# Reverb pedal



## Edutainment (Jan 29, 2008)

I want to get a reverb pedal for a surf rock sound. I'm thinking of the EH Holy Grail Plus, but it's a bit expensive. What would you guys suggest that's cheaper but still good (preferably with spring reverb).

EDIT: Now that I see the list price, as opposed to the musiciansfriend.com price, it's not a bit too much, it's just too much period. I could go with the Holly Grail (non Plus) I suppose.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

I have the EH Holy Grail (regular) as I like a small amount of reverb and neither of the heads I play through has reverb. Personally, I think the Verbzilla is a better pedal (though, also not inexpensive ) and has more options. Boss makes a reverb pedal also.

If you decide on the Holy Grail, after trying a few and comparing, you could PM me and we could discuss the possibilities . At least it would be less than a new one.

The Holy Grail I have works off a power supply (wall wart) and can not use batteries to power it. 


cheers

Dave


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

does danelectro have a reverb pedal? should do the trick.


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

Budda said:


> does danelectro have a reverb pedal? should do the trick.


Good idea...I think that they make one and their stuff is usually not expensive.

Dave


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## Edutainment (Jan 29, 2008)

They have one called the Spring King. It's the same price as the Holy Grail. It's not one of those little plastic ones. I've read good things about it.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Danelectro-Spring-King-Spring-Reverb?sku=151904


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## Greenbacker (Mar 29, 2007)

Digitech Digiverb! Awesome sounds out of this thing and also has a tone knob to boot! I use my RRR nowbecause it is True Bypass, but I miss those textures for sure! You can find em used for pretty cheap. One just went off of this forum for $65 shipped.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

i was on the dano site yesterday, they have the dan-echo ($90) and a 2-knob unit for $30.


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## Ripper (Jul 1, 2006)

Budda said:


> i was on the dano site yesterday, they have the dan-echo ($90) and a 2-knob unit for $30.


I've got a Dan Echo and love it. It can do a decent reverb simulation and it is a very versatile pedal, but I still wouldn't give up my Holy Grail from a reverb standpoint.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

While it is thoroughly capable of making people happy for all the right reasons, delay does *not* equal reverb. Where delay involves repetitions at a specific defined time interval, reverberation involves reflections/repeats at a variety of delay times, all occurring in parallel (think of it like 20 sonic ping-pong balls all being shot off at the same time in different directions). You can do that mechanically with a spring-reverb pan or you can do it digitally. Though there are a number of reasons for people to prefer analog pedals to digital, reverb is NOT one of them. Digital does reverb much better than analog electronics (and I do not include springs in there).

What I will note, however, is that almost any conventional analog delay pedal can do a decent job at provide a kind of "aural wash" in the background, useful in much the same way as true reverb, by simply providing some treble cut to the repeat path. What that does is to remove progressively more and more treble with each repeat, in much the same way that natural reverberant spaces tend to. Most decidedly NOT the same as reverb, but certainly much more in that direction.


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## Tom Sawyer (Mar 21, 2007)

I use a Holier Grail but if I was going to buy a cheaper reverb pedal I'd probably get the Dan Electro. Those are about the nicest I've heard in the price range your looking at.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

does the dan-echo do a good job of spring-reverb type sounds?

I am also looking for a reverb pedal, figuring i can score one of these on ebay when i have $$


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## david henman (Feb 3, 2006)

...line six verbzillas show up pretty regularly on craiglist.

highly recommended.

-dh


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Budda said:


> does the dan-echo do a good job of spring-reverb type sounds?


It's an analog delay, which means that the repeats are all at the same interval. If you set the unit for a short time-delay and turn up the regeneration to get a long decay so as to mimic reverb, you'll get a boxey sound. That's true with virtually any analog delay, and is fundamentally different from a spring or digital reverb.

