Every successful pedal generates the same email. Customers love it, and then they want one more thing. In EarthQuaker Devices’ case the pedal was the Dispatch Master, the four-knob delay-and-reverb box that had quietly become the company’s best seller and the default ambience utility on thousands of pedalboards. And the one more thing arrived in two flavours, over and over, for years: make it stereo, and give it tap tempo.
The Avalanche Run is the answer to both requests. It is also, in the plainest possible terms, the moment EarthQuaker stopped being a company that made simple pedals brilliantly and became a company that could also build a genuinely complicated one. EQD’s own blog describes it as a device “designed to satisfy requests for a stereo and/or tap tempo-augmented version” of the Dispatch Master — and then immediately concedes the point that matters: “as it quickly becomes clear to anyone who plugs into it, the Avalanche Run has a sound and soul all its own.”
That is an unusually honest thing for a manufacturer to admit about its own sequel. It is also correct. The Avalanche Run is not a Dispatch Master with more jacks. It is a two-second reverse-delay instrument with an expression input, six subdivisions, a five-position tails system and a plate reverb deep enough to lose furniture in.
This is a feature, not a review. We are not scoring it. What follows is where it came from, what the controls genuinely do, which players actually have one and how strong the evidence for each is, the settings worth stealing, how it stacks up against the obvious rivals, and the two or three practical facts that decide whether you should buy one.
Akron, 2016: EarthQuaker’s First Big DSP Swing
The EarthQuaker Devices origin story — Jamie Stillman, a basement in Akron, Ohio, a touring musician who put down the guitar and picked up a soldering iron, and a company that grew into one of America’s largest pedal builders without ever leaving town — is told in full in our feature on the EarthQuaker Devices Hoof Fuzz. The shape of the dirt catalogue sits in the Acapulco Gold feature, the company’s long argument with the Tube Screamer in the Palisades piece, and its most-loved overdrive in the Westwood one. We will not repeat any of it here.
What matters for the Avalanche Run is a different thread: EarthQuaker’s relationship with digital.
When the Dispatch Master launched in 2011, EarthQuaker’s own press copy had to apologise for being a DSP pedal — “Even though it is a DSP based effect, the sound is warm and full. No sterile lifeless tones here!” Five years later that defensiveness was gone. The Avalanche Run introduced a genuinely powerful proprietary DSP platform to the EQD arsenal for the first time, and the company built the biggest, most feature-dense pedal it had ever shipped on top of it.
The Staggered Launch
The Avalanche Run appeared at NAMM in early 2016 while still in development, which is unusual — EarthQuaker generally shows finished pedals. The rollout was then split: a Reverb.com exclusive in late March 2016, followed by a full release to the wider dealer network in July. Premier Guitar’s review, by gear editor Charles Saufley, ran on 26 September 2016 at a street price of $295, and the pedal took a Premier Guitar Gear Award that year.
Saufley’s opening line frames the design better than any spec sheet: “As far as I know, EarthQuaker Devices’ new Avalanche Run is not designed to emulate a classic tape delay. But few digital delays deliver the tactile immediacy or time-warping potency of an Echoplex or Space Echo as satisfyingly as the Avalanche Run.”
That is the whole pedal in two sentences. It does not model anything. It behaves like the machines people love to abuse.
V1 To V2: The 2018 Revision
Two years after launch, EarthQuaker reissued the pedal. The changes, per the company’s own account, were three:
- Updated stereo imaging — the reverb algorithm was rebuilt to be genuinely stereo rather than a mono reverb fed to two outputs.
- Flexi-Switch Technology — relay-based switching that gives you latching and momentary operation from the same footswitch. Tap once for standard on/off; hold it down for as long as you want the effect and it drops out when you let go.
- A half-inch wider enclosure — the V2 measures 4.65 x 4.15 x 2.25 inches (118 x 105 x 57 mm) with knobs.
Everything else — the control layout, the modes, the two-second ceiling, the expression assignments — carried over. This is a real revision, not a cosmetic one, and it is the version currently in production.
