piece of pulse-width modulation fuzz pedal for guitar.
I wanted to make something like that but that wasn't that DIY project, it was kind of more fully conceived, so what that ended up being was a pulse-width modulation fuzz where the pulse-width is controlled dynamically by pick attack. So the harder you hit the strings, when the "Yes!" control is up, the more narrow the pulse-width gets and then it sounds like the guitar disappears, and its coming back in, it's kind of crackling and buzzing, so that kind of did it.
RM: So, the pulse-width modulation was originally Lee's idea, in a way?
Stillman: Yeah, the concept of it. It wasn't, "I want a pulse-width modulation fuzz," he said he wants it to sound like his guitar breaks the harder he hits the strings. I kind of knew that would have that kind of effect to it, but it's also a little bit more interesting if you don't bring up the sensitivity for the envelope. If you leave it down in the low regions, it's a very vocal, super heavy fuzz that will naturally gate. If you're playing something really loud, you can mute the strings and it'll go quiet.
RM: Where did the concept for the Rainbow Machine come from?
Stillman: The Rainbow Machine, the processor that's in that is the FV-1, and it is designed specifically to make audio effects for guitars and PAs and things like that. It was pretty much brand-new back when I made the Rainbow Machine. The only product I could think of that it was being used in was the Electro-Harmonix Holy Stain (laughs), and it wasn't that widely known, but they had reached out to me and sent me some samples, and I was just messing around with it to see what it could do and I came across a thing that eventually morphed into the Rainbow Machine.
I thought it was so awesome and weird but so awful and unusable at the same time that I just let it sit on a breadboard. This is back when we were in the basement. When people would stop by, I would show them the thing and they'd be like, "Oh! That's awesome... and terrible, how is anybody going to use it?"
But eventually, I got it tweaked to a point where you could do a bunch of little things with this if you turn the controls a certain way. It could be a chorus, it could be a slapback delay, it can kind of sound like reverb, it can sound like pixie dust, I'll say there was nothing really like it in production.
We put it out and it was a very strong seller, especially for the size of company that we were then. I swear, thousands of people bought them and maybe for the first year, all of them would write us, "I must be the only person who bought this pedal!"
RM: In a 2011 review, Andy Martin – at the time "Andy from ProGuitarShop.com" – described the Rainbow Machine as a "warped, arpeggiating delay, harmonizer, and experimental noisemaker." Is there any other big-ticket descriptor you'd add to Andy's list?
Stillman: I'd say, "slapback delay," and then... it's almost like barber pole pitch-shifting where it continuously, smoothly shifts pitch up and just keeps going. Also, a really great automatic, double-tracking chorus. That's like, its best feature. It's chorus for people who hate chorus.
RM: That's also funny that you'd say that a thousand people emailed and said, "I must be the only one who bought it," when that ProGuitarShop review today has like, 800,000 views, so you guys did something right!
Stillman: Yeah, it's a polarizing pedal, but I feel like it's also a pedal everybody seems to know, whether they're a fan of EarthQuaker or not. They're like, "Oh, yeah. They make that Rainbow Machine..." So yeah, it's definitely a thing that got us on a lot of peoples' radar.
RM: On that note, it's safe to say that the Rainbow Machine is one of your most nontraditional designs, but at the same time, it's clearly one of your most enduring. Why do you think that contradiction is?
Stillman: There's things that fall into this, like a Tube Screamer. They kind of fall into that bucket of, everybody can safely make a version of a Tube Screamer and even if like, one thousand out of ten thousand sound exactly the same, it's still somehow okay to do.
Whereas, there's a couple of things like the Rainbow Machine where there's such a specific sound and it's both limiting and limitless at the same time in the stuff that it can do. It's not the kind of thing that a Boss or a Strymon are going to try to do their version of. There's just no other immediate competition for it, because in all honesty, I don't think anybody else would be like, "This is right to do, this sounds good." You know what I mean?
It's kind of a very experimental design that maybe should only happen once... once is enough.
RM: What EQD pedal in production right now do you personally see as your most "out there" design?
Robbins: I'm gonna say Data Corrupter.
Stillman: Yeah, maybe Data Corrupter. I'd also put Rainbow Machine kind of in that category too, and maybe a little bit of the Afterneath. These pedals have all been out for so long at this point now that a couple of other people have their own versions. I hear the Afterneath in a lot of modern boutique reverb pedals, but I still think it's more uncontrollable, which I like. The other one, I'd say Time Shadows.
