Do you think that reverb pedals change a guitar's tone and not just add reverb?

[GuyBoden]

I've been looking at Reverb Schematics and they seem to all have Caps and Resistors in the signal path, these must filter the signals high and low frequencies.

Do you think that reverb pedals change a guitar's tone and not just add reverb?


Here's the older Boss Digital Reverb circuit.

[JazzyJim]

I think they do. I think reverb itself gives "the illusion" of rolling off some highs, primarily because it makes the sound smoother (or muffled, depending on whether you like reverb!). It's the same with compressors - they may or may not have eq's or even a heavy dose of caps in the path, but they give the impression that the highs are reduced.

while reverbs have certainly moved on since the RV-3, I feel the same about modern verbs. May be in my head, may be filtering, not sure.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Doesn't sound that way on my TC Hall of Fame:



The FX Level knob controls the mix of the wet signal with the dry (true bypass) signal. I may have drunk the KoolAid, but the punching and unpunching the on button doesn't change the sound of the dry signal.

[GuyBoden]

I use a T.C Electronic studio reverb and although it's not a pedal, it certainly changes the guitar's tone. I thinking of building my own DIY reverb pedal, I've built quite a few pedals, but reverb pedals are so inexpensive to buy.

[s1track3d]

I have a Boss RV-3! (Digital Reverb/Delay) It makes the guitar sound like "Pat Metheny in the 80's", lol... (it stays in the gear closet pretty much...)

The other reverbs I have used all provide slightly different characteristics. Most do seem to add something (other than reverb) to the sound, with most it's a nice musical addition though, which is what matters to me.

The only reverb I have used which seems to "just add reverb" is the Hermida Reverb.


I have used:
Donner Surge Rotator (coloration, musical)
Electro Harmonix Holygrail nano (coloration, musical)
Malekko Chicklet Reverb (colorization - that I didn't really like, high end frequencies accented?)

I think like everything it depends on the quality/make/model. (schematic)

I have not used any of the real high end boutique stuff, like Strymon, Dr. Scientist, Jackson (Mr. Springy), etc, but I would assume they do not color the sound much.

I sometimes play without any reverb but I find people respond better when there is at least a little reverb, or maybe I play better with it on...

[jorgemg1984]

Depends... on the pedal design and the reverb algorithm. Spring revetb usually adds highs although some darken the sound. Halls tend to be dark too. The room side of the Spring Theory is the least intrusive reverb I ever tried.

Anyway if you keep the reverb at decent levels it almost won't impact your tone.. And some reverb have tone controls.

[jads57]

Use a TC Electronics HOF Mini doesn't change it or at least negatively in any way!

[Jim Soloway]

I think that older Boss pedal s so far from the contemporary pedals that it's not at all a representative sample. Enormous amounts of circuitry has disappeared from that design.

[jzucker]

There is no single answer to this. I can tell you that the topanga and the sole-mate brighten the guitar tone. I felt that the wet reverb didn't change the tone. I like the older boss RV-2 and the RV-3. I don't remember them changing the tone but it was a long time since I played through one.

My digitech digiverb doesn't change the tone.

[KirkP]

I've been looking at Reverb Schematics and they seem to all have Caps and Resistors in the signal path, these must filter the signals high and low frequencies.
Do you think that reverb pedals change a guitar's tone and not just add reverb?

The fact that there are caps and resistors in the signal path doesn't necessarily mean they have changed the frequency response. In the RV-3 the dry signal does get amplified and buffered, but I assume the intent was to keep the frequency response flat. In my RV-3 the dry signal (with the effect knob full left) seems the same as when I plug the guitar directly into the amp, which is how it should be.
Of course the guitar's tone is greatly affected by the reverb channel, especially if a dark reverb setting is selected. When the reverb is blended with the dry signal, it might create the illusion that the dry signal has gotten darker, but I don't think it has.
My main gripe about the RV-3 is that the effect level control is way too touchy at the low levels of reverb. I wish the level control had an audio taper..

