For music fans of a certain age, gated reverb can conjure conflicted, even hostile, feelings. Though there are myriad uses, in the 1980s it was employed to drive snare drums to migraine-inducing levels in mixes. But as the Catalinbread CBX proves, gated reverb needn’t be an ice pick or bludgeon. In fact, the CBX works best as a scalpel of sorts—enabling the player to fit big reverb sounds in very confined and specific musical spaces.
The basic reverb voice of the CBX is plate-like—spectral, blooming, and vaporous. It’s a nice fit for the CBX’s functionality and makes surreal juxtapositions of big reverb and tight spaces even more striking. At first, CBX’s control set can feel elusive. But that’s the key to its surgical tunability. The lag control enables cool swelling effects, which can, in turn, be more dramatic with saturation from the preamp control and advanced mix settings—which then can be clipped and tightened by the gate. The musical possibilities made by these combinations are endless. High-gain, palm-muted, machine-gun riffing can be made extra ghostly and huge when the CBX is placed after distortion. And aspiring Kevin Shields-types looking to twist My Bloody Valentine templates can use spacious, gated sounds to lend clarity to melody and pitch-shifted overtones when the CBX is situated before overdrive or fuzz. But even mainstream producers and players seeking punch in arrangements will find many paths forward via this unusual stompbox
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