Death By Audio helps celebrate reissue of A Place to Bury Strangers' 2009 Exploding Head album with limited run delay pedal of the same name

I realise I’m a little late with this - as this 500 unit limited run release has already sold out. While Death By Audio are somewhat on a roll this year with innovative compact pedals - and this makes it a hat-trick - after the Germanium Filter and Space Bender.

The only way this could be acquired was via special bundle on Reverb.com which included the re-mastered and reissued Exploding Head gatefold double-LP (transparent vinyl) by New York Shoegaze Space Rockers - A Place to Bury Strangers. The bundle included various bits and bobs - stickers and stick pins and the like among them I believe, and came in at a pretty reasonable $225 - while shipping and additional import duties would have added around $100 more for UK and European buyers.

I obviously like my delays to be fully stereo - but appreciate that this is a really cool take on a mono delay - consisting of 3 separate Delay Paths / Tape Heads - each with separate Time, Feedback and Blend controls. You can then apply the momentary second ’Infinity’ switch - which feeds the output of Head 3, back into Head 1 for even more feedback distortion. 

Feeding 3 delay lines / tape heads into each other obviously gives you a really cool feedback-distorted wall of sound kind of effect - perfect for Shoegaze, and very reminiscent of the Exploding Head album tracks.

I know some didn’t like the mini knobs here - and I’ve mentioned before that I would really like to see some Metal Mini Knob Toppers by now - which can be added to those plastic knobs to up the quality and appeal of such pedals.

In any case this is a fairly simple pedal to deploy and it really meets its brief. It was never going to be more than a nice-to-have for me. And for such pedal status - the numbers weren’t really fully practical for my circumstances. It’s a shame really that it’s been limited to 500 units as I feel they could have sold quite a few more!

A cool compact delay for sure though and an especially nice memento / memorabilia for fans of the band.

Would be cool to hear from anyone who secured one of these and what their first-hand opinions are.

For many of us though this is just a another footnote in pedal history!