And It Is Still In Production — Which, For EarthQuaker In 2026, Is News
This deserves calling out, because the last several EQD pedals we have covered have all quietly gone out of production while retailers carried on listing them as current. The Palisades, the Dunes and the Westwood are all discontinued. The Avalanche Run is not. As of September 2026, EarthQuaker’s product page for the Avalanche Run carries no end-of-production notice, the pedal is stocked new by major dealers, and the tech specs page is being maintained — right down to a new line of copy stating that the PCBs are “populated by a combination of artificial and human intelligence in the Akron, Ohio of America,” with final assembly, wiring and testing still done by “total human beans.”
A decade in the catalogue, one revision, still shipping. For a pedal at this price point in this company’s line, that is the strongest possible signal.
Specifications
What The Controls Actually Do
Eight knobs, one toggle, two footswitches. It looks worse than it is. The layout is logical once you know that the top row is delay and the bottom row is reverb.
The Delay Section (Top Four)
- Time — 0 ms to just under 2,000 ms. That range is wider than it sounds: fully counterclockwise gives you comb-filtering micro-delays and ring-mod artefacts, not slapback.
- Repeats — zero to near-infinite regeneration.
- Tone — affects the delay line only. Roll off highs to the left, roll off lows to the right, flat in the middle. This is the control that lets you decide between tape-emulation warmth and bucket-brigade grit, and it is genuinely wide-range.
- Mix (upper) — delay volume. Blends wet against dry up to 1 o’clock; 1 to 3 o’clock boosts wet over dry; past 3 o’clock the dry signal starts coming down until you are fully wet at maximum.
The Reverb Section (Lower Two)
- Decay — reverb tail length. Short counterclockwise, cavernous clockwise.
- Mix (lower) — reverb volume, with the same three-stage behaviour as the delay Mix, ending fully wet.
The reverb is a plate-style voice with a touch of modulation, described by EarthQuaker as similar to the reverb in the Dispatch Master but “more lush,” with the addition of an adjustable Decay the Dispatch Master never had.
The Two White Rotary Switches
These are the controls people ignore for six months and then can’t live without.
- Expression assign — maps the TRS expression jack to Decay, Reverb Mix, Time, Repeats, Delay Mix or Toggle. The Time assignment is the interesting one: EarthQuaker themselves note it behaves “DRASTICALLY” differently from turning the knob, producing Doppler and pitch-warp effects you cannot get by hand. The Toggle assignment crossfades from forward delay (heel down) to reverse delay (toe down), which is a genuinely unusual live gesture.
- Ratio — sets the subdivision applied to the tapped tempo: quarter, dotted eighth, quarter triplet, eighth, eighth triplet, sixteenth.
The Toggle: Normal, Reverse, Swell
Normal is standard delay-plus-reverb. Reverse is reverse delay with standard reverb. Swell is a volume-swell mode that behaves like an auto-volume pedal — the pedal does the fade-in for you.
One quirk worth knowing before you buy: in Reverse mode the delay subdivision is always 1/1, regardless of where you set the Ratio switch.
Tails Mode (The Hidden Menu)
The Avalanche Run can run true bypass or buffered with trails, and the trail length is set by a boot-time procedure: unplug the power, set the Ratio switch to the desired tail length, plug the power back in. The options are short, medium and long tails, a Sound-on-Sound infinite mode that holds an ambient pad you can solo over, and a User Defined mode where the tail length follows the Repeats knob.
It is clumsy — you cannot change it mid-set without power-cycling — but the Sound-on-Sound and User Defined options are where a lot of the pedal’s creative reputation actually comes from.
Famous Players: Who Really Has One
Here is the honest framing. The Avalanche Run does not have a marquee arena-rock name attached to it. There is no Avalanche Run equivalent of “The Edge and the dotted eighth.” What it has instead is a broad, well-documented, slightly unglamorous roster of working players across indie rock, math rock, doom, post-rock and even hip-hop — and one important caveat about the evidence.
The caveat: a large share of the confirmed sightings come from EarthQuaker’s own video series (Board To Death!, EarthQuaker Sessions) and their own artist interviews. That is real, first-party, on-camera confirmation — the player is standing over the board pointing at the pedal — but it is a self-selecting sample, because EQD films players who already use EQD. Independent confirmations, where they exist, are flagged as such below.
