Plus! December Premier Gear Award Winners!
Read the full reviews on the pages indicated below!
1. Peavey Invective.MH — $699 street, peavey.com
2. Chase Bliss Dark World — $349 street, chaseblissaudio.com
3. Comins CGS-16 — $2,399 street, cominsguitars.com
4. Ernie Ball Music Man Short-Scale StingRay — $1,999 street, music-man.com
5. EBS MicroBass 3 — $349 street, ebssweden.com
Keith Urban’s first instrument was a ukulele at age 4. When he started learning guitar two years later, he complained that it made his fingers hurt. Eventually, he came around. As did the world.
He’s in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He’s won 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Awards, four American Music Awards, and racked up BMI Country Awards for 25 different singles.
He’s been a judge on American Idol and The Voice. In conjunction with Yamaha, he has his own brand of affordably priced Urban guitars and amps, and he has posted beginner guitar lessons on YouTube. His 2014 Academy of Country Music Award-winning video for “Highways Don’t Care” featured Tim McGraw and Keith’s former opening act, Taylor Swift. Add his marriage to fellow Aussie, the actress Nicole Kidman, and he’s seen enough red carpet to cover a football field.
Significantly, his four Grammys were all for Country Male Vocal Performance. A constant refrain among newcomers is, “and he’s a really good guitar player,” as if by surprise or an afterthought. Especially onstage, his chops are in full force. There are country elements, to be sure, but rock, blues, and pop influences like Mark Knopfler are front and center.
Unafraid to push the envelope, 2020’s The Speed of Now Part 1 mixed drum machines, processed vocals, and a duet with Pink with his “ganjo”—an instrument constructed of a 6-string guitar neck on a banjo body—and even a didgeridoo. It, too, shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Country chart and climbed to No. 7 on the pop chart.
His new release, High, is more down-to-earth, but is not without a few wrinkles. He employs an EBow on “Messed Up As Me” and, on “Wildfire,” makes use of a sequencerreminiscent of ZZ Top’s “Legs.” Background vocals in “Straight Lines” imitate a horn section, and this time out he duets on “Go Home W U” with rising country star Lainey Wilson. The video for “Heart Like a Hometown” is full of home movies and family photos of a young Urban dwarfed by even a 3/4-size Suzuki nylon-string.
Born Keith Urbahn (his surname’s original spelling) in New Zealand, his family moved to Queensland, Australia, when he was 2. He took up guitar at 6, two years after receiving his beloved ukulele. He released his self-titled debut album in 1991 for the Australian-only market, and moved to Nashville two years later. It wasn’t until ’97 that he put out a group effort, fronting the Ranch, and another self-titled album marked his American debut as a leader, in ’99. It eventually went platinum—a pattern that’s become almost routine.
The 57-year-old’s celebrity and wealth were hard-earned and certainly a far cry from his humble beginnings. “Australia is a very working-class country, certainly when I was growing up, and I definitely come from working-class parents,” he details. “My dad loved all the American country artists, like Johnny Cash, Haggard, Waylon. He didn’t play professionally, but before he got married he played drums in a band, and my grandfather and uncles all played instruments.
One of Urban’s biggest influences as a young guitar player was Mark Knopfler, but he was also mesmerized by lesser-known session musicians such as Albert Lee, Ian Bairnson, Reggie Young, and Ray Flacke. Here, he’s playing a 1950 Broadcaster once owned by Waylon Jennings that was a gift from Nicole Kidman, his wife.
“For me, it was a mix of that and Top 40 radio, which at the time was much more diverse than it is now. You would just hear way more genres, and Australia itself had its own, what they call Aussie pub rock—very blue-collar, hard-driving music for the testosterone-fueled teenager. Grimy, sweaty, kind of raw themes.”
A memorable event happened when he was 7. “My dad got tickets for the whole family to see Johnny Cash. He even bought us little Western shirts and bolo ties. It was amazing.”
But the ukulele he was gifted a few years earlier, at the age of 4, became a constant companion. “I think to some degree it was my version of the stuffed animal, something that was mine, and I felt safe with it. My dad said I would strum it in time to all the songs on the radio, and he told my mom, ‘He’s got rhythm. I wonder what a good age is for him to learn chords.’ My mom and dad ran a little corner store, and a lady named Sue McCarthy asked if she could put an ad in the window offering guitar lessons. They said, ‘If you teach our kid for free, we’ll put your ad in the window.’”
