Analog reverb options....

[VonBonfire]

It’s dig, but I love mine.

Glad you are happy but I'll never buy another piece of digital gear after owning several different pedals. I'm guessing it works good for heavier chugga chugga stuff but everything digital is screwed in the high end, and very noticeable to me with my rig.

Peavey Valverb

Interesting. Never seen one of those before and they seem to be scarce also.

 

[ChurchHill]

Then the question I have is will it remain quiet at high stage volumes? Other than some fiddling around with it at sane volumes at home when I got it I've never wrung out a cranked Twin with the reverb operational. I know the tank is a bag that is supposed to isolate it some, I just don't wanna go through all that trouble only to have issues at 120dB, LOL.

I don't think it would be any worse than a 6G15 sitting on top of a Twin. I'd make sure that the bag is intact and well insulated, all the mounting hardware has good rubber grommets. I've used bubble wrap inside the bag before with a piece of cardboard over the open side of the tank. I think the Dwell control would help, too, by reducing the drive into the tank when you're getting a healthy dose of vibrational energy into the springs, too.

 

[griff10672]

I have to admit a snakeskin reverb unit would be pretty badass.


Those are one of the better digital units but they are still digital and the only digital stuff allowed in my rig is my fingers.

I'll cover it in purple shag carpet

 

[sandman]

https://www.tedweber.com/5g15-c-kt/
can Build your own

 

[BeZo]

Glad you are happy but I'll never buy another piece of digital gear after owning several different pedals. I'm guessing it works good for heavier chugga chugga stuff but everything digital is screwed in the high end, and very noticeable to me with my rig.

Curious how you are running them in your rig. I've never had that experience with digital pedals. On bass, I prefer digital delay to analog BECAUSE of the retained high frequencies in the repeats. I've never played an analog reverb I've preferred to digital reverb, and that's not even taking into consideration the options and control digital offers to analog units.

Are you using them in the loop, or up front? Are you using them after gain, or before? Are you using buffers to accommodate for long cable runs? Having tone loss from digital pedals is rather anomalous.

 

[eero]

have a look at Demeter unit, should be more affordable than Benson

 

[griff10672]

something I just thought of ....... if you're looking to use this with your Twin .... you'd have to run it into the front end right ??? Twins don't have loops ??? do they ??

 

[eero]

on sale now:
https://demeteramps.com/product/rv-1d-real-spring-reverb/

 

[ChurchHill]

something I just thought of ....... if you're looking to use this with your Twin .... you'd have to run it into the front end right ??? Twins don't have loops ??? do they ??

You're right, Twin Reverbs don't have loops until you get into the Red Knob and Evil Twin era.

I seem to remember some devices made specifically to be used in place of the reverb tank but were never really successful. My guess is that, even though the reverb in/out jacks are after the preamp, they're set up to drive a reverb tank with those impedance and signal level requirements. That's not really compatible with pedals. Could probably modify it to be, or just add an effects loop, but that would seem to be a lot more complex than adding Dwell and Tone controls. Still the 6G15 was meant to be used into the front of the amp.

 

[VonBonfire]

something I just thought of ....... if you're looking to use this with your Twin .... you'd have to run it into the front end right ??? Twins don't have loops ??? do they ??

No loop on the Twin. I've never had an amp with an FX loop.

Curious how you are running them in your rig. I've never had that experience with digital pedals. On bass, I prefer digital delay to analog BECAUSE of the retained high frequencies in the repeats. I've never played an analog reverb I've preferred to digital reverb, and that's not even taking into consideration the options and control digital offers to analog units.

Are you using them in the loop, or up front? Are you using them after gain, or before? Are you using buffers to accommodate for long cable runs? Having tone loss from digital pedals is rather anomalous.

There is no loop and there aren't any long cable runs. I'm talking about my experience with digital guitar gear in general. It's not tone loss, it's harsh tones in the upper frequencies at high volume under gain. Anytime I've used a piece of digital gear in those circumstances it added a noticeable harshness in the highs. I'm not an audio expert so I can't describe the phenomena scientifically, I just know that I don't like the result. I don't generally hear it on videos or recordings but when I am in front of 120dB it's annoying to me.