Courtney Barnett — Confirmed On Camera
The strongest name on the list. Barnett appeared in Board To Death! Episode 31 (28 September 2020), filmed on stage at the Cleveland Museum of Art, walking through her own signal chain. EarthQuaker’s write-up describes a board “supported by a classic foundation of dependable circuits” — the “Tele and three Fenders” rig that so many players fantasise about — with the Avalanche Run in a specific structural role: it “provides mysterious atmosphere and ices everything over nicely at the end of this stoic chain.”
That last-in-chain placement matters, and we will come back to it in the settings section. Barnett is a player whose reputation rests on directness and dry lyrical delivery, not on ambience, which makes her use of the pedal instructive: the Avalanche Run is functioning as a finishing gloss on a fundamentally plain rig, not as a soundscape generator.
Yvette Young (Covet) — Independently Confirmed
Premier Guitar’s Pro Pedalboards 2020 round-up, drawn from the previous year of Rig Rundowns, lists Young’s core effects as “EarthQuaker Devices Warden and Avalanche Run stomps, Walrus Audio Fathom and Julia pedals, three MXRs — a Ten Band EQ, a Carbon Copy Deluxe, and a Bass Octave Deluxe — a Caroline Guitar Company Somersault, an Electronic Audio Experiments Longsword, a Meris Mercury7, a TC Electronic Ditto, and a Ground Control Amaterasu V2.”
PG’s own framing of her taste — “a big proponent of spacious reverb, swimming modulated sounds, and lovely weirdness” — describes the Avalanche Run’s design brief almost word for word. Young’s finger-tapped, open-tuned, harp-like guitar figures are exactly the material the pedal’s long decay and stereo field were built to hold up.
Jeff Schroeder (ex-Smashing Pumpkins) — Independently Confirmed, In His Own Words
Speaking to Guitar World in May 2024, the former Billy Corgan foil described rebuilding his rig from scratch after leaving the band: “I had an existential crisis with my pedalboard after leaving the Smashing Pumpkins. I had nothing else besides my touring rig based on my Revv Generator 120s and Line 6 Helix.”
What he built was a modular two-board system inspired by Rival Sons’ Scott Holiday, with a Line 6 Helix as the hub and three pedal loops hanging off it. The Avalanche Run lives on the satellite board, alongside a Line 6 HX One, an Eventide H90, a Vongon Polyphrase and a Vongon Ultrasheer. His description of that board’s purpose is the useful detail: “The secondary board is mainly for solo guitar playing.”
That is a specific, credible use case — a pedal deployed not as an always-on utility but as a dedicated ambient rig for unaccompanied playing.
Paul Gregory (Lanterns On The Lake) — Independently Confirmed, First-Hand
The most detailed account of the pedal in live use anywhere. Guitar.com’s Test Pilots series (11 October 2016) sent an Avalanche Run out on tour with Gregory, whose Newcastle band was playing Bluedot Festival at Jodrell Bank Observatory accompanied by the twenty-piece Royal Northern Sinfonia. He wrote the report himself, and it is refreshingly unmarketable.
On the reverb: “the reverb is beautiful. I mean really beautiful. It’s voiced perfectly, feels as if it naturally filters some low end from the decay and the top end is smooth.” He set Decay around 11 o’clock and reverb Mix around 1 o’clock and left it there for the whole set, running overdrives, fuzz and a Line 6 DL4 through it into a serviced Vox AC30 — “no weird clipping or muddiness, just tons of post-rock/shoegazey/ambient fun.” It became his base reverb for roughly 70 per cent of the set.
He is equally direct about the 30 per cent where it did not work, and about the two-second ceiling. Both complaints appear in the ownership section below, because they are the most useful things anyone has published about this pedal.
Jonathan Nuñez (Torche) — Confirmed On Camera, On Bass
Board To Death! Episode 27 (7 November 2019) toured the Torche bassist’s deliberately minimal setup, built around an Avalanche Run and an Arpanoid. Worth noting because the Avalanche Run’s all-analog dry path means it does not thin out low end the way many stereo ambience pedals do — a bass player putting one at the centre of a small board is a meaningful endorsement of that design choice.
Angie Swan — Confirmed In Interview
Swan, whose CV runs from David Byrne’s American Utopia through Fifth Harmony, En Vogue, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kelly Rowland, Adam Lambert and Cirque du Soleil, discussed her rig with EarthQuaker in November 2020. Her EQD complement is listed as Arpanoid, Avalanche Run, Grand Orbiter, Hoof and Spatial Delivery — a working session-and-Broadway player’s board, which is a very different context from the indie-and-doom crowd elsewhere on this list.
