EarthQuaker Devices

Jamie Stillman started building Fuzz Face clones in his basement in West Akron, Ohio, taking the circuit apart and reassembling it until he understood every part of what made it sound the way it did. EarthQuaker Devices grew out of that habit; by 2019 the company had 50 employees in a 15,000-square-foot Akron facility and had won the US Small Business Administration's Exporter of the Year award for shipping to 47 countries. It's kept its reputation for pedals with distinctive, often odd names and a house style built around fuzz, reverb and modulation rather than straight amp-in-a-box overdrives. New releases and anniversary reissues of older pedals both turn up regularly on GuitarBomb. Here's what we've covered.