Some guitarists (the ones into shoegazer in particular) can be very attached to their digital reverb rack units from the ’80s (Alesis ruled at the time), even though they have become obsolete and as ridiculed for their size as the primitive cellphones from that same decade.
But sometimes you just need THAT sound, and if nothing else compares, you are stuck with the “dinosaur.”
Well, we might have some good news for the community of guitarists with shoegazey inclinations: at NAMM we saw Alexander Pedals ‘s new Sky Fi Reverb/Delay, and it sounds like it was built to emulate the hardware quirks that caused those 80’s rack reverb effects to build in intensity over time, generating a slow layering effect that pretty much defines the wall of sound of seminal bands like My Bloody Valentine and Ride.
The controls are pretty straight forward, apart from the three modes, selectable through a toggle switch, which do the following:
Wash — Combines an 800ms delay with our slow-building reverb engine. Holding the footswitch initiates reverb sustain.
Gleam — Adds an upper octave partial to the reverb effect, holding the footswitch swells in a pronounced shimmer. Maximum delay time in this mode is approximately 640ms.
Echo — Slow-build reverb plus delay, holding the footswitch reduces the reverb slightly and forces the delay into oscillation. Warning – extremely loud oscillation and / or total collapse of your signal may occur!
Also, quite interestingly!
The Hold function has two options: Infinite allows new notes to be added to the held signal. Freeze routes the dry signal around the held notes so that you can play over the frozen notes without changing their harmonic content. To switch between the two modes, hold the bypass switch while powering on. The LED will blink once for Freeze or five times for Infinite. The pedal remembers the last setting.
But here’s the true test: hear it!
