// THE VERGE — MODA & SOCIETÀ
This tiny guitar amp is the most unhinged distortion pedal I’ve ever used
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Amp Crash is the latest from the proud lunatics at Death By Audio and Rainger FX.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.
Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Death By Audio’s latest is, in fact, both. While it’s in a guitar pedal enclosure, Amp Crash is actually a tiny 3-watt amp hooked up to a 2-inch speaker. You can even connect an external speaker if you want. This isn’t a digital re-creation of a classic Fender or Marshall like you might get from a Universal Audio amp sim pedal or a Neural DSP Cortex. This is an actual amp with an original design that moves air.
The tone you get out of this tiny thing is, unsurprisingly, harsh and boxy. But that’s not a criticism. Guitarists like Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Jack White, and Dan Auerbach (The Black Keys) have famously used cheap solid-state practice amps to get their unique tones. Amp Crash lives firmly in that realm. It never truly cleans up, even with the gain turned all the way down, and the brittle edge-of-overdrive at those lower settings has a charming, amateurish vibe. It’s not going to replace my Yamaha THR10, but I can’t hate on it.