Familiar and freaked-out reverb colors live side-by-side in a powerful, sensibly sized ambience-generating tool.
RatingsPros:Vast selection of conventional-to-cosmic sounds. Thoughtful, streamlined interface design. Cons: Twitchy knobs can be hard to dial in with precision. Street: $349 Walrus Audio Mako Series R1 Reverb walrusaudio.com | Tones:  Ease of Use:  Build/Design: Value: |
Digital stompbox reverb has evolved by leaps and bounds in a very short time. One of the best outcomes of this evolution—and the explosion in affordable processing power that drives it—are reverbs that stretch the very definition of the effect. Walrus Audio’s Mako Series R1 is such a unit. It readily produces sounds with so many compound resonances, reflections, and modulations that the results—indeed, the pedal itself—seem to reside in a category all their own. The R1 isn’t all weird and wild. It has lovely and practical spring, plate, and hall emulations. But it’s the R1’s ability to range from those points out to stranger realms that distinguish it from much of the stompbox reverb class.
Manipulation Means
The R1 very gracefully walks the line between intuitive and intimidating. You probably won’t want to gig with it without familiarizing yourself with its idiosyncrasies, but it also forgives and rewards a naïve, intuitive approach.
When the R1’s functionality feels elusive, it’s usually attributable to the sensitivity and range in each knob. In the get-to-know-you phase, the knobs can feel twitchy and difficult to use with precision. The unique swell function, for example, comes on hard and fast. And subtle settings, to the extent that they exist, can be hard to pinpoint. Additionally, some functions—like the decay knob in spring reverb mode—have unnatural range relative to their inspirations. That’s awesome when you want to achieve the sound of a spring reverb tank on maximum dwell and hooked up to 10 Dual Showmans blasting a dirigible hangar. It’s less helpful if you’re trying to fine-tune an authentically vintage-style amp reverb tone.
The good news is that the R1 is, ultimately, quite intuitive. Utilizing the nine presets is recommended: You’ll hunt less for sounds on the fly and can switch between wildly divergent sounds if you like dramatic tone shifts. But even if you skip the presets, with practice you can manipulate the core controls to predictable ends.
The tone and tweak knobs, and associated toggle switches, control multiple parameters that change depending on the reverb mode. I needed the manual on hand to remember the secondary functions—particularly those associated with the “X” toggle position. But switching between toggle positions and adjusting the parameters is neither as onerous nor complicated as it sounds. Ultimately, I could move nimbly and naturally through those sequences.
Mad Modes, Supremely Huge Spaces
Once you make friends with the R1’s quirks, it’s fun to explore. The swell function, an envelope that operates a bit like an auto-volume pot, lends a beautiful woozy softness to each of the voices. You can only shape the duration of the swell, and the initial attacks of the note can hit with a bit more intensity than I prefer. But at high decay and mix levels, the swells become beautifully phantasmal. In hall mode, they generate swirling variations on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless reverse-reverb tricks. In most other modes, slow, abstract melodies adorned with quivery finger vibrato become the stuff of hazy dreams.
The spring mode might not beat the most obsessively crafted digital spring emulations for authenticity in isolation. But it’s full of personality, and when mixed with other instruments (or enjoyed without perfect authenticity in mind) it generates lively spring-style voices with mechano-metallic overtones that are responsive to modulation and trebly tone settings. Hall mode is equally adaptable and versatile—ranging from cozy room-like spaces to more spacious zones that can be turned nightmarishly disorienting with generous heaps of modulation. The plate mode can generate very practical, tight, warm, studio-style settings. Or you can use the X-switch overdrive with aggressive mix, decay, and treble settings to excite and distort compound reflections. The BFR setting (you can guess at the words behind the acronym) picks up where the hall setting leaves off—effectively creating architectural spaces of scale that don’t exist on this world.
Air mode produces another voice that is more complex than it seems on the surface. It’s the closest the R1 comes to a shimmer-type reverb—adding and regenerating high-octave content that gives longer reverberations a choral quality. But where many shimmer verbs teeter toward the cheesy side of this tone recipe, the R1 often transforms that regeneration into cool feedback effects not unlike a freeze function. These textures can be thrilling to use, and sometimes behave a lot like amp feedback—particularly when you add extra regeneration via the X knob. This mode, like many on the R1, is suited to slow, lazy phrasing. But it can make a single note or chord cluster fantastically kinetic and alive.
The refract mode (labeled rfrct on the pedal) can also be driven to very resonant, near-feedback zones where individual notes and harmonics shape-shift wildly. These sounds can be used to exceptional ends at maximum decay settings, which effectively generate long-cycle loops that are a nice foundation for additional melodic and prepared guitar elements. Secondary functions from the tune and tweak knobs enable unexpected variations on these colors, and it’s fun to get lost in the huge spaces you can build.
The Verdict
Though the R1 capably spans familiar and freaky tones, the most exciting sounds are the weirdest. That is no knock on the pedal’s most basic core sounds—which are satisfying to use and can be warped into huge, mutant versions of themselves with the rangey primary and secondary controls. The Mako Series R1 reverb is a truly creative instrument that, with a little practice and exploratory spirit, can yield thrillingly and inspiringly unexpected results.
Watch our First Look demo of the Walrus Audio Mako Series R1:
The masters of affordable analog mimicry resurrect one of Roland’s most far-out ’70s effects.