Yet, guitar didn’t come without problems. “With the guitar, my fingers hurt like hell,” he laughs, “and I started conveniently leaving the house whenever the guitar teacher would show up. Typical kid. I don’t wanna learn, I just wanna be able to do it. It didn’t feel like any fun. My dad called me in and went, ‘What the hell? The teacher comes here for lessons. What’s the problem?’ I said I didn’t want to do it anymore. He just said, ‘Okay, then don’t do it.’ Kind of reverse psychology, right? So I just stayed with it and persevered. Once I learned a few chords, it was the same feeling when any of us learn how to be moving on a bike with two wheels and nobody holding us up. That’s what those first chords felt like in my hands.”
Keith Urban's Gear
Urban has 13 Country Music Association Awards, nine CMT video awards, eight ARIA Awards, and four Grammys to his name—the last of which are all for Best Country Male Vocal Performance.
Guitars
For touring:
- Maton Diesel Special
- Maton EBG808TE Tommy Emmanuel Signature
- 1957 Gibson Les Paul Junior, TV yellow
- 1959 Gibson ES-345 (with Varitone turned into a master volume)
- Fender 40th Anniversary Tele, “Clarence”
- Two first-generation Fender Eric Clapton Stratocasters (One is black with DiMarzio Area ’67 pickups, standard tuning. The other is pewter gray, loaded with Fralin “real ’54” pickups, tuned down a half-step.)
- John Bolin Telecaster (has a Babicz bridge with a single humbucker and a single volume control. Standard tuning.)
- PRS Paul’s Guitar (with two of their narrowfield humbuckers. Standard tuning.)
- Yamaha Keith Urban Acoustic Guitar (with EMG ACS soundhole pickups)
- Deering “ganjo”
Amps
- Mid-’60s black-panel Fender Showman (modified by Chris Miller, with oversized transformers to power 6550 tubes; 130 watts)
- 100-watt Dumble Overdrive Special (built with reverb included)
- Two Pacific Woodworks 1x12 ported cabinets (Both are loaded with EV BlackLabel Zakk Wylde signature speakers and can handle 300 watts each.)
Effects
- Two Boss SD-1W Waza Craft Super Overdrives with different settings
- Mr. Black SuperMoon Chrome
- FXengineering RAF Mirage Compressor
- Ibanez TS9 with Tamura Mod
- Boss BD-2 Blues Driver
- J. Rockett Audio .45 Caliber Overdrive
- Pro Co RAT 2
- Radial Engineering JX44 (for guitar distribution)
- Fractal Audio Axe-Fx XL+ (for acoustic guitars)
- Two Fractal Audio Axe-Fx III (one for electric guitar, one for bass)
- Bricasti Design Model 7 Stereo Reverb Processor
- RJM Effect Gizmo (for pedal loops)
(Note: All delays, reverb, chorus, etc. is done post amp. The signal is captured with microphones first then processed by Axe-Fx and other gear.)
- Shure Axient Digital Wireless Microphone System
Strings & Picks
- D’Addario NYXL (.011–.049; electric)
- D’Addario EJ16 (.012–.053; acoustics)
- D’Addario EJ16, for ganjo (.012–.053; much thicker than a typical banjo strings)
- D’Addario 1.0 mm signature picks
He vividly remembers the first song he was able to play after “corny songs like ‘Mama’s little baby loves shortnin’ bread.’” He recalls, “There was a song I loved by the Stylistics, ‘You Make Me Feel Brand New.’ My guitar teacher brought in the sheet music, so not only did I have the words, but above them were the chords. I strummed the first chord, and went, [sings E to Am] ‘My love,’ and then minor, ‘I'll never find the words, my,’ back to the original chord, ‘love.’ Even now, I get covered in chills thinking what it felt like to sing and put that chord sequence together.”
After the nylon-string Suzuki, he got his first electric at 9. “It was an Ibanez copy of a Telecaster Custom—the classic dark walnut with the mother-of-pearl pickguard. My first Fender was a Stratocaster. I wanted one so badly. I’d just discovered Mark Knopfler, and I only wanted a red Strat, because that’s what Knopfler had. And he had a red Strat because of Hank Marvin. All roads lead to Hank!”
