Best reverb pedal

thanks good to know, shopping now

The Hall of Fame has a beautiful Cathedral sound, and I hate to not have it; maybe I can find the same on the Boss if I search. The Boss has some normal, useful reverbs, but what sold me is the Shimmer - which, oddly enough, I don't even consider a reverb. It's beautiful, harmonic, very musical, weird, and emotional - but you wouldn't use it as a straight 'reverb' effect. My reverb journey is not over, but the Boss has a lot of goodies, IMO.
 
I've been on a somewhat hunt for a digital reverb pedal to use when just playing live and jamming.
While I still have my Sole-Mate spring reverb unit, I was wanting more variety and more studio quality reverb, since whenever I record, I'll usually put one of my racked reverb units into the cue mix, including for the guitar stuff, and it's always much richer than any spring reverb plus I can really control the amount.
One of the issues I have with a lot of reverb and delay pedals is that the effect goes from nothing to very obvious, very fast...:eek:
I'm always trying to have the reverb (and especially delays), be more like a "shadow" to my dry guitar signal...not the obvious BOINK! :)

So anyway...I recently picked up three digital reverb pedals to try out...the Mr. Black Supermoon, the Earth Quaker Devices Ghost Echo and the Digitech Polara.

The Supermoon has a cool "Sway" feature, but the reverb flavor was just one kind, and you then adjust the decay. Not a bad pedal, but not quite what I was after...though that "Sway" option is very unique and it can have some special case uses.

The Ghost Echo isn't really an "echo/delay"...as one might think, it is a reverb, and it has an Attack knob that will let you tailor the reverb from soft to more percussive, which then sounds like a combination reverb/delay effect. Overall it sounded pretty good...but I was still looking for more reverb flavors.

The Polara was my most recent purchase, and I have to say, it's got more reverb flavors than the other two put together...though the other two would be great in specific situation. The Polar reverb algorithms are from Lexicon, so there's some decent quality to them...and you have 7 reverb flavors...Room, Plate, Hall, Reverse, Modulated, "Halo" and Spring...and the Polara also gives you Tails on/off switch.
Also...of the three, the Polara sounded and worked best in the FX loop of the amp...the other two seem to sound better used in front of the amp's input.

I think right now I'm going to ride with the Polara for awhile...but I will get back to the other two to do some more comparisons in different setups...and may ultimately use two or even three reverb pedal for a live/jamming rig....I just want to experiment with some different signal path combinations.

There are some more involved reverb pedals out there for sure...but I was looking for a small, minimalist reverb pedal, and the Polara just makes it into that category, IMO....along with the other two. I mean, I don't want to have to dial in a half-dozen or more knobs/switches for a reverb pedal. :D

For recording/studio use...I'll still always opt for one my racked reverb units for use in cue mixes when tracking and also later on when mixing, along with some of my reverb plugins.
 
I know it's probably out of the budget....
But the Strymon blue sky is a great reverb. I've used it as a pedal, and as an insert device on my console. It has great sounds and is quiet enough to use as a studio processor....to the point where I wish they made a rack version of it. :D
 
I'm going with an RV-6 this month. I have boss pedals from the 80s, they are built shit brick tough and are easy to mod.

However the HOF 2 looks good.

The Blue Sky or even the Big Sky looks great but FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK that price. All this shit is digital anyway and I don't play live so 20 presets is useless.

I'm also interested in trying out the new EH model that just came out that competes price wise with the HOF 2 and RV-6 but I haven't seen one in a store yet.

Since the RV-6 and HOF 2 can be purchased used, that's probably what I'm going with. The HOF 2's usb port is what keeps me from wanting to go with it (I hate tech that's designed to be obsolete down the road and toneprint will someday be obsolete, although I know the pedal won't technically be).

And I've heard the spring reverb setting is garbage on both so I don't really care either way. The demo of the EH oceans 11 sound pretty good as well though.

IDK, thinking out loud. I'm pretty sure I'm set on the RV-6 though.
 
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