RM: What EQD pedal out of production would you say was your most "out there" design?
Stillman: Arpanoid, and I guess by "out there," I mean, "hard to use," (laughs) but an interesting concept. That's pretty much it.
RM: Would you ever bring the Arpanoid back?
Stillman: Yeah, I would. I like the idea of it a lot, but I think it would have to be done completely different.
RM: Hypothetically, of these three Legacy EQD pedals, you gotta bring one back tomorrow. Which one would it be? The Erupter, the Pitch Bay, the Transmisser.
Stillman: Well, that’s a difficult one. The Transmisser, the sound of the Transmisser, is something I really love. I kind of understood what the things were that other people didn't love about it. That concept will be revisited, but it will not be the same. I'm gonna go down to two, between Pitch Bay and Erupter.
I'd say the Pitch Bay. I feel like it had an untimely death. I feel like it didn't have the space that maybe it deserved, because in my mind, it's actually worse than how it sounds, it sounds awesome. Every time it's, "Oh, it wasn't that good of a pitch-shifter or harmonizer," but it was actually pretty interesting. I'm seeing people use them now, we really didn't make that many of them.
RM: It was too early, it was ahead of its time.
Stillman: Well, maybe. Or, we used to – I say "we," but I'll take the blame for it, it was always my choice to – dump a bunch of releases together.
Robbins: We tried to stop him...
RM: What keeps you pushing for the next thing that excites you?
Stillman: I don't know, just the need to be creative, I think. That's kind of pretty much my primary job with EarthQuaker now is just, I'm making stuff now all the time, which is like, great. Though, also at the same time, eternally frustrating because I'm problem-solving in my sleep all the time. Then like, you know, I end up making a lot of stuff, and you kind of got to balance the good with the bad, where it's like, "Yeah, this concept worked, in, it’s a functional product, but, is it interesting or unique in some way that another one in the category isn't?" It's kind of chasing that.
I do feel that a lot of times I know it when I hear it, like, "Oh, this is so much fun to play." I know not everything I make is a knock-it-out-the-park winner, but I do feel that at least a couple times a year I make something where it's like, "I could just use this forever." It's kind of solving those problems that I think is gratifying.
RM: We talked about some EQD designs with other people maybe not "getting" them. After doing this all these years, do you have any instinct built up of knowing what designs might be "for you" versus for other people? How do you navigate that?
Stillman: Yeah, I think I do. What I've realized is when I lean more towards the, "Other people need to understand this," side of things, things never do as well as I would hope. When I make it the best that I can make it or the most interesting thing I think it can be, it'll usually take on a life of its own.
The other thing is people do actually want more immediately gratifying and explainable things. There's obviously a very sizable group of people who really like to menu dive and read a fifty-page manual and remember MIDI commands, I'm not denying that. I'd say, there's an equally large, if not larger, group who just wants to plug something in, know that it's going to work, know that, "If I just turn these controls, it's gonna sound good and I can get on with making music". Those are the kind of people that I feel like I'm speaking to more. For better or worse, EarthQuaker's personality is totally defined by what I'm into. It's not that market-driven.
You know, that's not to say like, we aren't or haven't talked about incorporating those kinds of features in our products in the future. I think by and large most of our stuff will be pretty easy to be manipulated and instantly gratifying... with a couple curveballs thrown in. I think we have a few relatively confusing things coming up in the next year or two.
RM: That's the next big thing we can expect from EarthQuaker Devices? Something cool and confusing?
Stillman: Well, I think the very next product to come out is definitely one of my most favorite things that I've made. It's been done for two years. It was done for two years and I played it all the time and every time I played it, I was still excited. I was still kind of getting lost in the whole thing. Then, it was supposed to come out in September of 2025 and we hit a roadblock with parts availability.
It left this weird window open where I was like, "You know, there's a couple things about this pedal I think I could do better," and then, I redesigned it from the ground up after it was done for two years (laughs). Now, I'm so happy that that all worked out the way that it did. I'm very stoked on this one. So there's that, and then, I don't know the exact dates, but at some point in the next year, there'll be at least two more really confusing oddballs that'll come out.