He clarifies, “Remember a short-lived run of guitar that Fender did around 1980–’81, simply called ‘the Strat’? I got talked into buying one of those, and the thing weighed a ton. Ridiculously heavy. But I was just smitten when it arrived. ‘Sultans of Swing’ was the first thing I played on it. ‘Oh my god! I sound a bit like Mark.’”
“Messed Up As Me” has some licks reminiscent of Knopfler. “I think he influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player. ‘Tunnel of Love,’ ‘Love over Gold,’ ‘Telegraph Road,’ the first Dire Straits album, and Communique. I was spellbound by Mark’s touch, tone, and melodic choice every time.”
Other influences are more obscure. “There were lots of session guitar players whose solos I was loving, but had no clue who they were,” he explains. “A good example was Ian Bairnson in the Scottish band Pilot and the Alan Parsons Project. It was only in the last handful of years that I stumbled upon him and did a deep dive, and realized he played the solo on ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Eye in the Sky’ by Alan Parsons, ‘It’s Magic’ and ‘January’ by Pilot—all these songs that spoke to me growing up. I also feel like a lot of local-band guitar players are inspirations—they certainly were to me. They didn’t have a name, the band wasn’t famous, but when you’re 12 or 13, watching Barry Clough and guys in cover bands, it’s, ‘Man, I wish I could play like that.’”
On High, Urban keeps things song-oriented, playing short and economical solos.
In terms of country guitarists, he nods, “Again, a lot of session players whose names I didn’t know, like Reggie Young. The first names I think would be Albert Lee and Ray Flacke, whose chicken pickin’ stuff on the Ricky Skaggs records became a big influence. ‘How is he doing that?’”
Flacke played a role in a humorous juxtaposition. “I camped out to see Iron Maiden,” Urban recounts. “They’d just put out Number of the Beast, and I was a big fan. I was 15, so my hormones were raging. I’d been playing country since I was 6, 7, 8 years old. But this new heavy metal thing is totally speaking to me. So I joined a heavy metal band called Fractured Mirror, just as their guitar player. At the same time, I also discovered Ricky Skaggs and Highways and Heartaches. What is this chicken pickin’ thing? One night I was in the metal band, doing a Judas Priest song or Saxon. They threw me a solo, and through my red Strat, plugged into a Marshall stack that belonged to the lead singer, I shredded this high-distortion, chicken pickin’ solo. The lead singer looked at me like, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I got fired from the band.”
Although at 15 he “floated around different kinds of music and bands,” when he was 21 he saw John Mellencamp. “He’d just put out Lonesome Jubilee. I’d been in bands covering ‘Hurts So Good,' ‘Jack & Diane,’ and all the early shit. This record had fiddle and mandolin and acoustic guitars, wall of electrics, drums—the most amazing fusion of things. I saw that concert, and this epiphany happened so profoundly. I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. That’s what John did. I’m not gonna think about genre; I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’
“Of course, getting to Nashville with that recipe wasn’t going to fly in 1993,” he laughs. “Took me another seven-plus years to really start getting some traction in that town.”
Urban’s main amp today is a Dumble Overdrive Reverb, which used to belong to John Mayer. He also owns a bass amp that Alexander Dumble built for himself.
Photo by Jim Summaria
When it comes to “crossover” in country music, one thinks of Glen Campbell, Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton’s more commercial singles like “Two Doors Down.” Regarding the often polarizing subject and, indeed, what constitutes country music, it’s obvious that Urban has thought a lot—and probably been asked a lot—about the syndrome. The Speed of Now Part 1 blurs so many lines, it makes Shania Twain sound like Mother Maybelle Carter. Well, almost.
“I can’t speak for any other artists, but to me, it’s always organic,” he begins. “Anybody that’s ever seen me play live would notice that I cover a huge stylistic field of music, incorporating my influences, from country, Top 40, rock, pop, soft rock, bluegrass, real country. That’s how you get songs like ‘Kiss a Girl’—maybe more ’70s influence than anything else.”
“I think [Mark Knopfler] influenced a huge amount of my fingerpicking and melodic choices. I devoured those records more than any other guitar player.”
