I’m a gear geek.  I admit it.  I love shopping for gear.  In the music world, we call this G.A.S. (gear acquisition syndrome).  While it’s fun to buy a new piece of gear and see how it affects your tone and overall presentation of your music, it doesn’t affect your talent (or lack thereof), so keep practicing!

I’ve been itching for a reverb pedal lately.  A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I picked up the two latest CDs from Kings of Leon and we’ve been wearing them out!  I’m planning to buy tickets for their show at the Municipal Auditorium here in Nashville in November.  It’s my birthday present from her.  Anyway, their lead guitar player, Matthew, makes liberal use of his verb pedals and I’ve been dying to try out that sounds on my rig.  I’m also a huge fan of Jeff Buckley, who used an Alesis Quadraverb to get his cathedral verb sounds.

My qualifications:

• Has to have a good room sounds (see Kings of Leon’s “Crawl” – the lead guitar line after the first chorus )
• Has to have a huuuge room/hall/cathedral sound (see Buckley’s “Dream Brother” from the Mystery White Boy live album)
• Has to be stereo in, stereo out.  This is different from most people.  I want to run stereo out of my digital delay and into two heads, which feed a stereo speaker cabinet.  I know it doesn’t matter at all live (most PA’s are mono anyway), but I wants it!
• 9V power – preferably.  This just makes it easier to get power to it.  For the right pedal, I’ll make an exception.
• Small pedals size.  I just got a great Pedaltrain 2 and I’d rather not have to upgrade to the Pro just because I bought a reverb pedal.

So I started reading.  The firs thing I did was look up every verb pedal I’d every read about or seen on a forum.  The stereo in/stereo out option seemed to eliminate most of the more common pedals.  Many pedals offer stereo outs, but few offer stereo ins also.  I narrowed it down to a handful:

• Line6 Verbzilla
• EBS Dynaverb
• Boss RV-5
• Nova NR-1 Reverb
• Hardwire RV-7
• Fishman AFX Acoustic Reverb
• Behringer DR100

I’ll go through each one, then tell you which one I’m trying to buy and why.

Line6 Verbzilla.  This was my first choice.  I’ve used Line6 gear over the years and most of it sounds good for what it is.  I was thinking that the Cave setting on here would be great for those Buckley-esque verbs that I wanted.  However, many people have complained about it feeling cheap (it’s all plastic), too digital, and that’s its noisy.

Fishman AFX Acoustic Reverb.  I hadn’t seen this one before, but there’s a good reason.  It’s an acoustic reverb pedal, not for electric guitars.  So, it’s out.

Boss RV-5.  I’m buying one it’s sister pedals for a digital delay (the DD-7), so I thought this would be a great match.  However, the vast majority of reviews I read from other players said it was expensive for what you get, and the verbs aren’t all that great.

Behringer DR-100.  I just can’t get my head around the idea that Behringer makes a good pedal.  I listened to a few clips, but I found them lacking.  Behringer’s pedals are all plastic too, so longevity might an issue.

Hardwire RV-7.  Hardwire is the “boutique” line from Digitech.  They licensed their verb sounds from Lexicon, who makes great studio reverb processors, so I thought they would have great sounds, right?  Unfortunately, they are just ok, compared to the next pedal.  Considering the drawbacks of the next pedal, I might give this one a second look.

Nova NR-1 Reverb.  Nova is a line from TC Electronics, which also makes great studio reverbs.  There are tons of options for different verbs, although there aren’t any presets, so you get two sounds: one that’s saved, the other thats on the manual setting.  The real bummer is the power.  Most guitar pedals are 9 volt, this one is 12.  Which means I can’t just use a common power supply, I have to use theirs.

EBS Dynaverb.  I’m trying to find one of these.  The sounds from it are as good as any of the pedals above, it’s tiny, it’s 9 volt.  We have a winner.

Please understand, these are just my opinions.  You may love one of the pedals above.  You may not.  Most players don’t run a stereo rig, so that would add a ton of pedals back to the mix.  In that case, I’d probably look more seriously at the Room-mate from T-Rex.

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