Electro-Harmonix Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb Review

I usually take on reviews of anything called “shimmer reverb” with a mild sense of trepidation. I like the effect in certain measures and settings, and many artists I adore use it (or some more primitive version of harmonizing reverb, anyway) on songs I love. But it goes without saying, perhaps, that shimmer 'verb can be used and abused in ways that are a bit cloying.

Leave it to Electro-Harmonix to create a tiny, affordable shimmer 'verb that even shimmer verb skeptics can embrace. It does everything a good shimmer ‘verb should, which is to say it’s killer for scoring romantic dramas about fictional undersea civilizations. But it also offers alternative “scenes” or algorithms that can turn the shimmer ‘verb formula on its head, as well as a versatile, wide-ranging control set, and secondary controls that widen the possibilities of each scene—enabling subtle or seismic-scale variations on a given sound.

Reflections On Deep Space

The Pico Shimmer, to some extent, builds on voices that some of you will know well—namely those from the POG, Oceans 11, and Canyon—so there are some familiar textures here. But the most enticing of the sounds here—like the glitchy etherdust effect, which fractures the signal with randomized delay times, to very compelling ends—can feel very novel and tread well outside known shimmer zone boundaries. Etherdust is one of three basic scenes. The other two are the more traditionally shimmery intergalactic mode and the smoother off-world scene, which uses hazier contours in the voice to conjure very effective vintage synth-like tonalities.

For all the variation in possible sounds here, EHX did a great job of keeping the controls streamlined and full of range. Some of the controls, the blend and tone, for instance, are self-explanatory. Others keep surprises in store. The time control, for example, ranges all the way to infinite reverb, which enables you to create endlessly droning sound beds and synth-like pads (you can literally hit a note, put your guitar down, go for a walk, and return to your guitar singing, mantra-like, on the floor). The voice control, meanwhile, enables you to dial out the shimmer effect completely, leaving a very useful and pretty plate reverb effect that extends the pedal’s practicality in a big way. At the secondary function level (which you activate by holding the scene button), you can also adjust the delay time of discrete echoes and alter modulation depth and rate.

“The bizarre, almost reverse-reverb effects I got by reducing the discrete delay time to a minimum were a total surprise.”

Take a Left Turn at Cygnus 6

Considering the reticence with which I approached the Pico Shimmer (I have not been in what you would call an ethereal mood), boy, did I have a blast. I loved the ease with which I could put the plate reverb voice to work and how well it worked with drive tones to create familiar but jarring, even lo-fi colors. The synth-like effects I could extract from the off-world voice compelled me to use the lowest three strings of the guitar in low registers to craft ominous pads that could be made doubly creepy by adding a touch of distortion downstream.

But the bizarre, almost reverse-reverb effects I got by reducing the discrete delay time to a minimum in the same mode were a total surprise, and I went missing for a while playing arpeggios with active vibrato arm technique and a bit of low-gain distortion to activate the clattering, downward-spiraling overtones. Everything that was strange and unsettling in that off-world environment was extra weird in the more fractured etherdust mode. And even at mellow wet/dry blend settings, these shards of deconstructed tone and time were enough to make me wonder, at times, if I was hearing phantasmal voices amid the wobbly din.

The Verdict

The Pico Shimmer Cosmic Reverb, as the name suggests, excels at doing classically shimmery things. But for me at least, it’s the many sound tangents extending out from that shimmer core that make this little pedal so interesting. It’s a breeze to use to unlock its full potential once you get a feel for the secondary controls. And while you can get deep into extraordinary and alien sound worlds, extracting yourself is easy if you stray too far. That quality, along with its compact size, makes this a very practical gigging tool and a deeply engaging and intuitive means of experimenting with exploded and enhanced reverb textures.