 

[Shask]

Interesting. Never seen one of those before and they seem to be scarce also.

They go for more than they used to, but they are pretty cool. Someone I know has one and won't let it go.

 

[Laputan Machine]

Tank:
I foolishly sold my old Fender RI 6g15 tank about 12 or 13 years ago....shouldn't have done that as they are running 700-800 bucks now. It was kind of a hassle to carry, like toting a second amp to gigs, but the sound was unbeatable. I kinda like the no compromise approach but the last time the additional hassle had me leaving it at home more often than not so I'd have to renew my commitment to using it at that price.

Amp:
I haven't found the Twin Reverb's built-in unit all that great so I removed the tanks to save weight but I could reinstall. Stock, it either washes out the pick attack, or isn't there i.e the mix control is way to sensitive and is tough to get just right, plus the cables that go from the tank into the back of the amp are often a fail point in a lot of cases. The lack of a dwell control sucks and of course there isn't a tone knob for it either. I thought about giving it another shot with a tube swap, as supposedly subbing a 12au7 helps reduce the onslaught of washed-out tones but I also considered talking to my tech about modding it for a dwell knob. I could have the amp serviced while it was in for mods so two birds with one stone....

Boxes:
Spaceman Orion. I have had good luck with the Spaceman designs and it's fairly straightforward although it's also about half the cost of a RI tank. It's been discontinued though so if it needs work that could present a problem. Spaceman stated he put more work into it than any of his other pedals so it's tempting.

Echo Fix spring reverb. Around the same price as a used Orion. Seems to sound good and have good reviews but I only recently stumbled across it.

Gamechanger light pedal. Around the same price as the other pedals. I've tried it as the other guy in my band has one, and it is a nice sounding unit but has a lot of crap on it I don't really need.

Anything else I should consider? BTW digital isn't an option. I sold a Meris Mercury 7 cause while it was lush and juicy with clean tones it harshed my analog mellow with gain, just like all my other experiences with digital stuff. I've just started looking cause it will take some time to put together the dough. Anyone got any other input or experiences they could share?

Go digital. The thing that makes traditional reverb sound good is the length of the springs, short springs (even 10" ones) will always sound like ass. I have a 6G15 and have had smaller 'real spring' reverb units in pedal form that use small springs and there's no comparison, I'd much rather have something like a Catalinbread Topanga, Boss '63 Reverb or whatever than a 'real' spring unit that's a pedal.

 

[VonBonfire]

Go digital. The thing that makes traditional reverb sound good is the length of the springs, short springs (even 10" ones) will always sound like ass. I have a 6G15 and have had smaller 'real spring' reverb units in pedal form that use small springs and there's no comparison, I'd much rather have something like a Catalinbread Topanga, Boss '63 Reverb or whatever than a 'real' spring unit that's a pedal.

I appreciate your forthrightness but all you've done is make a case for me to use a real Fender style spring unit because as much as the Mercury 7 sounded like a dream with clean tones, it sounded like digital dogshit at 120dB with overdrive. I just can't get any of those digital boxes to give me the same smooth top end as their analog counterparts using my rig set like it would be at a live show.

 

[BeZo]

No loop on the Twin. I've never had an amp with an FX loop.


There is no loop and there aren't any long cable runs. I'm talking about my experience with digital guitar gear in general. It's not tone loss, it's harsh tones in the upper frequencies at high volume under gain. Anytime I've used a piece of digital gear in those circumstances it added a noticeable harshness in the highs. I'm not an audio expert so I can't describe the phenomena scientifically, I just know that I don't like the result. I don't generally hear it on videos or recordings but when I am in front of 120dB it's annoying to me.

