# Building a Shimmer Reverb Preset in the Axe-Fx II



## Guest (Dec 26, 2013)

(Why waste a good post? I did this for a sub-post on a Fractal forum thread, but thought some GC Axe-Fx'ers might enjoy this.)

To produce a really excellent sounding (in my highly-inflated opinion) shimmer reverb you need both a muti-delay block and a reverb block.

This is where the Axe-Fx II really excels over something like a simple pedal like the Strymon stuff. Not that those aren't lovely in their own rights, but they are fixed and locked to the routing and ideas of the creator. If you wanted to do anything other than the exact type of shimmer it offered: no dice. If you wanted trails going down instead of up: no dice. If you wanted it to be more delay, less reverb: no dice. It does what it does.

Not so with the Axe-Fx II. And, as Cliff says (and I whole-heartedly agree with), there's a lot to be gained from the box by just following your ears. So follow mine I did and I threw down a quick example of a shimmery reverb preset for you. It was done using 12.03b4 so you need to be running the beta 12.03 release 4 or better to use this. It uses all kinds of snazzy new stuff in that beta: the Carr Rambler amp, the Dimension-D chorus. But oh man! Sounds pretty crazy if you ask me!

The mix on this clip is much wetter than I'd probably play with, but it serves to illustrate the point of how you can concoct an excellent, shimmery reverb with minimal effort. The blocks involved in the shimmer effect are mostly at their default settings. I fixed the mix and level values on the multi-delay. And the reverb block had it's time and pre-delay settings jacked up so it'd be a huge wash of a reverb, but that's it. The other reverb is, I believe, Scott P's dark studio verb. It's there because hey, why not? We can do crazy stuff like this in the Axe-Fx II and ain't no one gonna stop us!

The routing sends the signal out of the cab block an on a parallel adventure! It's run in to the shimmer side of the patch, which is on row 1. It's run straight through the chorus and to the output for a "dry" signal on row 2 (plus a little "dry" gets mixed in to the washed out shimmer reverb block). And it's run to the simple reverb side of the patch on row 3.










How'd I arrive at that routing you might ask?

I started simple: I had a row 1 shimmer path that took signal from just before the chorus block and that was it. I felt the washed out reverb on row 1, having only delayed signal, wasn't sitting quite right. So I routed some of the post-chorus block "dry" signal up to it.

Then I felt like it was just too shimmery -- the ambience in the patch was coming solely from the shimmer stuff on row 1. So I added the third row and routed the post-chorus "dry" signal to a parallel reverb just for it. That gave it the body I was looking for and made me smile so I saved it.

Ears followed the entire way through here and nothing else.

And so you can hear how it sounds:

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/iaresee/axe-fx-ii-shimmer-reverb[/soundcloud]

And here's a patch for you to play with: http://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=2050


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## gtone (Nov 1, 2009)

I just run my Deluxe Memory Man through my Brian Duguay modded BYOC Reverb. Tweaking the DMM's knobs and using long Dwell control settings on the BYOC give me plenty of nice shimmer options without too much fuss or expense. I used to have a Yamaha half-rack reverb with some nice reverb presets that did it also by way of my Korg SDD-2000 modulated delay, but there wasn't much parameter tweakability with the Yamaha unit.


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## vadsy (Dec 2, 2010)

Love it! 
I'm a big fan of the shimmer on my Blue Sky and get called on to use it often with a band. I'd love to have the patience to play around with programming but even giving the POD HD a go I got tired quick, I imagine the sonic payoff with an Axe would be greater so time put in might be worth it. Of course I would require an Axe FX unit first.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

Sounds good Ian! I just dont know where I would use shimmer reverb. It was something I didn't know existed and was floored to find in my friend's old axe fx standard when he had it.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2013)

gtone said:


> I just run my Deluxe Memory Man through my Brian Duguay modded BYOC Reverb. Tweaking the DMM's knobs and using long Dwell control settings on the BYOC give me plenty of nice shimmer options without too much fuss or expense.


How so? I didn't know the DMM could do pitch shifts on the repeats. A key component of the "shimmer" effect is the pitch shifted repeats.

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Budda said:


> Sounds good Ian! I just dont know where I would use shimmer reverb. It was something I didn't know existed and was floored to find in my friend's old axe fx standard when he had it.


You'll hear it, unknowingly, in a lot of U2 tunes. Or tunes that have a funny organ sound as a pad behind them. They tend to be shimmer settings, just run lower in the mix and even more washed out than this sample. If you want to add some ambience to a clean piece or some keyboard type elements to it, shimmer is a great way to do it without having to have a keyboard in the band or on stage.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

I actually recognize it as being at the end of "all the small things" by blink 182 (or a different blink 182 song)


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