Released in limited numbers in 2021 as a marketing stunt to promote Reverb.com’s The Pedal Movie, the Time Shadows is a filter pedal engineered by two of the edgiest stompbox brands in the US: Ohio’s EarthQuaker Devices and NYC’s Death By Audio.
The two companies are now unveiling an update, Time Shadows II, which adds welcome features such as preset (6 of them) and expression pedal mapping for any parameter.
The pedal is an experimental split, with pitch-morphed fuzz delay from EQD on one side and DBA offering a multi-delay filter on the other.
The left side (EQD) takes the input signal, applies a digital distortion, blends it with a polyphonic sub-octave, feeds it into a delay, and then spits it out into a highly resonant envelope-controlled lowpass filter.
The right side (DBA) is – according to the company owner and designer Oliver Ackermann, is “a multi-intertwined delay filter remorphinator of cosmic waves.”
MkII offers a new, third mode, accessible when the toggle switch is placed in the middle position, that’s at least in part reminiscent of one of EQD’s most bizarre pedals, the Rainbow Machine: it’s a arpeggiator that pitch shifts your notes into an weird arpeggio.
You can hear how the EarthQuaker Devices + Death By Audio Time Shadows II sounds in the videos below, while in the videos under the pictures of V1 you’ll find brief interviews with both companies’ circuit designers. We added the Time Shadows to our list of Creative Guitar Pedals.
EarthQuaker + Death by Audio Time Shadows MkI
The latest EarthQuaker Device actually is the same as the latest Death By Audio device. This new pedal is a joint collaboration that brings their sonic soundscape trips to your melted mind.
With the switch to the left, Time Shadows’ controls are completely the brain child of EarthQuaker Devices resident genius, Jamie Stillman. Flip the switch to the right and you enter the head of the madman Oliver Ackermann from Death By Audio barely clutching to reality.
Both sounds are wildly different from each other and yet share a perfectly designed harmony to be completely complementary and suitable for every style and genre of music. The EarthQuaker Devices side transforms whatever you play into the sound of a jazz space bazooka! It’s a pitch-morphed fuzz delay filter with so much attitude that you are actually intimidated. It takes the input signal, blows it out with the power of digital distortion, blends it with a polyphonic sub octave, feeds it into a delay, then spits it out into a highly resonant envelope-controlled lowpass filter. The Death By Audio side is a multi-delay filter remorphinator that goes from icy shimmers to cosmic space caves of bouncing repeats.
Between the two, you should have everything you need to break brains and destroy monotony!
Each Time Shadows was lovingly built by druids with very soft hands in the tiny hobbit hole of Akron, Ohio.
