Santa Delivered New Pedals!
Was he kind to you...?
A couple of new pieces came into the studio this holiday season, and I can’t wait to do full-length videos on them and share the results.
First up was a very unexpected gift of the 3leaf Audio Doom 2 that I featured on a recent episode of the podcast. The unit was passing through as it was for a friend, and I managed to spend a little time getting some sounds.
I immediately found some use-cases for my everyday setup and started to think about owning one, which is not an easy prospect when stocks are low and they sell out almost immediately. Here we are a couple of months later and Santa has come through big-time with my very own unit!
I love the splash of colour on the board with the “Hi-Viz” version I ended up with.
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And speaking of a splash of colour… I’ve been working on a replacement for my Chase Bliss Dark World since it got mangled on a flight to Europe a couple of months back.
I think it’s most likely repairable, but since I was short on time and have over 300 pedals at home, I started trying other things in the library as a replacement.
Because I’m heading towards running a permanent stereo rig (more on that soon) my first option was the Earthquaker Devices Avalanche Run V2.
Rather than “just” being a reverb pedal, it has delays as well, and really does sound incredible. I used it out on the road with Mike Stern in December, and even running it mono it sounded beautiful.
In the above photo you can see two other units that you might be asking “well, why the heck wouldn’t you use the stomp or the HX One…?”.
The HX One I want to keep as a utility position on the board and give myself the option of being able to change its function regularly rather than have it locked into just reverb or delay. The HX Stomp is very much a synth, a harmonizer and a sequencer for me, so it stays where it stays, and unless I’m using it as a stand-alone effects option on the road, I don’t use it for delays and reverbs.
I’ve been going back and forth for months now about the Meris LVX and Mercury X. They are AMAZING sounding units from everything I’ve heard. They feature incredibly detailed user interfaces, and I get the feeling you can program any delay or reverb in history as well as a million more you’ve never even thought about.
They are also $600 each and take up an entire row of my board when sat next to each other. Not the greatest cost vs space ratio that is unfortunately always consideration. I think I’ll get them for the studio at some point as they could be priceless writing and recording tools. But for live they are reverb and delay in two separate units still, so the search continued…
Enter the UAFX Del-Verb!
I had incredibly high hopes for this one from the amazing sounds I’d herd in online demos, to the fact that it’s a reverb/delay combo in a unit that is around half the size of the larger Meris boxes. And don’t get me wrong, the delays especially, sound ridiculous. It’s a stereo pedal, it oozes musicality, and the reverbs are super high quality. But there is a but here…
The control over the reverb is literally amount only. No modulation, no on-pedal manipulation beyond the selector switch, no decay, no mix, no feedback. Just one knob that turns it on and off. You can get more, or you can get less.
Then you get into the app, somewhere I thought I’d at least be able to do a set-and-forget on some parameters to build my ideal verb… ❌ nope. You can select presets, and that’s it. I understand that on other pedals the app lets you set a bunch of different parameters, but not on the Del-Verb. Bummer.
But… The quality of the delays is so insane, I’m actually thinking about switching out my Del-Verb and getting both a UAFX Delay and Reverb to sit side by side on the board.
Having two pedals was never the goal, especially when I was so enamoured with the Meris boxes, but I had to write them both off for touring right now because of size. The UAFX could just be small enough to make it work, especially with the payoff of being stereo and sounding so good.
I’m going to make a video with the Del-verb before I make any decisions so you can listen for yourself and see if it makes sense for your setup. Maybe you’re way more into Delays (of which I have a hard time remember hearing anything better), and the reverb is just a bonus.
I have an older Chase Bliss Mood on my board right now and I was kind of hoping it would be the catch-all pedal that satisfied my delay/reverb needs. But alas, it’s more for the weirdo side of my brain than anything else. I’m curious to try the new stereo version though, and that’s on my wishlist for 2025.
The last main push for 2024 is to get the 20th Anniversary of Mystery to Me out before the clock strikes midnight on December 31st. The mixes and master are done and sound incredible, so it’s just the artwork to go and we can put 2024 to bed and focus on the fist vinyl release of my career!. Psyched to bring you the pre-sale on that next week, and it will be one of the great honors of my life to share not only this remixed and remastered music with you, but also a physical product that has recorded music at the center of it.
My childhood was spent pouring over the credits and photos associated with a vinyl record, and to be able to share my music with you in that format is probably the most exciting thing I’ve ever embarked on as a musician.
More soon,
Janek
