My Nu-X Atlantic finally arrived and I wanted to get a quick review out there. Bottom line is that it is well worth the price tag. I tend to be pretty picky about reverbs. I do play with gain and all my heads have loops. I have found that even some of the pricey, ‘boutique’ reverb effects have a very subtle harsh digital artifact going on underneath the effect - more noticeable as the effect trails off. I don’t hear that at all with this pedal. It does have a +4/-10 db switch on the pedal which I have never seen on a stomp before - so you can really match it to your loop settings.
I use verb and delay mainly as an ‘always on’ ambient effect. I love the way Ted Templeman used both effects to give width and fullness to Eds guitar tracks without the effect getting in front of or washing out that huge, raw tone. I have been using the Earthquaker Devices Dispatch Master for a long time and fine it to be the best sounding, cleanest, most transparent time effect I have ever had on my board. My only gripe is that there is not a dedicated ‘level’ control for each effect. You cannot independently push a touch more verb and pull a bit of delay out of the final effect. Earthquaker did a really good job of balancing the effects - but I do miss that level of control. The Nu-X solves that with dedicated level controls for each effect.
One ‘complaint’ I have seen on other reviews is that folks would like to see a ‘tone’ control on the reverb side of the pedal: they find the ‘plate’ setting to be a bit to bright and they find the ‘hall’ setting to be a bit too dark. I can understand that. The plate setting is bright enough that it gets right up to the line of that harsh artifact thing that I can hear with other reverbs. I am using the hall setting and I agree it would be nice to just nudge a tiny bit of highs into the effect.
The delays are cool - I’m using the one that is supposed to emulate a tape echo. I found the analog setting (carbon copy style) was a little undefined and the 80s setting is very ‘articulate’. Those setting as may be great for certain songs or styles - but too sharp a digital delay can get in the way of lead lines and kind of ‘clutter’ things up. The tape setting is just perfect - it adds a nice full trail at the end of notes and phrases and doesn’t get in the way when you are playing leads.
For a big board - many may prefer dedicated delay and reverb pedals that provide a few more options for each effect. But for a small board / rehearsal board, this sounds really, really good and saves valuable real estate and cable routing.