Citing ’50s producers Chet Atkins and Owen Bradley, who moved the genre from hillbilly to the more sophisticated countrypolitan, Keith argues, “In the history of country music, this is exactly the same as it has always been. Patsy Cline doing ‘Walking After Midnight’ or ‘Crazy’; it ain’t Bob Wills. It ain’t Hank Williams. It’s a new sound, drawing on pop elements. That’s the 1950s, and it has never changed. I’ve always seen country like a lung, that expands outwards because it embraces new sounds, new artists, new fusions, to find a bigger audience. Then it feels, ‘We’ve lost our way. Holy crap, I don’t even know who we are,’ and it shrinks back down again. Because a purist in the traditional sense comes along, whether it be Ricky Skaggs or Randy Travis. The only thing that I think has changed is there’s portals now for everything, which didn’t used to exist. There isn’t one central control area that would yell at everybody, ‘You’ve got to bring it back to the center.’ I don’t know that we have that center anymore.”
Stating his position regarding the current crop of talent, he reflects, “To someone who says, ‘That’s not country music,’ I always go, “‘It’s not your country music; it’s somebody else’s country music.’ I don’t believe anybody has a right to say something’s not anything. It’s been amazing watching this generation actually say, ‘Can we get back to a bit of purity? Can we get real guitars and real storytelling?’ So you’ve seen the explosion of Zach Bryan and Tyler Childers who are way purer than the previous generation of country music.”
Seen performing here in 2003, Urban is celebrated mostly for his songwriting, but is also an excellent guitarist.
Photo by Steve Trager/Frank White Photo Agency
As for the actual recording process, he notes, “This always shocks people, but ‘Chattahoochee’ by Alan Jackson is all drum machine. I write songs on acoustic guitar and drum machine, or drum machine and banjo. Of course, you go into the studio and replace that with a drummer. But my very first official single, in 1999, was ‘It’s a Love Thing,’ and it literally opens with a drum loop and an acoustic guitar riff. Then the drummer comes in. But the loop never goes away, and you hear it crystal clear. I haven’t changed much about that approach.”
On the road, Urban utilizes different electrics “almost always because of different pickups—single-coil, humbucker, P-90. And then one that’s tuned down a half-step for a few songs in half-keys. Tele, Strat, Les Paul, a couple of others for color. I’ve got a John Bolin guitar that I love—the feel of it. It’s a Tele design with just one PAF, one volume knob, no tone control. It’s very light, beautifully balanced—every string, every fret, all the way up the neck. It doesn’t have a lot of tonal character of its own, so it lets my fingers do the coloring. You can feel the fingerprints of Billy Gibbons on this guitar. It’s very Billy.”
“I looked at the stage and thought, ‘Whoa! I get it. You take all your influences and make your own thing. I’m gonna take all the things I love and find my way.’”
Addressing his role as the collector, “or acquirer,” as he says, some pieces have quite a history. “I haven’t gone out specifically thinking, ‘I’m missing this from the collection.’ I feel really lucky to have a couple of very special guitars. I got Waylon Jennings’ guitar in an auction. It was one he had all through the ’70s, wrapped in the leather and the whole thing. In the ’80s, he gave it to Reggie Young, who owned it for 25 years or so and eventually put it up for auction. My wife wanted to give it to me for my birthday. I was trying to bid on it, and she made sure that I couldn’t get registered! When it arrived, I discovered it’s a 1950 Broadcaster—which is insane. I had no idea. I just wanted it because I’m a massive Waylon fan, and I couldn’t bear the thought of that guitar disappearing overseas under somebody’s bed, when it should be played.
“I also have a 1951 Nocaster, which used to belong to Tom Keifer in Cinderella. It’s the best Telecaster I’ve ever played, hands down. It has the loudest, most ferocious pickup, and the wood is amazing.”
YouTube
Urban plays a Gibson SG here at the 2023 CMT Music Awards. Wait until the end to see him show off his shred abilities.
Other favorites include “a first-year Strat, ’54, that I love, and a ’58 goldtop. I also own a ’58 ’burst, but prefer the goldtop; it’s just a bit more spanky and lively. I feel abundantly blessed with the guitars I’ve been able to own and play. And I think every guitar should be played, literally. There’s no guitar that’s too precious to be played.”
