What’s New, Neighbor?
Given the Wet Mono’s ’90s-Photoshop visual vibe and lack of toggles and LCD readouts, it can seem almost quaint at first glance. Indeed, perhaps its most sophisticated function is the ability to use the soft-response footswitch during power-up to select between normal, trails, or two-stage bypass modes, the latter of which allows already-played notes to continue at their normal rate of decay while you hold the switch down (an option that perhaps has more allure and practical use on the true-bypass v4tb). But once you hear the Wet’s fidelity and interact with the knobs a bit, you get the sense that a lot of care and thought went into making this a quality pedal with the no-nonsense allure of an amp-style reverb.
Only two construction aspects struck me as potentially problematic: First, the manual warns that removing the bottom plate will void the warranty because the circuit is sensitive to electro-static discharge. A lot of players are going to think you should be able to take a gander at the innards without such drastic consequences. Second, the amount of vertical give in the plastic pot shafts makes me wonder how much the Mono will stand up to gig abuse.
Ratings
Pros:
Great digital fidelity in an incredibly easy-to-use package.
Cons:
Pricey. Plastic pot shafts don’t inspire confidence.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$179
Neunaber Wet Mono Reverb
neunaber.net
As Wet As You Wanna Be
When I tested the Neunaber with a Telecaster and a Danelectro baritone driving a Jaguar HC50 and a Goodsell Valpreaux 21, I got a surprising number of sounds from the humble control set. Although the company’s website and the unit’s included instruction sheet don’t specify what type of reverb it’s pumping out, it sounds to me like a hall emulation.
Don’t let that lead you to rash conclusions, though: Yes, if you set the mix knob between noon and 2 o’clock and then crank depth to its upper reaches, it sounds like you’re playing in a giant room in space where crazy galactic walls reflect gorgeous, glitch-free reverberations into infinity. It’s nothing like the interstellar zaniness of Eventide’s Space, but fans of Strymon-style lushness will love it. They’ll also dig how higher tone settings add an addictive sheen reminiscent of mild shimmer-mode settings on the BlueSky or BigSky. These sounds really are so inviting that you’ll find yourself coming up with new song parts simply because of how beautifully ghost notes and minuscule picking nuances blossom into oblivion.
But the Wet Mono also sounds really good when you turn depth way down for a rockabilly-style slapback, or dial it somewhere in the middle to use as a pristine set-and-forget reverb. And the tone knob lets you tailor the ambience from a darker, more muted vibe to something more akin to a live room with hard reflective surfaces.
The Verdict
If your ambience needs are simple and you’re searching for a studio-quality reverb in a box that’s a piece of cake to operate and doesn’t hog pedalboard space, then Neunaber’s Wet Mono Reverb may be the single-purpose, 21st-century ’verb machine of your dreams. Considering its price and other powerful options on the market, the Mono can seem limited. But its simplicity is the whole point. It’s difficult to imagine a hi-fidelity reverb that’s easier to use.
Watch the Review Demo:
A Dashing Dandy
I won’t lie. I’m a sucker for a good-looking stompbox. And with its psychedelic, grey-sparkle graphics, the Black Cat Vibe is the kind of box that compels you to kick it on and dive in headfirst. The simple control set has knobs for volume, speed, and intensity, and a small switch toggles between chorus and vibrato modes. Even the knobs themselves look cool, and the pots have the smooth feel of controls lifted from a precision scientific instrument.
Opening up the substantial box reveals that the bigger enclosure is more than just a style exercise. You’ll find a circuit board nearly as wide as the enclosure itself and densely populated with an impressive array of transistors, resistors, and caps. But the coolest bit of the circuit is the little black dome—embossed with a leaping black cat—that protects the photocell apparatus. It’s a tidy and ordered circuit, though I have some concerns about the plastic posts and double-sided tape that secure it—they seem flimsy and out of place on a pedal that otherwise feels positively luxurious.
Ratings
Pros:
Deep, organic, lush Uni-Vibe style modulations. Authentic photocell circuit. Looks old-school and amazing.
Cons:
Circuit board needs sturdier mounts.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$299
Black Cat Pedals Vibe
blackcatpedals.com
Visceral Vibes
The original Uni-Vibe’s magic was in how completely alive, animated, and deep it sounded without the advantage of a physically rotating speaker. The Black Cat Vibe has that liveliness and, at times, abyssal depth—creating the illusion of displacing and reordering air, water, and other matter in it’s own strange and intoxicating way.