It's a gain staging issue. If you use boosts to push the front of the amp, you get some delicious breakup. If you put pedals in between, then you are peaking the input of the pedals instead of the amp. That's why you get the peaked mixer style clipping on those pedals through your amp. To use digital pedals properly, you would have to change your setup. Ideally, you would move those pedals into an effects loop,but you don't have one. The other way is to use distortion pedals, or preamp pedals instead of drive pedals. You would have to set your amp up for the big clean and keep all of your pedals at unity volume. That's how all the stoner doom bands do it, only with fuzz instead of distortion.

 

[Geo]

Z VERB

https://drzamps.com/product/z-verb/

 

[Laputan Machine]

Theres these:
https://www.surfyindustries.com/surfybear

I think they are a 6g15 using jfet

 

[griff10672]

Z VERB

https://drzamps.com/product/z-verb/

forgot about those ......

 

[VonBonfire]

It's a gain staging issue. If you use boosts to push the front of the amp, you get some delicious breakup. If you put pedals in between, then you are peaking the input of the pedals instead of the amp. That's why you get the peaked mixer style clipping on those pedals through your amp. To use digital pedals properly, you would have to change your setup. Ideally, you would move those pedals into an effects loop,but you don't have one. The other way is to use distortion pedals, or preamp pedals instead of drive pedals. You would have to set your amp up for the big clean and keep all of your pedals at unity volume. That's how all the stoner doom bands do it, only with fuzz instead of distortion.

I appreciate you taking the time to write this but I'm not following it....I have other pedals in the chain already with an OD (gladio SC clone) in front of them. The other pedals, a Griffin pultec EQ, and Spaceman Meridian, are analog, and give no issues with the mixer style clipping you described. I throw a digital reverb or delay into the chain and my high end gets noticeably more harsh. I don't think it's clipping, I think they are artifacts. Not sure what the difference would be with a distortion or preamp pedal vs an OD? Aside that I see no point in completely changing how I run my rig just so a digital pedal won't sound like crap when I can just use analog gear that most of that digital stuff was meant to copy to begin with.

 

[griff10672]

I appreciate you taking the time to write this but I'm not following it....I have other pedals in the chain already with an OD (gladio SC clone) in front of them. The other pedals, a Griffin pultec EQ, and Spaceman Meridian, are analog, and give no issues with the mixer style clipping you described. I throw a digital reverb or delay into the chain and my high end gets noticeably more harsh. I don't think it's clipping, I think they are artifacts. Not sure what the difference would be with a distortion or preamp pedal vs an OD? Aside that I see no point in completely changing how I run my rig just so a digital pedal won't sound like crap when I can just use analog gear that most of that digital stuff was meant to copy to begin with.

I call that the Coke Can effect .........sounds like it's coming out of a coke can ....

IMO ... there are some incredible sounding Digital units out there ..... but to use them you have to go full digital .... at least in your loop anyway ...

problems start happening when you're mixing digital pedals with analog..... in my experience they just don't play well together ...

volume drops are my biggest gripe .... you can dial in a great tone but then if you switch something off ... or add something ... you get that weird volume thing going on

plus I'm old school I guess ..... I still think the best pedals were made in the late 70's early 80's

 

[ChurchHill]

I'm not sure this is going to help, but I think @BeZo has a point. I also think you're hearing the effects of aliasing, but, more to Bezo's point...

If you add a digital pedal to your current rig before any drives (boost, OD, distortion, fuzz, doesn't matter), it will probably work but all the reverb will be boosted by the drives that follow, which is not always ideal. If you put a digital pedal after the drives, it will likely distort the input of the digital pedal, which is what Bezo is describing as mixer clipping. Either way is not ideal. Most digital pedals, especially delays and reverbs, are designed to work best in a loop, which Twins don't have.

The 6G15 handles this better because its input is more like that of an amp. It's still not always ideal but mostly because it was designed before there were boosts, ODs, etc., but it's definitely better than a digital pedal that can't deal with too hot an input.

In any case, I do agree that for the tone you're going for, digital is not the answer. Hope the above at least makes a little sense.