The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi,

I'm currently playing my lapsteel (a 6-string model I built myself) through a Fender Pro Jr amp. I'm pretty happy with the tone, but the downside of this amp is that it has no built in reverb. Does anyone have recommendations on digital reverbs? I've been looking at the Boss RV-5 and the EH Holy Grail (although I have yet to try them out). And does it matter where I place this effect relative to the volume pedal?

Thanks! This forum is great.

-Chris Gilchrist

Look around for a Boss RV-3. That is the unit I use for lap steel. It's a 2 in 1 unit with both reverb and delay.

You should also check out the Line 6 Verbzilla. It is one of the best sounding pedal reverbs that I've heard.

Take the carpet out of the room you play in.

The Holy Grail is excellent, the reverb and/or delay should be the LAST in the chain before the amp.

I have been using a Zoom 507 reverb pedal. I wired a 115vac plug inside my amp cabs for the power supply, which is wired thru the amp power switch. Most pedals eat 9 volt batteries fast, so a 9 volt power supply is the only way to go.
My reverb pedal comes on and reads"A1" on the readout, which is just a touch of reverb. I have the pedal sitting inside the bottom of the cabs, out of the way and out of sight.
BILL

Chris, the Boss RV-5 is the way to go.
It has some nice reverbs - and no unwanted noise or tone degradation.
It's stereo, so you can run 2 amps if you want - it keeps crosstalk and hum to a minimum.

The Holy Grail has some very pleasant reverbs, but it's a bit noisy compared to the RV-5.
It's a mono unit and it doesn't take batteries.

I agree with Basil - delay and reverb should be last in the chain.
If you put it before the VP you would cut off the reverb every time you reduce the volume, which might sound unnatural.


RA
BIG STEEL

The basic circuit in those Pro Juniors have a pretty nice natural tube tone, and while there are decent sounding digital reverbs out there, the tone you'd have using a tube reverb tank would sound better, IMO. I think your tone with that PJ would suffer with a digital pedal.

Of course, since they're about the size of a small amp, a downside with a tube tank is they're not as convenient as a small pedal. But for me, to put that digital reverb into the all tube chain just takes some of the 3-D quality from the tone of those amps, which I think sound pretty good just by themselves.

Personally, I prefer the non-verb sound on most of the stuff we play anyway, aside from a couple things, in which case we use a Fender tube tank, which sounds pretty good.

In any case, good luck with whatever you find works for you!

TJW

I checked out a few reverb/echo units at NAMM this year. There were many and many, and I was not diligent enough to make notes on each. A general observation, though, is that they are getting better and better i.e., less noisier, the Bosses, the Zooms, the Holy Grails etc etc. Some surprisingly have 24-bit A/D conversion and processing, unthinkable at the price a few years ago. Myself, I lean towards Line 6, they often seem to have something special and out of the ordinary. But they are also more expensive.

One point, you may wish to look for something that has both echo and reverb effects, would give you a broader palette to work with. Yes, as Baz says, it should be last in the chain, but ahead of a DI box or other kind of isolator you may be using on stage or in the studio.

I put my time effects last and tone effects first. tone effects would be overdrive, chorus etc. and time effects is , of course, delay or reverb.
the volume pedal before the reverb works good.
as the poster above said, the results is more natural to the ear.

Isn't the Pro Junior the same amp as the Blues Junior but with no reverb?

If so, why not sell the Pro and get the Blues. The Blues Junior has a built-in spring reverb.

Nope, just checked the specs. They both are 15 watts but the Pro has a 10" speaker, the Blues - 12". The Blues has a few more EQ controls as well.

Verbzilla has a nice 'verb and is a great pedal and very quiet. RV-3 is grainy and you can actually hear the delays they are using to simulate reverb. Holy Grail is ok but some are noisy.

I've owned both the RV-3 and the Verbzilla and the latter is far superior.

