Death By Audio and Rainger FX Put a Real Amp, Speaker and Mic Inside One Pedal
The $395 Amp Crash makes distortion physically: a 3-watt amp drives a 2-inch speaker while a built-in mic captures the result.
Aug 24, 2026
Credit: Death By Audio
Brooklyn's Death By Audio teamed up with UK builder Rainger FX on a dirt pedal that works unlike most. The Amp Crash, announced August 24, holds an actual 3-watt power amp, a 2-inch speaker, and a microphone, all sealed inside the enclosure. You blend the direct amp signal against what the mic picks up off that tiny speaker.
Because air is genuinely moving inside the box, the pedal produces compression, feedback, and harmonic artifacts that a modeled circuit has to approximate. According to the companies, David Rainger brought the mic-in-a-pedal idea to Death By Audio, who then asked what would happen if it carried its own speaker too. There are onboard reverb, echo, and chorus effects, plus an external 8-ohm speaker output for running a real cab.
Street price is $395. The first batch sold out, and further orders are shipping as preorders while more enclosures are built.
Credit: Death By Audio (official)
Why it matters
Plenty of pedals chase amp-like feel through circuitry or DSP; this one gets there by actually being a miniature mic'd amp, which is a genuinely different design worth paying attention to.
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