Speaking of precious, there are also a few Dumble amps that elicit “oohs” and “aahs.” “Around 2008, John Mayer had a few of them, and he wanted to part with this particular Overdrive Special head. When he told me the price, I said, ‘That sounds ludicrous.’ He said, ‘How much is your most expensive guitar?’ It was three times the value of the amp. He said, ‘So that’s one guitar. What amp are you plugging all these expensive guitars into?’ I was like, ‘Sold. I guess when you look at it that way.’ It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
“It’s just glorious. It actually highlighted some limitations in some guitars I never noticed before.”
Keith also developed a relationship with the late Alexander Dumble. “We emailed back and forth, a lot of just life stuff and the beautifully eccentric stuff he was known for. His vocabulary was as interesting as his tubes and harmonic understanding. My one regret is that he invited me out to the ranch many times, and I was never able to go. Right now, my main amp is an Overdrive Reverb that also used to belong to John when he was doing the John Mayer Trio. I got it years later. And I have an Odyssey, which was Alexander’s personal bass amp that he built for himself. I sent all the details to him, and he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my amp.’”
The gearhead in Keith doesn’t even mind minutiae like picks and strings. “I’ve never held picks with the pointy bit hitting the string. I have custom picks that D’Addario makes for me. They have little grippy ridges like on Dunlops and Hercos, but I have that section just placed in one corner. I can use a little bit of it on the string, or I can flip it over. During the pandemic, I decided to go down a couple of string gauges. I was getting comfortable on .009s, and I thought, ‘Great. I’ve lightened up my playing.’ Then the very first gig, I was bending the crap out of them. So I went to .010s, except for a couple of guitars that are .011s.”
As with his best albums, High is song-oriented; thus, solos are short and economical. “Growing up, I listened to songs where the guitar was just in support of that song,” he reasons. “If the song needs a two-bar break, and then you want to hear the next vocal section, that’s what it needs. If it sounds like it needs a longer guitar section, then that’s what it needs. There’s even a track called ‘Love Is Hard’ that doesn’t have any solo. It’s the first thing I’ve ever recorded in my life where I literally don’t play one instrument. Eren Cannata co-wrote it [with Shane McAnally and Justin Tranter], and I really loved the demo with him playing all the instruments. I loved it so much I just went with his acoustic guitar. I’m that much in service of the song.”
All clips recorded direct into Avid Mbox into Logic X.
Clip 1: [’84 Yamaha BB 3000S - neck pickup soloed] Lo gain distortion with compression at 10 o'clock, blend at 1 o'clock, 2k boosted at 3 o'clock on both channels, tone and drive at 2 o'clock, character switch engaged, and deep switch engaged.
Clip 2: [Spector Euro 4 LX with both pickups at full volume.] Hi gain distortion with compression at 10 o'clock, blend at 1 o'clock, 2k boosted at 5 o'clock on dirty channel, tone and drive at 11 o'clock, character switch engaged, and deep switch engaged.
Clip 3: [Sadowsky Vintage reverse PJ 5 in active mode with both pickups at full volume.] Clean channel only with 180hz boosted at 2 o'cloc and character switch on.
RatingsPros:Versatile sounds. Clear layout. Dual XLRs. Channel blending. Cons: No cab sim. Street: $349 EBS MicroBass 3 ebssweeden.com
| Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
Sweden’s EBS has a rich, 30-plus-years history of innovation as a purveyor of hi-fi bass tones. Players like Marcus Miller and Stanley Clark helped put EBS on the map, and when the company’s HD350 was introduced in 2001, the amp (now called the HD360) quickly became a favorite among slappers and modern gospel players alike for its squeaky clean highs and tight, modern lows. Meanwhile, EBS was determined to also be known for a wide variety of tones, including midrange-forward hard rock and metal, and the model that carried the rock torch for the brand was the Fafner II. Why all this reminiscing about two classic Viking warships in the sea of bass amps? The EBS MicroBass 3. It’s the company’s new all-analog floor unit that combines the characteristics of both amps into a small, road-ready enclosure.
Nordic Know-how
Unpacking the MicroBass 3 from its black, rune-themed box, I was immediately struck by its build quality. The housing is solid, and the controls have a confidence-inducing amount of resistance at first turn. Pedals with lower-resistance knobs will often come out of a gig bag with the previous show’s settings altered, so it’s a feature I always appreciate.
