A spacious reverb that spans low-key plate and demented, enormous cosmic reverb colors is a gas to use and easy to own.
Fun to use. Wide spectrum of sounds. Nice build quality at a great price
Can be hard to remove high harmonic content at all but the least trebly tone settings.
$129
Walrus Fundamental Ambient
walrusaudio.com
With variable voices, accessible prices ranging from 99 to 129 bucks, and slide controls that evoke old synths and vintage Jen pedals, Walrus Audio’s Fundamental series effects are functional, stylish, and dish a lot of awesome sounds at a nice price. The newest addition to the Fundamental series, the Ambient, will be good news for budget-constrained atmospheric musicians that otherwise settle for less-durable pedals at the market’s most inexpensive extremes. Some of those pedals are pretty cool, but the Walrus’ construction quality, sense of substance, and function—which is flat-out fun—make it a substantial alternative to those entry-level artifacts for a minor additional investment. It puts a super-wide range of sounds at your disposal, too.
Though few may use Ambient in subtle applications, it is capable of nice sounds on that spectrum. By using the lowest mix, tone, and decay settings, you can create an appealing facsimile of studio plate reverb that isn’t slathered in cloying top-end harmonics—particularly in the deep mode (which adds low octave) and the sustain-rich lush setting. At advanced mix and decay settings, the Ambient can sound colossal, alien, and unreal in ways any serious sound designer would be happy to explore. Haze mode, which uses sample rate reduction to create grainier, fractured, lo-fi pictures, is its own awesomely weird animal. You can fashion outsized dream-pop textures, or, at the most extreme level and mix settings, use the tone slider in crossfade fashion to conjure scuzzy VHS horror tones that, frankly, freaked me out as I was playing them.
A stereo, high-fidelity ambient reverb designed to allows musicians to tailor three original spaces—Theatre, Temple, and Cosmos—as well as the ability to oscillate between two different reverb sounds in real time.
“Cosmosis is a new chapter for Pigtronix,” says Bond Audio CTO and Pigtronix Founder, Dave Koltai. “We worked on this pedal for years, and breakthrough after breakthrough, we kept refining and reaching so that we could offer one of the finest sounding and coolest digital reverb pedals ever made. We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to achieve.”
This is the very first pedal that Dave and I discussed making when we began working together,” says Bond Audio EVP of Product Ryan Kershaw. “This is an inspired product. The amount of detail and imagination that went into developing this pedal is beyond my wildest dreams. It was so much fun to make—I cannot wait to see what artists do with it.”
In addition to controls for the size of the reverb, wet/dry blend, and filtering, Cosmosis features a unique Morph function that allows musicians to alter their reverb settings in real-time by engaging the Morph footswitch. Players can set both “red” and “green” values on their Tone, Blend, and Size knobs, then engage the Morph footswitch to oscillate between the two reverb tones at their desired rate, controlled by the Morph Rate knob. Any combination of knobs can be assigned to morph. Create elegant morphs for subtle movement or sweeping, cinematic morphs for dramatic sound design effects. Save up to four custom reverb presets, including morphing.
Unlock a World of Ambient Reverb with Cosmosis | Pigtronix
Features
Each of the three spaces within Cosmosis is a completely unique algorithm—a combination of impulse responses and imaginative, heady mathematics.
Theatre puts the player in a variable room that ranges from cozy to highly reflective using multiple parallel short reverberators, offering vintage-inspired recording studio tones.
Temple offers a dramatic, large indoor space by implementing numerous long reflections in both parallel and series. Perfect for the sweeping cinematic reverb associated with worship spaces.
Cosmos creates an enormous spectrum of heavenly reverb derived from the harmonic content it’s fed. The spiritual center of the pedal, the Cosmos space is a rich and smooth harmonic reverb with none of the grainy octave generation or glitching that many ambient reverb pedals suffer from. Just soaring, beautiful reverb that shadows your playing.
More info: pigtronix.com
First Look: Universal Audio Galaxy ’74 Tape Echo/Reverb & Del-Verb Ambience Companion
UA takes their top-flight analog modeling to the pedal sphere again with two beautiful time-manipulation machines.
Galaxy '74 Tape Echo & Reverb
Galaxy '74 Tape Echo & Reverb captures the warm, warped, relentlessly analog effects of the iconic mid-'70s Roland Space Echo hardware.*
Key Features:
- The most authentic emulation of the classic mid-'70s Roland Space Echo* hardware
- Full modeling of the classic multi-head tape delay mechanism
- Exacting emulation of original hardware's spring reverb
- Definitive capture of iconic analog preamp section
- Doubled delay times for effects that go beyond the original hardware
- Tweak footswitch functionality, adjust realtime effects, and customize unique oscillation sounds with UAFX Control app
- Includes silent switching, buffered bypass, analog dry through, spillover/trails, and stereo operation
Del-Verb Ambience Companion
Del-Verb Ambience Companion packs ready-to-wear emulations of classic reverb and delay effects in a pedal designed for immediate inspiration.
Key Features:
- The most authentic vintage reverb and delay effects ever captured in a single effects pedal
- "Golden unit" spring reverb tank, pulled from classic '60s American guitar amp
- Vintage German studio plate reverb sourced from The Plant in Sausalito, CA
- Bit-for-bit vintage studio digital reverb algorithms from the late 1970s
- Definitive emulation of iconic tape echo unit and legendary preamp
- Classic bucket-brigade analog delay effects with the color, texture, and tone of the original hardware
- Pristine, studio-grade digital delays with dynamic and inspiring modulation textures
- Download custom effect voicings, add tap tempo and more with the UAFX Control app
- Includes silent switching, buffered bypass, analog dry through, optional spillover/trails, and stereo operation