RatingsPros:Superb sound quality. Expressive realtime control. Vast tonal range. Cons: Mono output only. No software editor. Street: $349
eventideaudio.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value:  |
You can approach Eventide’s latest stompbox two ways: If you dive in without consulting the documentation, you’ll encounter a straightforward delay pedal with magnificently warm and musical sounding echoes. If you go by the book—pamphlet, actually—and plumb the Rose’s hidden features and secondary knob functions, you’ll uncover a powerful processor capable of many unexpected sounds.
Whether you dive deep or only submerge a toe, you’ll revel in the Rose’s stellar sound quality, which is on par with Eventide’s flagship processors. The delays have incredible detail and body. They sound glorious until the last repetition fades into silence. (The quietest note decays are the acid test for delay and reverb effects.) There’s no bleating or glitching, even in the face of huge pitch shifts. These warm sounds interact beautifully with your dry signal, and they don’t get tiring over time. This thing sounds great.
Analog by Any Other Name
The word “analog” appears seven times on the Rose’s product page, despite the fact that this is a digital delay. According to Eventide, the dry signal path is all analog (nothing unusual/special about that), and some functions, such as the feedback return and low-pass filter, employ analog circuitry, not the DSP chip. Still, it’s hard to mistake this for analog delay. There’s no noise. There’s no attempt to replicate the audio degradation inherent in all analog delays—here the tenth echo repetition sounds as hi-fi as the first. Yet the Rose nails what many guitarists love about analog delay, producing warm, inviting tones that sit prettily alongside your dry signal. Many players would probably choose the Rose over a true analog delay in a blind listening test.
This China-made pedal is also exceptionally well built. The steel chassis is thicker than the pedalboard norm. The jack and switch hardware is well above average quality. The knobs are slightly recessed to prevent them from shearing off at the posts. Not to mention, the Rose is pretty. An LED in the form of a low-relief rose pulses in tempo against the purple top plate. The Rose has no battery compartment, and a 9V power supply is included. A side-mounted USB jack permits MIDI control and software updates.
Simplicity vs. Sophistication
Many of the Rose’s core features are intuitive. The delay time, wet/dry mix, and feedback controls are straightforward. There’s LFO modulation with rate and depth controls. You can tap in delay times via the hotswitch. The filter knob trims highs for warmer faux-analog tones. Those are the only controls some players need, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The results are splendid. To dive deeper, you must keep the instructions handy or do some memorizing. If you’re cool with that, the rewards are legion.
The Rose can store five settings in memory. (There’s no software editor/librarian, so you can’t save patches. Once you overwrite a patch, it’s gone.) You can step through saved presets with a switch connected to the single expression input jack. (Controller pedals and switches are not included.) Actually, you can connect up to three switches through that one TRS jack. You can also use connected switches or the built-in hotswitch to tap in tempos, pause or reset LFO modulation, and trigger infinite hold repeats. You can also toggle between two states per preset. Two states? Yup. Each preset slot can store two independent settings, and you can toggle between them via an external footswitch.
Heavy Pedal
It gets better, and sometimes more intense, when you connect a controller pedal. That way you can morph continuously between A/B states. Since a preset’s A and B settings are completely independent, that means you can control literally any parameter in real time. These A/B morphs can be subtle—perhaps just a slight variation in delay time to create delicate tape-wobble effects. But even if you alter many parameters simultaneously, there’s nothing smeary or cheap-sounding about the transitional states. The detail is superb.
Available delay times range from a fraction of a second to nearly a minute. A dedicated delay multiplier control toggles between short and long delays. Minimal delay times provide a wealth of chorus/flanging/vibrato tones. You can even flip the phase of the wet signal for thinner, comb-filtered effects. Reverse delay is available at longer delay settings, and the sound quality is superb. (Come to think of it, that would make an awesome morph: from a taut, heavily phase-cancelled chorus sound to a long, gooey reverse delay.)
The Verdict
Whether you seek delay basics or fresh new sounds, the Rose’s rich musicality will serve you well. The audio quality is fantastic. The build quality is excellent. The realtime control options are vast. Looking for a pedalboard echo with great range and studio quality sound? Don’t, uh, delay.
