Reverb pedals?

[Spook410]

I have a HoF. And a couple of Strymon's (Flint and BlueSky). They're great. But for how I use reverb a cheap pedal on Amazon would work just fine. If I want ambient, I use my delay and a volume pedal.

[garybaldy]

I have a HoF. And a couple of Strymon's (Flint and BlueSky). They're great. But for how I use reverb a cheap pedal on Amazon would work just fine. If I want ambient, I use my delay and a volume pedal.

I have much experience with cheap but not so much with expensive.

[John A.]

If it doesn’t have to be a pedal, the Alesis Nanoverb sounds great and is comically cheap. It works well either in front of an amp or in a loop.

Otherwise, +1 on the RV-7, or maybe one of the Boss reverbs? The original rv-2 (which I had) didn’t sound very good, but all the subsequent ones are fine. I feel like reverb is like pizza and sex. Sometimes it’s not fantastic but it’s never bad, though, and I’d even take an RV-2 over no reverb at all.

[Cunamara]

I use the HOF2 and I'm quite happy with it. It's a poor choice if you want to do battery power; I find that it will drain a 9V alkaline battery in less than four hours. I found it was noisy when being powered by the 1Spot, I have switched to the Cioks SOL with excellent results. I am generally using the Hall reverb setting with a relatively long duration, but with the level knob set right it can be subtle. There are a lot of different reverb sounds in this thing and, as noted by others, the Tone Print facility through their app gives you three slots into which you can download other reverbs. I have done this although I can't for the life of me remember what they are.

[banjohood]

I strongly recommend a used V1 Strymon Flint, which go for just about your asking price. It sounds incredibly musical and convincing. I perform regularly, and it just always seems to fit into a mix perfectly, adding color and atmosphere without sounding effect-y. (FWIW, I play jazz at home, but gig primarily in other genres.)

Bill Frisell also uses it (or did last to my knowledge) and I believe said that if he could only have one pedal, it would be the Flint.

PLUS you get killer tremolo. I went though maybe 4 or 5 reverbs (Boss, TC, EHX) but wasn't satisfied until ponying up for the Strymon--the others just sounded artificial to me.

[BreckerFan]

I have the Catalinbread Topanga and talisman for spring and plate verb, respectively. They both are pretty simple pedals that do what they do very well. I think talisman would fit the bill for what you're after; very clean plate that can be subtle or huge.

[ruger9]

I'm late to this thread, but I've played many reverb pedals over the years. I much prefer amp spring reverb. For amps that don't have reverb, I'm currently using an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail MAX. Duke Levine uses one, good enough for Duke, good enough for me.

But if I was buying today, I'd probably get the Source Audio True Spring, unless I wanted to fiddle with a bunch of different reverbs in which case I'd get the Poly Effects Verbs pedal.

[jamesego]

You may want to see if you can find a Digitech Polara

[omphalopsychos]

Dispatch master went on sale on amazon so i ordered one to try, just so I could say I have first hand experience.

Returning it. It's just too dark and gooey for me, the trails are too long and too modulated. Obviously this is subjective and I can see why it works for players with washier and soundscapier styles (thinking rosenwinkel, moreno, hekselman, lund).

You might really like it if that's your thing.

[nelliebot]

The small UA pedals sometimes go on sale, or are offered as refrubrished for around $100. I can't think of anything that can touch them at that price.

For purely quality of sound, I prefer my Evermore to the Strymon Flint on the 80's setting, regardless of it's added advantages of lower price, slightly easier power consumption, and smaller & simpler form factor.

[Doctor Jeff]

I'm late to this thread, but I've played many reverb pedals over the years. I much prefer amp spring reverb. For amps that don't have reverb, I'm currently using an Electro-Harmonix Holy Grail MAX. Duke Levine uses one, good enough for Duke, good enough for me.

But if I was buying today, I'd probably get the Source Audio True Spring, unless I wanted to fiddle with a bunch of different reverbs in which case I'd get the Poly Effects Verbs pedal.

+1 on the Holy Grail. I have a Nano. It does one thing and does it well.

[MikeTT]

Tom Lippincott did a jazz reverb shootout:

I didn't yet try the RedPanda, but also have nostalgia for the older Lexicon Reverbs...

[omphalopsychos]

I had a context reverb (both v1 and v2). The reverb was decent, but the buffer affected the base tone too much in an unpleasant way.

[MikeTT]

Is there any currently manufactured pedal that has the Lexicon algos? There once was one by Digitec, but I'm not aware of a current in production pedal. I guess I'm still addicted to these classic reverbs.

[omphalopsychos]

The universal audio ones have them or at least very close replications. Like I said in an earlier reply the golden reverberator is great (my favorite is the lexicon chamber setting) but the pedal just takes up too much space on a gigging board.

The evermore pedal has the lexicon 224 room and hall algos.

[58flame]

DigiTech Polara.

[Herbie]

I need reverb pedal on my board only when I play with my Tweed Deluxe clone. My Deluxe Reverb clone and two Quilter TB202 combos have good enough reverbs on them.

For me the best reverb pedal is that with the least amount of knobs and the best emulation of spring reverb. But I think that the spring reverb itself tries to emulate some kind of hall, so I am not a Fender-spring-purist.

At the moment I have a three knob DIY reverb, which has three position switch (spring, hall & shimmer) and has great spacey opportunities. It was not expensive (~60€) and it is size of a ”normal” fx pedal.

But I am planning to move to a smaller pedalboard so the Tone City Tiny Spring with only one knob has caught my attention. Has anybody tried or used it? Good reverb? Tone suck? Too trebly? Durability?


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[Little Jay]

I honestly can’t hear a difference between the on board reverb of my Twin Reverb amp and my Boss FRV-1 pedal. I use the pedal on all my amps that don’t have on board reverb (Tweed Champ, 50ies/60ies Framus and Dynacord tube amps).

[drbhrb]

I have a JHS series 3 reverb and a Keely Caverns (which does delay and reverb) on the way. Black Friday sales were tempting

[stevo58]

I use on-board reverb if the amp has it. If it doesn’t, I still have a V1 Flint, an FRV1, and a ReVibe I built.

But generally, when I’m using my favorite amp (tweed pro clone I built with a JBL K130) I don’t bother. If I bother, I use the Flint, because I’m a tremolo junkie. If I just wanted reverb, the FRV would be fine. The Revibe sounds best, but it’s another biggish piece of gear that runs the risk of ground loops, so it doesn’t get out much.

My experience with TC Electronics would lead me to buy a HOF if I were looking for a new pedal.

Reverb is the only guitar effect that we hear regularly in the natural world, and it’s a fairly complex thing. This means you are highly critical of it, whether you know it or not. So if your goal is a “natural” reverb, you better listen closely when you test, because that doesn’t really exist. Reverb pedals duplicate other approximations of reverb, spring, plate, whatever (haven’t found any oil pan modelers yet, that would be cool); so maybe if you grew up listening to Dick Dale (or who/whatever), that’s what you are looking for whether you know it or not.

In my opinion if you are just looking for a little low-level ambience you will be happy with any decent pedal. I bought the Flint because at the time it was the only generally-available harmonic vibrato pedal around. The reverb is good, but I just leave it on the standalone tank and am happy with it. If reverb were a serious, indispensable part of my oh-so-boss sound, I’d use the Revibe.