Many bassists, including me, love a simple, SVT-style layout. If presented with too many controls, we can be slightly pensive about a new piece of gear. The MicroBass 3 has a plethora of controls, but they are laid out in a very concise and efficient—dare I say very Scandinavian—way that almost makes the owner’s manual unnecessary.
The first feature that grabbed my attention is the pair of XLR outputs. One is a designated post out at all times, while the other can be a completely unaffected pre out or a second post out, determined by a small button next to the output. (Why this isn’t standard on every bass preamp/DI designed for professional use is beyond me.) Other features on the sides of the unit include a separate input for the drive channel only, serial on/off switch for series mode, an aux-in for playing along to music, a headphone out, and an effects loop. The effects return can be sent to the FOH or mixer in stereo by pushing the button located to its right. Next to the effects loop is the mute footswitch, which engages the onboard tuner that displays on the small LCD screen.
Ebony and Ivory
The MicroBass 3 houses two channels which can be run in parallel or series: a dirty channel (Fafner II) and clean channel (HD 360). The clean channel’s controls are assigned an angelic shade of white, while the distortion channel, of course, is black. (The color scheme is actually incredibly helpful.) Located underneath the two rows of channel controls are a character switch for mid-scooping and a bright switch that adds hi-fi sheen to the tone, but without adding any noise to speak of.
The gain switch on the upper right side of the pedal maneuvers the overall sound of the distortion section, from vintage-sounding, lo-gain distortion to a more modern, super-saturated hi-gain sound. Next to it is the 3-way type switch, which provides a varying amount of thickness to the distortion channel—thin, middle, or deep.
Out to Sea
With an ’84 Yamaha BB3000S running through the clean channel, it took me no time to find a high-quality, rich-yet-neutral bass sound, without any control tweaking at all. I achieved full P bass-tone glory and was ready to gig or record by simply engaging the well-voiced character switch. With a slight boost on the treble control, the pristine high-end presented itself by showcasing all the overtones of my brand-new stainless-steel strings. I appreciate gear that’s able to let the top-end shine through vintage, passive pickups. And the MicroBass 3 did exactly that.
Eager to hear both flavors of distortion, I set the type switch to deep, added a little onboard compression, set the mids to 2k on both channels (about 3 o’clock), and set the distortion channel’s tone control to 3 o’clock. My sound was definitely on the more aggressive side of “vintage,” but it was warm and well defined while listening on headphones through an Mbox interface. My midrange setting also gave the sound a nice honk that cut through, without adding gain.
When I flipped the gain switch to high and cranked the mids to 5 o’clock on the distortion channel, I was rewarded with a creamy—but also very aggressive—tone, reminiscent of what the company’s Billy Sheehan Signature Drive can achieve. I then switched over to my EMG-equipped Spector Euro4LX, and the tone cut superbly with these settings.
The Verdict
I felt like I had run a short-distance race after my first session with the MicroBass 3. The pedal can do so many things at once, and is a lot easier to navigate than you might think at first glance. For anyone travelling or short on space, the MicroBass 3 is an effective solution to several issues we contend with as bassists. The amount of control the pair of XLRs provides is truly a godsend for anyone who dreams of easily hauling their 2-channel studio rig to gigs. And when you consider the upgrades since the previous-generation MicroBass, such as the onboard tuner and compression, this pedal is well worth some time and attention. Color me impressed.
RatingsPros:Unique reverb effects. Countless combinations. Expressive real-time control. Flexible routing. Stores two settings. Cons: Not cheap. Mono only. Street: $349 Chase Bliss Dark World chaseblissaudio.com
| Tones: Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
You can describe the concept behind most Chase Bliss effects in four words: “analog effects, digital control.” Designer Joel Korte’s pedals can perform such digital tricks as preset storage, real-time control, and exquisitely complex parameter adjustments—without compromising their warts-and-all analog color.
But the Dark World is a departure for Chase Bliss. It’s their first all-digital device. So is it devoid of weird sonic warts?
Uh … no.
Double Digital
The Dark World pairs two reverb circuits in a single 125B-sized enclosure. It’s a collaboration between Korte and two other pedal makers. One circuit (“World”) is a straightforward hall/ plate/spring simulator by Robert Keeley. The other (“Dark”) is freakier, based in part on low-fi designs from Cooper FX. The implementation (including MIDI control, expression-in jack, a trio of 3-way toggle switches, and a bank of 16 tiny DIP switches on the side-top surface) mirrors previous Chase Bliss products. There’s a dedicated on/off switch for each reverb, a blend knob to balance their levels, and a global tone control to nudge those blends brighter or darker.
