At the end of November last year - I put out an article featuring the two very first full stereo analog bbd delay pedals - The Walrus Audio Meraki, and Flower Pedals Dahlia. Shortly after that went live - my friend Olivier Armbruster of Glou-Glou fame - sent me a message to say that he was working on a number of his own Analog BBD Stereo Delays. And that has now been revealed to be 4 separate units - with 2 minor variants of control topology - featuring different BBD Chips for different Delay ...

CTC has wholly updated its White Whale All-analog Trem-Verb with a slew of extra features and modes, and increased fidelity and versatility - this surfer’s delight just got even better!

Both effects now are entirely separated internally - and each comes with 3 modes of operation - different spring combinations on the Reverb Side, and now 3 different Tremolo Modes - including a brand new Harmonic variety. You can set the relative position of the Tremolo - Pre/Post, and the Reverb’s power amp...

We all knew this was in the works - it was just a question as to when this inevitable follow-up to the Meris LVX Modular Delay would materialise - and that time is now evidently! This is another one of those supreme Sound Designer style pedals - and is somewhat reminiscent of Strymon’s NightSky ’Design-a-Reverb’ as I kind of referred to it at the time. Both have lots of hidden secondary features, parameters and functions - while the Meris Mercury X of course goes a few steps further in its ...

Since we have had 5 cool new and formidable Stereo Reverb pedals this year - it seems opportune to review the category and figure out which are the standout options and alternatives - past and present.

My own journey into Reverb started with the Strymon BigSky - which was my mainstay for a while, then Source Audio announced its new Dual-Channel Ventris and I was very keen on that - but that edition was very slow to materialise, and so I moved instead to Boss’s excellent RV-500 next.

The...

Many of us were surprised when there was no RV-200 to match its DD-200 and MD-200 siblings when the 200-Series was originally launched back over two years ago now. And plenty of us are still surprised that it has failed to materialise in the interim. I would have thought it would be obvious for Boss to want to have mid-size versions of its 500 series workstations - while there is still a gaping hole where the RV-200 should be - and Boss has nothing to directly challenge the Source Audio Ventris...

Gamechanger Audio continues to blaze a trail of innovation with yet another inspired technological evolution - this time focused on the humble spring reverb - whose popularity was reignited last year by Anasounds’ smart Elements take on the same format. Anasounds simply split out the noise generation and signal processing elements into two separate scalable boxes, while Gamechanger has evolved a whole other type of Spring Reverb.

The basic fundamentals are the same in that you ...

As I assumed per my first couple of recce’s - Spain was going to be a tricky territory to cover/feature compared to all the others that came before it - Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Greece. None of the current Spanish builders have yet attained wholly global recognition as of the moment - unlike a number of brands from the other featured countries.

Probably the most significant Spanish builder to-date has been Roberto García and his ThunderTomate brand - which shipped over 6,...

NOTE - New/Updated Feature on True Spring Tank Reverb Pedals [here]

Who does not love the slight shimmer of a tightly wound steel spring. Those Fender engineers were obviously inspired when they introduced the spring-tank reverbs to their core amps, and for many that early Fender sound is still the benchmark. Some players are still stuck in the 60’s and have to play though an authentic Fender-style amp with proper Reverb and Tremolo onboard. Others - like John Mayer, use a more ...