It seems my reverb needs are changing. Please forgive the background but hopefully it’ll make the sonic journey make sense and will ring a bell or two:
For several years I was dragging around a proper tube reverb unit and getting a wonderful tone with lots of admiring oohs and ahhs from fellow guitarists, that was until I picked up a used boss frv1 from here and found it did everything the head did. Cue the sale of the head and several years of lighter lifting and one less thing to collect from the car each show.
However, the times are a changing and so are my needs. I now own a Princeton Reverb so have all that natural splashy springy goodness if I want or need it and I find I am increasingly intrigued by the possibilities or shimmer reverbs and maybe even reverse reverbs.
It seems logical therefore to move the frv1 on and with the proceeds purchase a polara or rv6. I’m not in the bank balance zone of being able to stretch to a big sky or blue sky unfortunately, so pedals around the value of the boss are the only possible option -though with a little in the PayPal I maybe able to trade towards a used blue sky if one came up cheap enough.
So what do you recommend guys, any pedals I’m missing, any reliability issues I should be aware of before I purchase? What are your experiences and what did you go for and why?
Comments
https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_udlo&_udhi&_ftrt=901&_ftrv=1&_sabdlo&_sabdhi&_samilow&_samihi&_sop=12&_dmd=1&_ipg=50&_fosrp=1&LH_Complete=1&_nkw=boss frv-1&rt=nc&LH_PrefLoc=1&_trksid=p2045573.m1684
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
It’s just the indecisive decision of what the devil to go for.
Seriously - accept your good luck and sell it for the going rate, and don't have any moral doubts. If someone wants to pay that much it's up to them - it's quite likely that if you sell it too cheap the buyer will just flip it for the profit anyway.
(And no, I'm not in the market for one now .)
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Now this reverb issue, what do you recommend guys?
At least I was lucky that I got the FDR-1 when they were cheap too - they've also gone up, if not quite as much.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
There’s the polara again, keeps getting good mentions.
Just YouTubing blue sky clips...might have to just save up and do it.
That leaves the polara, oceans 11 and blue sky. Having had a glance the blue sky looks more user friendly than the Neunaber and is in the same ball park pricewise.
for a clean and crystalline all-rounder they have the rv7 stereo. for late 1960s ampy reverb vibe they have the polara, for dark ambient they have the supernatural. they do a few others but they are the three i have either owned or borrowed long-term, so can speak personally of their merits.
line 6 verbzilla is pretty decent too, but long out of production and getting pricey used for what they are. £60 good, but not £100.
behringer do a bang on clone of the zilla but i have heard complaints of noise and buffer issues.
personally i haven't noticed this, so it maybe some and not others, or a dirty signal corrupting the power supply. i've only used mine at home, not in venues with crap circuitry.
plus they are plastic. for a bedroom demo maker like me that's not an issue, but if you are playing out maybe a consideration.
another interesting one is the boss re20 space echo thing. it's a bit overblown (huge box and two pedals) for what it does, but sounds pretty good and actually has some of the charcter of the space echo. worth looking out for if you have a boss affection.
nux have just released a pedal that plays with the black green space echo graphics and pretends to be of that ilk, but it sounds to me like any other digital reverb-echo-delay. like the d-seed etc. dry and superclean but lacking character.
but it has a cool trick in that you can link it to your computer and tweak the parameters, then save to the pedal. for fancy pedals that's normal, but for a sub £50 pedal that's quite a lot of tweakability for pocket money.
so while demos sound uninspiring, you may well be able to go radically off piste via the gui options. plus the potential for future firmware upgrades means it may get better in time.