One of the Black Cat’s prettiest, most surreal qualities is the almost submarine coloration it adds to your output. A lot of this is down to the way the Vibe’s modulation softens the high-end and midrange, and even at high intensity rates this lends a hazy, dreamy quality to your guitar. The high/mid roll-off also makes the Back Cat Vibe and excellent match for aggressive fuzztones, and the high-end peaks of octave-up fuzzes are especially well suited to the Vibe—a good thing given how many players will rush to do their best “Machine Gun” solo as a litmus test.
Another fascinating aspect of the Black Cat’s softer high-mid content is how seamlessly it compliments the pedal’s very wide and unique spectrum of shades and overtones. At slow speeds in particular, you can perceive a delicious mélange of almost metallic, reverberative overtones and super-fractal, sunlight-through-water modulation textures. The pedal offers wonderfully complex sounds that work whether you use them at barely perceptible levels or at completely hallucinogenic orders of intensity. And though the most classically Uni-Vibe-like sounds come by way of the chorus setting, the organic warble of the vibrato channel is no less effective.
The Verdict
The Black Cat Vibe is a sharp-looking, beautifully lush modulation machine. And if you’re dead set on finding the most authentic Uni-Vibe out there, it will be hard to top. That said, there are a wealth of textures beyond classic Hendrix/Trower/Gilmour tones that make this pedal worth investigation, and its ability to subtly color your tone and add almost subliminal but deep levels of movement to your playing is remarkable. We hope future versions will find a sturdier way of affixing the circuit board to the chassis, especially given the near-$300 price. That issue aside, this is a lovingly built, high-quality homage to a timeless classic with the potential to reward you in unexpected ways.
Watch the Review Demo:
tremolo-like wobble.
The two top and left-most knobs enable sweepable pitch adjustments, including all 12 semitones and the microtones in between. One is dedicated to an octave below the root; the other is dedicated to the octave above. The top right knob is a gain control, which you can use to dirty up the harmonized output.
The three lower knobs are level controls for the root-note signal, the octave down, and the octave up, and they give you a lot of flexibility for shaping the harmonized output. While the root-note signal moves through an all-analog signal path, the two octave signals are digitally processed.
Ratings
Pros:
A harmonizer that’s easy to tune. Lots of practical applications and unconventional sounds. Even slightly out-of-tune harmonies sound cool. Sounds fantastic with other effects.
Cons:
A little pricey for the casual user.
Tones:
Playability/Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$225
EarthQuaker Devices Pitch Bay
earthquakerdevices.com
Many Harmonious Means
Dialing in harmonies is easy on the Pitch Bay. And the most natural application is a virtual 12-string (or 18-string, if you prefer). Dialing in the unisons is easy enough—what’s fun is adding slightly off kilter pitches and odd emphasis on one octave or both. Add a short delay and an expansive reverb, and you’re living in a sci-fi, folk-rock utopia.
Classic rock guitar harmonies are another obvious and easy application. But I got a bigger kick out of using the gain and unison harmonies to create a dirty little virtual three-piece horn section. If you can’t afford a trumpet player and baritone and alto sax sidemen, the Pitch Bay plus a simple horn section-style riff make a pretty funky stand-in.
As forgiving and easy as the Pitch Bay can be, dialing in precise semitones can be tricky. The knobs are pretty sensitive and they’re easy to bump out of place. But dialing up slightly out-of-tune octaves or unisons can give the pedal the feel of analog synth pitch drift or add an almost tremolo-like wobble when close harmonies clash just right. Dialing up odd intervals produces even stranger pitch wobbles and cancellations. And while they can easily sound harsh, working these textures in with volume swells or dialing them in at disparate levels can sound like everything from alien radio dispatches to cathedral bells clanging in the distance.
The Verdict
EarthQuaker clearly builds pedals with moody players in mind, because the Pitch Bay can go from pretty and angelic to completely nihilistic and demented with a few twists. And few harmonizing pedals move through those moods as readily and intuitively as the Pitch Bay, and it’s that easy interactivity and musicality that set it apart.