Jaye Jayle, Ah Mer Ah Su, Free Black! — Confirmed On Camera, Beyond Guitar
Three EarthQuaker Session episodes worth mentioning because they document the pedal doing things it was not sold for. Louisville’s Jaye Jayle (Episode 26, May 2020) used it in an Americana-gothic context alongside an Afterneath, Rainbow Machine, Transmisser and Pyramids. Ah Mer Ah Su (Episode 35, June 2021) ran vocals through the Avalanche Run and a Rainbow Machine. Akron hip-hop duo Free Black! (Episode 28, July 2020) used it in a rooftop set from their album Freedom Summer.
EarthQuaker’s own blog makes the same claim more plainly: “Guitars? Synths? Drums? Vocals? Brass and Wind instruments? The Avalanche Run can process them all.” The session archive is the receipt for that claim, and it is more convincing than the copy.
Players Who Get Attached To This Pedal But Shouldn’t Be
A brief honesty note, since the shoegaze and post-rock associations invite it. There is no verified evidence that Kevin Shields, Robert Smith, The Edge, Jonny Greenwood or Lee Ranaldo use an Avalanche Run. Their signature ambience predates this pedal by decades and comes from rack units, tape machines and the Electro-Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man lineage. If you see one of those names attached to an Avalanche Run in a listing or a forum post, it is aspirational, not sourced.
Tone Recipes
1. The Courtney Barnett Ice Glaze (Last In Chain)
Time noon, Repeats 9 o’clock, Tone noon, delay Mix 9 o’clock, Decay 1 o’clock, reverb Mix 10 o’clock. Normal mode. This is the “ices everything over” setting: barely any audible repeats, a modest reverb bed, sitting at the very end of a chain of drives and fuzzes. You should not be able to point at it and say “that’s a delay pedal.” You should notice when it’s off.
2. The Paul Gregory Live Base Reverb
Decay 11 o’clock, reverb Mix 1 o’clock, delay Mix all the way down. Set it once and leave it. Gregory ran this untouched through a full set with an orchestra behind him, feeding overdrives, fuzz and a DL4 into it. The point of this recipe is that it is a reverb pedal setting — the delay section is entirely switched off, and the pedal still earns its board space.
3. Dan Epstein’s Cavernous Fingerpicking Setting
From EarthQuaker’s own long-form blog piece. Time, Repeats and Tone all at or just before noon; delay Mix around 10 o’clock so the dry signal stays dominant; Decay all the way up; reverb Mix around 1 o’clock. Described as “hauntingly cavernous yet impressively precise” — it gives clean fingerpicked figures articulation and ambience at the same time, which most reverbs at this decay length destroy.
4. The Streets-Have-No-Name Rhythmic Delay
Time around 9 o’clock, Repeats noon, Decay around 2 o’clock. Tap quarter notes with the Tap switch, then set the Ratio selector to 3/4 (dotted eighths). This is the standard dotted-eighth trick, and the Avalanche Run’s advantage over most pedals doing it is that the reverb is voiced to sit underneath the rhythmic pattern rather than smear it.
5. Reverse Mode Call-And-Response
Time fully clockwise, Repeats fully counterclockwise, Reverse mode. Play a burst of notes up to two seconds long; the pedal answers with the phrase backwards. Use Tone to control how brightly the reversed answer cuts through, and the delay Mix to balance forward against backward. This sounds dramatically better in stereo into two amps spaced a few feet apart.
6. The Angry Robot (Reverse Mode Ring Mod)
Time and Repeats fully down, Decay and both Mix knobs at noon or beyond, Reverse mode. The short repeat times collapse into a glitchy, abrasive, ring-modulated distortion with semi-random dissonant overtones. Charles Saufley found the same territory in his Premier Guitar review — “metallic, ring-modulated tones that are extra trippy with heaps of reverb.” Best on single-note runs.
7. The 1950s Tremolo Accident
Same as recipe 6, but move Time to between 8 and 9 o’clock. The glitch cleans up and the pedal produces a pulsating tremolo-with-reverb that sounds like the closing bars of “Rumble.” Turn Decay down and Tone up for full slapback-era authenticity. This is a genuinely useful sound hiding inside a mode most people only visit for weirdness.
8. The Violin Swell
Swell mode. Time around noon, Repeats around 9 o’clock, Tone around 11, delay Mix all the way down, Decay and reverb Mix both around 3 o’clock. A bowed, singing attack without a volume pedal or a spare hand. Fret the low strings while rubbing them with your picking-hand fingers for a cello-ish variant.
9. The Degrading Tape Loop (User Defined Tails)
Power the pedal down, set Ratio to 3/4 (the User Defined tail position), power back up. Now turn Repeats nearly all the way clockwise. You get a tape-loop effect that degrades progressively with each pass. Tone fully up strips a little low end per repeat; Tone fully down strips a little high end per repeat. Put the toggle in Reverse for a loop that alternates backwards and forwards.
10. Expression Pedal Doppler Chaos
Set the expression assign switch to Time, Decay and both Mix controls past noon, and sweep. The pitch-shifting is severe and uncontrollable in the best way — Saufley described “warped bird-call and hyperspeed-to-dead-stop Doppler effects that sonically approximate a projector running backwards and forwards at constantly variable and wildly different speeds.” Hold the Tap switch at the same time to push the delay into self-oscillation.
All settings use clock positions. The top row is delay (Time, Repeats, Tone, delay Mix), the bottom row is reverb (Decay, reverb Mix).
How It Compares
Versus The Dispatch Master
The obvious one. The Dispatch Master is four knobs, mono, roughly a third of the price, and the correct choice for perhaps three quarters of the people who consider an Avalanche Run. It does the always-on ambience job beautifully and requires no thought.
You want the Avalanche Run instead if you need any of the following: tap tempo with subdivisions, genuine stereo, reverse delay, an expression input, adjustable reverb decay, or delay times beyond 1.5 seconds. If none of those appear on your list, buy the cheaper pedal. Gregory’s summary — “a Dispatch Master on steroids” — is accurate, and steroids are not always indicated.
Versus Strymon TimeLine And BigSky
The Strymon TimeLine and Strymon BigSky are the presets-and-MIDI answer: twelve machines each, 300 preset slots, deep menu editing, MIDI clock. Together they cost about three times an Avalanche Run and occupy about three times the board space.
The trade is philosophical. Strymon gives you recallable, repeatable, programme-changed sounds — the right tool if your set requires a different delay on every song. The Avalanche Run gives you one sound you adjust by hand and foot, in real time, with no menus. It is an instrument rather than a library. Neither approach is better; they suit different kinds of gig.
Versus Boss DD-200 And RV-500
The Boss DD-200 and Boss RV-500 bring presets and MIDI at lower cost than Strymon, in compact enclosures. The DD-200 in particular is the value pick for anyone whose actual need is “several recallable delays.” Where the Avalanche Run wins is the integration of the two effects — the reverb and delay are voiced to sit together, and running two separate Boss pedals never quite produces the same cohesion.
Versus Keeley Caverns And EHX Oceans 11
Both are two-in-one ambience boxes at lower prices. The Keeley Caverns Delay Reverb V2 gives you a modulated analog-voiced delay with a choice of reverb voices in a compact enclosure. The Electro-Harmonix Oceans 11 is reverb-only but offers eleven algorithms for a fraction of the money. Both are excellent, both are mono-centric, and neither has reverse delay, tap subdivisions or expression control. They are the pragmatic choices; the Avalanche Run is the expressive one.
Versus The Line 6 DL4
Interesting comparison because Gregory used both simultaneously. The Line 6 DL4 is a looper and a model library; the Avalanche Run is a real-time ambience instrument. He ran DL4 loops through the Avalanche Run’s reverse delay and reported it “sounded massive.” They are complementary, not competing.
Versus Analog Delay
If what you actually want is dark, degrading, wobbling analog repeats, the MXR M169 Carbon Copy and the Deluxe Memory Man do that better and cheaper, and no digital pedal fully replicates bucket-brigade decay. The Avalanche Run’s Tone control gets remarkably close to the character — Saufley noted that when he perceived “a touch of digital sharpness in the repeats,” a small Tone adjustment added “analog-style haze” — but it is an approximation. If bucket-brigade grit is the whole point of your delay, buy a bucket-brigade delay. If you want tape-to-BBD flavour plus two seconds, reverse and stereo, this is the pedal.
Versus A Tape Echo Emulation
The Boss RE-2 Space Echo and its larger sibling model a specific machine with specific behaviours. The Avalanche Run does not model anything, but Saufley’s core observation stands: it delivers “the tactile immediacy or time-warping potency of an Echoplex or Space Echo” without pretending to be one. Different route, overlapping destination.
Buying Guide
V1 Or V2?
Buy the V2 unless the price gap is substantial. The stereo reverb rebuild and the Flexi-Switch are both meaningful, and Flexi-Switch in particular changes how you play the pedal — momentary reverse bursts held under your foot are a technique the V1 simply cannot do. Identify a V2 by the slightly wider enclosure and, on retail listings, by the “V2” suffix in the product name.
The V1 remains a fine pedal. If you play mono, never use momentary switching, and find one cheap, it is not a mistake.
What It Costs
New, around $399 in 2026 — up from the $295 street price at launch, which is roughly what a decade of inflation and a revision will do. Used examples appear regularly around the $230 mark. It has always been one of the most expensive pedals in the EarthQuaker line, and EQD’s own blog says so without flinching.
The 410 mA Problem — Read This Before You Buy
This is the single most important practical fact about the Avalanche Run, and it catches people constantly.
The pedal draws 410 mA. That is not a typo. Most isolated pedalboard power supplies provide 100 mA per output, some offer 250 mA or 500 mA on one or two designated high-current outputs, and a great many boards have no output capable of feeding this pedal at all. EarthQuaker ships a 9V centre-negative 1-amp supply in the box precisely because they know this.
Before you buy, check your power supply’s spec sheet for a single isolated output rated at 500 mA or more. If you don’t have one, budget for either a new supply or a dedicated wall wart and a free mains socket on stage. Daisy-chaining is not an option here.
There is a second consequence. The Flexi-Switch relay switching requires power to pass signal at all — so if the pedal loses power mid-set, you don’t get bypassed tone, you get silence. Feed it properly.
Who Should Buy It
Post-rock, shoegaze, ambient and math-rock players running two amps or going stereo to front-of-house. Solo performers who need a pedal that can hold a pad while they play over it. Anyone who wants reverse delay as a genuine performance tool rather than a novelty. Bass players and keyboard players — the analog dry path and stereo field make it unusually good outside guitar.
Who Shouldn’t
Players who need recallable presets per song. Players with no room in their power budget. Anyone whose real need is “a bit of ambience, always on” — buy a Dispatch Master and spend the difference on something else. And anyone who needs delay times beyond two seconds, for the reason immediately below.
Ownership Notes
The Two-Second Ceiling
Gregory’s most pointed criticism: “the delay time has a maximum of two seconds, which might sound like a lot, but sometimes you just need more — and I found myself needing more… at least two seconds more. A minor grumble, but given that the Avalanche Run is a DSP pedal, I’m not sure why it’s limited to two seconds.”
He is right that it is arbitrary-seeming, and it remains unchanged in the V2. If your ambient practice depends on very long loops, this is a hard limit, and no firmware update is coming.
The 100% Wet Volume Drop
The other genuine limitation, and one you will not find in marketing copy. Gregory again: on his older DigiTech in church mode, at 100 per cent wet “the volume doesn’t change; on the Avalanche Run when the reverb is set to 100 per cent, everything gets much quieter.” He kept a second reverb on his board specifically for the 30 per cent of his set that needed full-wet passages.
If fully-wet ambient washes are central to what you do, audition the pedal for exactly that before buying. For blended use — which is most use — it is a non-issue.
The Expression Jack
Two things. First, it is side-mounted, which Premier Guitar listed as the review’s only con — on a tightly packed board that side jack can be awkward. Second, and more importantly: EarthQuaker specifically recommends a Moog expression pedal with the output adjustment knob fully up, and explicitly cannot guarantee that any other expression pedal will work. That is unusually blunt, and given how much of this pedal’s character lives in the expression assignments, it is worth taking seriously. Budget for the right pedal rather than assuming the one you own will do.
Stereo Routing, Including The Trick
Mono: use the left input and left output only. Stereo: both inputs, both outputs. Mono in, stereo out: left input, both outputs.