[nikolozj]

First, magnetic guitar pickups absorb the vibration (waves) of strings and turn it into electric signal. This signal is pure. Electric signal goes into your pedal and the word Digital in itself means that your pure electric signal will be converted into digital code and then back to electric signal.

Inside every digital pedal there is a main digital chip. Those chips are programmed to perform tasks - like Delay effect or Reverb or Chorus or whatever... But it can not perform these tasks on electric signals it undestand only digital codes. So chip will translate your electric signal into zeros and ones and then perform the task. Then it will convert back to electric signal and put it out into your amp. It's like a computer program.

The conversion is what matters. Some do good conversions, some - don't.
However Digital Technology generally is pretty advanced today. A lot of people won't be able to tell difference between analog and digital delay, if they hear it without knowing which one is which.

[jzucker]

you're missing the most important part. Almost every digital pedal has an analog component that does not go through the digital section. That's why there's a mix control.

First, magnetic guitar pickups absorb the vibration (waves) of strings and turn it into electric signal. This signal is pure. Electric signal goes into your pedal and the word Digital in itself means that your pure electric signal will be converted into digital code and then back to electric signal.

Inside every digital pedal there is a main digital chip. Those chips are programmed to perform tasks - like Delay effect or Reverb or Chorus or whatever... But it can not perform these tasks on electric signals it undestand only digital codes. So chip will translate your electric signal into zeros and ones and then perform the task. Then it will convert back to electric signal and put it out into your amp. It's like a computer program.

The conversion is what matters. Some do good conversions, some - don't.
However Digital Technology generally is pretty advanced today. A lot of people won't be able to tell difference between analog and digital delay, if they hear it without knowing which one is which.

[scottkerr]

I chose the Bluesky because I liked the tone change. Have reverb on my Vox which I also like.

[Jazz_175]

.... the Spring Theory ....

As an aside I've just discovered the Spring Theory is out of production.
It's been replaced by the Super Spring Theory

[palindrome]

you're missing the most important part. Almost every digital pedal has an analog component that does not go through the digital section. That's why there's a mix control.

My impression has been that the more regular reverb pedals will A/D the whole signal, add more or less reverb (hence the mix control), and then D/A the whole signal.

A mix knob that actually adds reverb to a dry signal bypassing the A/D conversion seems (to me) like a feature found in more sophisticated (and expensive) pedals.

[GuyBoden]

First, magnetic guitar pickups absorb the vibration (waves) of strings and turn it into electric signal. This signal is pure. Electric signal goes into your pedal and the word Digital in itself means that your pure electric signal will be converted into digital code and then back to electric signal.

Inside every digital pedal there is a main digital chip. Those chips are programmed to perform tasks - like Delay effect or Reverb or Chorus or whatever... But it can not perform these tasks on electric signals it undestand only digital codes. So chip will translate your electric signal into zeros and ones and then perform the task. Then it will convert back to electric signal and put it out into your amp. It's like a computer program.

The conversion is what matters. Some do good conversions, some - don't.
However Digital Technology generally is pretty advanced today. A lot of people won't be able to tell difference between analog and digital delay, if they hear it without knowing which one is which.

I'm agreeing with Jack, and I thought I'd share some info from my fav Manchester based pedal designer:

"The main signal isn't digitised, so the dry signal goes through a buffer and then the reverb is mixed in at the end of the circuit, so with only the effect being digitised I don't think it should sound digital in the same way as some poor rack or pedal effects that convert everything to 1s and 0s can do. "

[jorgemg1984]

As an aside I've just discovered the Spring Theory is out of production.
It's been replaced by the Super Spring Theory

Yes but the algorithms are the same I believe... they just added a few controls and a fet preamp on the spring side.