The only all-analog pedal I am aware of that comes close to competent reverb is an older DOD pedal based around the MN3011 chip. This is an analog delay chip with 3328 stages instead of the 4096 one usually finds in pedals like the Boss DM-2 and such. What is most distinctive about it, however, is that it has not one output but 6 different "taps" at mathematically unrelated points (i.e., none is a multiple of any other). When Matsushita produced/released the chip, the intent was to provide an acceptable emulation of the multiple taps/reflections of true reverb, in the absence of the sort of digital technology that would have been required at that time (early 80's) and without the size and mechanical considerations of a spring. The MN3011 was never adopted by manufacturers to the extent the MN3005 or MN3007 was, and it soon disappeared. I know of only one magazine project article using it ( http://www.synthdiy.com/show/file/?id=873 ), and the only commercial products I am aware of that used it were the aforementioned DOD Reverb pedal, a number of Gallien-Kruger amps, and the legendary A/DA Stereo Tapped Delay. The latter, however, was not a reverb but rather a kind of über-chorus, so we'll ignore it for the moment.

I did populate the 3011 solid-state reverb project board noted above (including the MN3011 chip), but have yet to wire it and fire it up, so I can offer no opinion on whether it sounds like reverb or not.


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## washburned (Oct 13, 2006)

*Deals*

Twelfth Fret is having a big clearance on pedals right now....check out their site. I saw a Digiverb for about 50% off list...about 25% off online store prices. Lots of other stuff, including a Tone Bone Hot British for about $130.


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## Edutainment (Jan 29, 2008)

washburned said:


> Twelfth Fret is having a big clearance on pedals right now....check out their site. I saw a Digiverb for about 50% off list...about 25% off online store prices. Lots of other stuff, including a Tone Bone Hot British for about $130.


:banana: Sounds good, link please?


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## iggs (Apr 6, 2006)

Probably the best Reverb in a pedal out there:
http://www.axeandyoushallreceive.com/biglist.htm#doctor


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Not to take anything away from that pedal, but from all outward signs, it uses the Alesis/Wavefront digital reverb chip (see here: http://www.wavefrontsemi.com/datasheets/Wavefront_AL3201BG_DataSheet.pdf ). A good reverb, I'm told, and I have three sets of those chips that I'm waiting to hook up when time permits. I will note, however, that the same chipset is used world-wide for the "digital FX" that a lot of medium and budget-priced amps come with, some of them actually cheaper than the pedal itself is sold for. Dr. Scientist was probably correct in leaving the chorus and flanger options out since most reports indicate they are no substitute for "the real deal", but people seem pleased with the reverb algorithms.

Is it somehow a "better" reverb than the digital engine used in the Holy Grail and others? I don't think it could be. Reverb is complex enough that *any* set of algorithms is bound to leave some folks wanting even while it's as glorious as warm chocolate pudding to others.


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

GONE


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

My mistake. I know the Fab Echo uses a Princeton Technologies PT2399 digital chip (easily modded to produce as much as 350msec delay time rather than the single stock delay time), but was under the (obviously mistaken) impression that the first of the Danelectro pedals (in the heavy cast chassis) used a standard MN3205 BBD chip. As this picture illustrates - http://www.e-basteln.de/harp/Images/large_disassembly.jpg - the basis of the pedal is a 40-pin chip, which I take to be the PT2395, a digital delay chip, and a decent one. The pins for an 18-pin chip right beside it is undoubtedly the 256K DRAM chip needed by the PT2395 to provide 800ms of delay.

Though opinions vary about how effectively a digital delay can match the quality of an all-analog, my sense is that with the right filtering, it can do a helluva decent job. In his effects pedal book, Dave Hunter interviews Roger Mayer, and Mayer makes some interesting observations about digital delays. What he suggests is that the real differences between analog and digital occur during the note decay. While the signal amplitude is high, it is encoded by more bits, where once the note tapers off, there are fewer bits to encode it and you start to creep into quantization error with the last wisps of the delayed signal. Some folks would argue with that, though I would not classify myself as someone who knows enough about the state-of-the-art in a/d conversion to be able to argue staunchly one way or the other. Certainly 10 years ago, he probably would have been correct. Whether his concerns matter any more is something I'll leave to the experts.

But yes, you were absolutely correct.


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