Each reverb employs its own Spin FV-1 DSP chip, but man, do the results differ! The sweet-toned World reverb offers relatively conventional colors. Typically for FV-1 reverb, the results don’t sound identical to their analog inspirations, but they’re more than listenable. Long reverb tails are nice and smooth, with little lo-res granularity. A pair of knobs specifies the reverb and pre-delay times.
The Dark Side
The Dark reverb is … something else entirely. It’s a spinoff from Cooper FX’s Generation Loss pedal, which calls itself a “lo-fi VHS simulator.” It’s actually digital reverb with artfully applied modulation, bit-crushing, and sample reduction. These effects introduce wobbly pitch shifts, treble loss, and seemingly random clicks and pops. All are regulated by a single “modify” knob. Crank it clockwise, and degradation ensues.
And what lovely degradation it is! These tones are fragile and dreamlike, evoking distant radio broadcasts, faded photos, and, yup, rotting VHS tapes. If you can perceive beauty in decay, you’ll encounter it in these sad, lonely sounds. (Note to self: Check out the Cooper FX Generation Loss pedal. Updated note to self: Dang—it’s discontinued.)
Infinite Ambience
Now, imagine running those distressed tones through rich conventional reverb. Or running conventional reverb through the Dark’s filtering, modulation, and distortion. Or combining both effects in parallel rather than in series. (There’s a 3-way routing toggle that enables these modes.) You can also use each reverb on its own. Are you getting a sense of the possibilities here? And we’ve only covered about half the options.
That degraded “VHS” tone is merely one of the Dark’s three modes. And the rest each add unique twists to the otherwise common functions they perform. The shimmer, for instance, transposes the wet signal up or down an octave. But instead of performing a straightforward transposition, the shimmer is created by a complex and shifting dual-channel algorithm. There’s also a freeze mode for infinite sustain. But rather than just capture and hold a snippet of audio, it clears the reverb buffer and captures new chunks of incoming audio depending on whether you play loud enough to trigger an adjustable volume threshold. These refinements lend extra animation to these ordinarily static effects. And they’re not the only source of animation: the Dark World has many real-time control options.
Chips and DIPs
With a connected expression controller (not included), you can pilot the Dark World’s primary parameters in real time. The DIP switches select which of the five parameters the pedal controls and sets their polarity. The possible combinations aren’t literally infinite, but it can feel that way.
All this makes for a spellbinding playing experience, especially when using an expression controller. It’s difficult not to stumble upon exciting new sounds within a few minutes. And you can save two favorites in memory, recallable via footswitch.
Whatever the settings, the Dark World favors a particular type of playing: dreamy clean-toned parts with lots of empty space. Sure, you could play distorted riffs or speedy lines. But the reverbs are so compelling that you’ll probably find yourself playing a note or two and then pausing to hear what happens. That’s the approach I take in the audio clip, as does every online demo I encountered.
The Verdict
The Dark World’s seemingly endless reverb textures are bewitching. There are many fresh sounds here, and they get even more exciting with expression control. If you like spacy ambient textures, you’ll be in ecstasy. The $349 price may seem high, but remember that the Dark World provides two complete reverb effects and many ways to combine them. It fuses ideas from three different manufacturers. It’s a unique design that required substantial R&D. I call it a good deal—and a great stompbox.
Recorded direct into Focusrite Saffire 6 interface into MacBook Pro using Logic.
Clip 1: Fingerstyle bass riff with tone at 75 percent
0:00 - Parallel with bass boost engaged
0:14 - Single-coil with bass boost engaged
0:30 - Series mode
Clip 2: Slap riff with tone at 90 percent
0:00 - Parallel with bass boost engaged
0:10 - Single-coil with bass boost engaged
0:20 - Series mode
RatingsPros:StingRay sound with all the benefits of a short-scale instrument. Awesome passive electronics. Cons: Neck might feel small for larger hands. It’s a bit pricey. Street: $1,999 Ernie Ball Music Man Short-Scale StingRay music-man.com
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