[jzucker]

i listened to a bunch of spring theory clips and it seems to me that it sounds more like the outboard fender reverb unit (surfy). I like the BF fender reverb but frankly, i'm not tied to spring reverb. I'd rather have a good plate or hall. As an experiment, I put my digiverb in stereo in the loop of my kemper and I think I like it better than the kemper reverb. In fact, i may not need the wet reverb after all. It's good enough.

[KirkP]

"The main signal isn't digitised, so the dry signal goes through a buffer and then the reverb is mixed in at the end of the circuit, so with only the effect being digitised I don't think it should sound digital in the same way as some poor rack or pedal effects that convert everything to 1s and 0s can do. "

In the OP's RV-3 schematic, it's not clear whether the dry signal is digitized or kept digital. But it's a misconception that "converting to 1s and 0s" causes an audio signal to "sound digital". Audio digitization is a very mature technology. With appropriate bit depth and sampling rate it's not difficult to digitize a signal then bring it back to analog in its original form.
It's digital processing that causes the problems. A reverb processor must simulate all the signal paths in a room, plate or spring with with an infinite number of delayed signals bouncing back multiple times until they've faded out to the point they are inaudible.
It was very difficult to accomplish all of that in a pedal when the RV-3 came out over 15 years ago. The designers undoubtedly had to approximate the theoretically infinite number of reflected signals by a just a few return signals. Since the reverb signals must go through the process multiple times, the approximations made in the simulation become more audible with each iteration.
Those approximations are especially audible (on the RV-3) if you dial it up for 100% reverb (no dry signal) play something staccato then listen as the reverb fades to nothing. As it fades you may hear each of the individual delayed signals drop off, which is a bit unnatural. But with the effect blend set to the low level I prefer, it sounds pretty good to me.

[jzucker]

no jazz guitarist dials the reverb up to 100% mix though and I did literally hundreds of jazz gigs with an RV-2 and it was just fine with a low mix.

[palindrome]

With appropriate bit depth and sampling rate it's not difficult to digitize a signal then bring it back to analog in its original form. It's digital processing that causes the problems.

Was just going to just Like your post and leave it at that, but then wondered if the maturity of the technology has really reached the point of high-quality converters being THAT high quality in 80-bucks pedals (or, for that matter, if sample rate and bit depth is really all there is to it).

Perhaps we have reached this point, but if so, this is a very recent development. What about quality loss in loopers? (Again, this may be solved by now, but has been an issue until very recently.)

That said, my feeling is that you are right about digital processing being the more important part.

[HighSpeedSpoon]

Yes, reverb pedals change a guitar's tone too, but I would respectfully add that I'm not sure what the "so what?" is. First of all, even if a reverb pedal replicated the incoming spectrum precisely but with some delay(s) and attenuation(s), that alone would be enough to change the tone. And second, isn't the whole point of most pedals to change the tone?

All that said, I really love my Strymon Bluesky. It has great hall, plate, and spring reverbs, and enough controls to dial in exactly what I want.

[feet]

i would postulate that a good one doesn't, shouldn't and/or allows you to dial the change in and out. and if it did change my base tone in some (unpleasant) way, it would be out the door. i'm quite ok with the effect my reverb pedals do or do not have on my base tone, whatever it is or isn't.

and like jack, i prefer a plate as the go to, and the hall for more of an effect. spring lies somewhere in between for me. the rest i rarely, if ever use. i use a flint and a mini reverberator when i do, but lately, i've been playing in such a live room, i don't use one at all. natural reverb doesn't change my tone, either.

[rpjazzguitar]

My all time favorite reverb is the vintage Ampeg Reverberocket. It makes the tone darker. I assume that's the physics of the vibrating spring, since it's not perfectly flexible at every frequency.

[citizenk74]

I use reverb to bring the guitar up in the mix without radically changing the volume - kind of adds a little sonic "glow" and is best used somewhat sparingly i.e., to enhance a solo. I thus prefer amps with an on/off switch. I have been known to use echo to the same effect.