RatingsPros:Complex 8-stage phase tones. Unique, characterful fuzz. Rangeful resonance control. Cons: Can’t use otherwise excellent fuzz without phaser. Fuzz could use a touch more output gain. Street: $199 Warm Audio Jet Phaser warmaudio.com | Tones:  Ease of Use: Build/Design: Value: |
If the Warm Audio name looks familiar but you can’t quite place it, maybe you’ve been hunting for vintage-style studio gear on the cheap. If so, you’ve probably noticed Warm makes many enticing reproductions of classic Neumann microphones, Neve preamps, Urei compressors, and more—all at very accessible prices.
Until recently, Warm Audio’s focus remained in the studio lane. But it seems the company’s affinity for vintage design made the big guitar stompboxes from the 1970s an irresistible target for its resurrection efforts. And apart from a few massive Maestro and Mu-Tron oddities, I can think of few big ’70s pedals more deserving of full-size reproduction than the Roland Jet Phaser—a lovely but nasty fusion of 8-stage, FET-driven phaser and fuzz that Warm has impressively mimicked in its own Jet Phaser.
Woody and Wild
The original Roland Jet Phaser was packaged in a cast-steel enclosure similar to the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and DM-1 Delay Machine. Warm took some liberties with the Jet Phaser design in this respect, borrowing moves from the Moog playbook by using wood sides to lend a dose of vintage synthesizer style. Otherwise the design is fairly faithful to its inspiration.
Functionally speaking, the Jet Phaser is an odd bird. Modulated fuzzes are more common now—particularly among small, experimental builders—but for the most part, modern players and pedal builders seem to prefer phase and fuzz as independent effects. Here, the fuzz and phase are integrated, save for the two fuzz-less phaser voices.
The controls—which, except for the battery/DC adapter switch, are identical to those on a Roland original—are easy to understand and operate once you acclimate to their operational quirks and idiosyncrasies. The “jet” in the pedal’s name is shorthand for the sound of the combined fuzz and phase effects, and there are four jet modes to explore. Number one is a combination of bright fuzz voice and a less intense phase voice. Number two combines the bright fuzz and a more intense version of the phaser. Modes three and four combine a darker, filtered fuzz with the lighter and powerful phase voices, respectively. The two clean phase modes are mellow and full-strength versions of the phaser.
The jet level knob regulates the output of the combined effects, but it’s important to know that—in true vintage style—most of the knob’s range produces sounds quieter than unity gain. Personally, I find a lot of utility in these textures in studio situations, but to effectively use the Jet Phaser in performance without a signal drop, you’ll likely have keep the jet level close to maximum. The resonance control is sensitive and has great range, which makes fine-tuning the intensity of the phaser voices easy and exponentially expands the palette of available phase colors. It’s also very effective at taming resonant peaks that can occur at certain bright-and-heavy fuzz settings.
The slow rate knob determines modulation rate when the pedal is in slow mode, whereas modulation rate is fixed in fast mode. That limitation is a bit of a bummer, even if it’s vintage-correct. On the other hand, if you use the fast/slow foot switch to toggle between the two modes, the faster speed is an ideal departure or end point for replicating the accelerating/decelerating ramping effects of a Leslie.
Phuzz Sandwich
By itself, the 8-stage phaser produces beautiful, rich modulation tones. Slower rates in particular highlight complex overtones in shifting phases rather than obscuring them in waves of whoosh. And if the Jet Phaser doesn’t produce the deepest, most radical phase tones in the cosmos, it certainly makes some of most detailed. (Some of this extra detail may be down to the 18V power.)
The mellower phase voice is especially lovely—adding subtle animation and shimmer at the lowest resonance levels and a classy dose of rotary speaker-style wobble with resonance up high. But the phaser’s capacity for detail and overtones shines in the more intense mode, too, and it’s fun and rewarding to carve out and highlight specific resonant frequencies in this very colorful mode with the resonance control.
It’s possible that the original Roland designers made the phaser relatively subdued to accommodate the fuzz—which isn’t even vaguely subdued. It’s not an easy voice to pinpoint relative to other common fuzzes. There is some of a Big Muff’s mass, particularly in the midrange, but there is also a great deal of a Tone Bender’s focus. And depending on where you situate the resonance control, you can dial in many variations on filtered, cocked-wah tones, and buzzier, more feral Bosstone and Fuzzrite sounds.
I liked the harmonically excited bright voices best, but there are many amazing smoky and mysterious sounds to be found in the darker, filtered jet modes, too—particularly when you use guitar volume and tone attenuation with the resonance control to sculpt niches in the lows and low mids. Add de-tuned strings and you can create massive waves of low-end modulation that sound weighty and surreal when situated right in a mix.
The Verdict
Warm Audio’s commitment to authenticity means the Jet Phaser suffers some of the practical shortcomings of its inspiration—big footprint, relatively low output from the fuzz, and the inability to use the excellent fuzz in isolation from the phaser. Then again, Warm’s take on the Jet Phaser is a reminder of how unique and just plain good two effects can sound when tailored to suit each other’s respective strengths. For those who can get past its period-correct quirks, the Warm Jet Phaser will reward with complex, tasteful, and downright mental waves of phase.
Watch John Bohlinger demo the Warm Audio Jet Phaser: