Description
Description
It’s no secret that My Bloody Valentine has had a lasting impact on rock music and the use of effects therein. While Kevin Shields famously deployed an army of pedals for live shows, a less glamorous but still extremely important facet of his sound was his rack effects. Having previously cracked the code on one element of that sound with the Soft Focus, we would like to present the second chapter of this story: our Early Verb. This unit harvests the “Early Reflections” patch, one that offers up swelling percussive echoes crossed with light reverb and attack softening, presenting it in a format that is more easily editable and accessible. Dialing in the original SPX90 was fairly complicated but we’ve simplified the process, giving easily adjustable parameters for delay time, echo spacing, and feedback to let you sculpt the version of the patch that works the best for you. Perhaps the biggest benefit of the Early Verb is the elimination of the tangled morass of cables you’d need to operate the original SPX90, putting full control at your feet and fingertips.
- DLY: This controls the onset of the percussive repeats, otherwise known as pre-delay, up to 400ms when set to its maximum. If you’re not familiar with that term, it is the amount of time from the initial impulse until the effect is heard. Setting this knob high can add some dramatic effect to your instrument when playing slower passages or combining with another effect.
- MIX: This adjusts the amount of effect heard; at minimum, only the dry unaffected sound is heard. At maximum, only the echoes and reverberation are heard.
- TIME: The initial echoes are separated by slightly different times. This control doesn’t adjust the time between the individual echoes, instead changing the time constant that multiplies the time between echoes. When this knob is all the way down, the echoes are bunched together with an indistinguishable time, so it sounds much like one repeat. Turning this knob up creates separation between them, and at maximum they are spaced the furthest apart.
- ROOM: This knob is a dual control, adjusting both the volume of the echoes and the amount of feedback which leads to more expansive reverb sounds. When used in conjunction with the DLY knob, you can dial in slapback delay sounds all the way up through massive cathedral-style echoes.
- VOL: It does the thing; up is up and down is down. As this is a preamp gain control and not a true output volume, turning it up high may cause some light distortion. Use this to your advantage, ol’ Kev would want it that way!
POWER SUPPLY
The Early Verb requires a power supply capable of providing 9-18V of DC power with at least xxmA of current with a center-negative polarity. If you use anything else (higher voltage, AC, center-positive adapter, whatever else), you will have some early reflection to do on how you made such a careless blunder. Your warranty may also be voided. It’s not ideal, please check your power supply before using!