The trick EarthQuaker documents on their own page is worth knowing. Plug into the right input while using both outputs, and the left channel becomes all-wet while the right stays a standard mix. Keep the Mix low and turn up the amp on the left output and you get dramatic stereo separation. Caveat: in true bypass mode the left output passes no dry signal when the effect is off; in trails mode it will still produce the decaying effected signal.
Living With It Live
Gregory’s practical notes are the best available. The LEDs are bright enough that he covered them with a plectrum in a dark rehearsal room, but that same brightness makes the tap tempo readable in stage sunlight. The tap function works even when the effect is bypassed, so you can set your tempo before you need the delay. Switching is silent — “nothing ruins a quiet moment in a song like the sound of ‘CLICK'” — and there is no hum. The footswitches survived being stamped on in over-excited fashion. Top-mounted jacks let him tuck it into the bottom-left corner of the board with the Time and Mix knobs reachable by foot.
That last point is a real technique: with the delay footswitch and the two Mix knobs positioned for foot access, you can push the delay up mid-song and pull it back down without an expression pedal.
Placement In The Chain
End of chain, after drives, is the standard and is what Barnett does. If you run four-cable-method with an amp’s effects loop, it goes in the loop. If you’re running stereo into two amps, this pedal is the point where your rig becomes stereo, so everything after it needs doubling.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Avalanche Run still in production in 2026?
Yes. As of September 2026 EarthQuaker’s product page carries no discontinuation notice and the V2 is stocked new by major dealers. This distinguishes it from several other EQD pedals of the same era — the Palisades, Dunes and Westwood are all out of production while still being listed as current by third-party retailers.
What is the difference between the Avalanche Run V1 and V2?
Three changes in the 2018 revision: a genuinely stereo reverb algorithm (the V1’s was effectively mono fed to two outputs), Flexi-Switch relay switching allowing momentary as well as latching operation, and an enclosure half an inch wider. Controls, modes, delay time and expression assignments are unchanged.
Do I need a special power supply?
Almost certainly, yes. The pedal draws 410 mA, which exceeds what most isolated power supply outputs deliver. You need a single isolated output rated at 500 mA or higher, or you use the 1-amp supply EarthQuaker includes in the box. Because the switching is relay-based, insufficient power means no signal at all rather than degraded tone.
Is the Avalanche Run just a stereo Dispatch Master?
It started as that request and became more. It adds tap tempo with six subdivisions, reverse delay, swell mode, adjustable reverb decay, expression control over six parameters, five tails options, longer delay time and true stereo. EarthQuaker’s own position is that it “has a sound and soul all its own,” and players who own both generally agree the reverbs are voiced differently — the Avalanche Run’s is lusher and more plate-like.
What is the maximum delay time?
Just under 2,000 milliseconds — two seconds. This is a hard ceiling and it has not changed between versions. It is the pedal’s most commonly cited limitation among ambient players who want longer loops.
Which expression pedal works with it?
EarthQuaker recommends a Moog expression pedal with the output adjustment knob turned fully up, and states plainly that they cannot guarantee any other expression pedal will function correctly. The jack is TRS with the tip acting as the wiper, and it is mounted on the side of the enclosure rather than the top.
Can I use it with bass, synths or vocals?
Yes, and there is documented evidence of all three. Torche’s Jonathan Nuñez built a minimal bass board around one; EarthQuaker’s own product page hosts bass, Moog, Mellotron and Roland SE-02 audio samples; and Ah Mer Ah Su ran vocals through it in an EarthQuaker Session. The all-analog dry path helps here — it does not thin out low end the way some stereo ambience pedals do.
Why does everything get quieter when I turn the reverb to 100 per cent?
Because the Mix controls are designed so that past roughly 3 o’clock the dry signal is progressively removed, reaching fully wet at maximum. At 100 per cent wet the perceived level drops noticeably — a documented behaviour that Paul Gregory of Lanterns On The Lake worked around by keeping a second, dedicated reverb on his board for full-wet passages. For blended settings, which is how most people use it, this never comes up.
Does the tap tempo work in reverse mode?
The Tap switch functions, but the subdivision is locked to 1/1 in Reverse mode regardless of where the Ratio switch is set. You can still create rhythmic patterns with it, and holding the Tap switch temporarily returns the delay to forward mode — releasing it drops you back into reverse, which is a usable performance gesture in itself.