I'm not inclined to use much in the way of effects. A touch of reverb seems to beautify the sound of the amp and the guitar both. I'm also not a big Fender fan, even though I have three of them here. Although I just built a Princeton Reverb clone and I'm waiting for the cab for it. I'll just have to compare it with my old Valco, which blows away all the other amps around here for tone.

My favorite reverb is the EHx Holy Grail - the spring reverb setting is better than some "real" ones on some tube amps I've tried; with lap steel I also like the "Hall" setting (a plate reverb emulation), you can get some really angelic chimey tones with that one.

Occasionally I also use a Zoom 507 (on the "D2" factory setting), (because the Holy Grail is mounted to my pedalboard at our rehearsal space, which is kind far to drive to - and I keep the 507 at home), and while not bad, it sound much more artificial than the Holy Grail.

BTW, a lot of people complaining about noise with the Holy Grail aren't using the original factory power supply - which is a must with this unit!

Anyone here using the Dano Spring King reverbs? I like the concept, but I've never used one. Been thinking 'bout trying to scare one up on Ebay.

One of the local music stores gave me a Danelectro reverb called "corned beef" or something like that, to take home and try out. That thing seemd to clip the sound a lot. I took it back and told them I didn't care for it.

Holy Grail reverb pedal. Best for the money and darned good overall. I think that the reverb on some of the "preferred" inexpensive and small amps sounds cheesy. For example, I do not like the reverb on the Fender Blues Jr. or the Peavey Classic 30. I'd rather use the HG. For the record, I own a Classic 30, a Pro Jr. and a Holy Grail pedal. I also own a Nanoverb and I've worked with a Quadraverb. I prefer the tone of a Pro Jr. to that of the Blues Jr. and I use the Holy Grail with my Pro Jr and my Classic 30.

Your best bet might be an Alesis NanoVerb. It's about the size of 2 packs of cigarettes and is very quiet, has several very nice choices of reverb as well as chorus and delay,has simple yet complete controls w/real knobs. You can stash it in the back of your amp. The best part is you can find them used for around $50.

I happen to have a nice (never taken out of the studio) yamaha 'verb i was going to ebay along with some other FX gear but, if you're interested pop me an e-mail.

-AJ

I thought I'd post a brief update on my digital reverb experiences, now that I've had some time experimenting with various ones.

First, all of the advice posted was really right on the money. With the Holy Grail, the reverbs really sounded great, and since the price was 2/3's of some of the others, I bought one. With my lap steel, I found that it did cool off some of the warm tube tone a bit, but that I could live with. What I couldn't live with was the extra noise, which was not too bad at low volumes, but really got out of control at higher volumes with my Pro Jr. (This was a brand new HG,with the factory power supply.) Pro Jr's are notoriously noisy, but mine (after a bunch of tube swaps) has just a touch of noise. But it was really amplified with the HG. However, I found HG worked quite well with some other quieter amps(Hot Rod Deluxe 410, Crate solid state), with almost no extra noise. Not sure if it's the Pro Jr's high gain or noisy circuit or what, but the two didn't go well together.

I sold the HG to my bandmate, and now have a Boss RV-5 (which I found used for a price I couldn't pass up). As Rick mentioned, I found that it doesn't color the tone at all, and the verbs sound really good to my ear. You can turn the knobs way, way up to the point where things don't sound so good (you can make out some "digital-ness") but those settings are quite extreme and wouldn't be used anyway. Overall, I think it's great. I unfortunately didn't get a chance to play the Verbzilla.

Thanks again to everyone for their input. It's great to have all this experience available here on the forum.

-Chris

You are probably pretty confused at this point with all these opinions. Well here's mine; I like the Boss Digital Delay and can dial in some great delay sounds that to me are as cool as reverb. I bought a Holy Grail and do not like it. It is not noisy but it is very difficult to set it up to match the volume of your guitar when you switch it on/off. I get either a lesser volume or more volume when I go back and forth. It's more work than it should take.

I'd sure like to find something comparable to the old Boss RV-3. I like a little reverb with a touch of delay but don't want to have to use two different units.

I don't understand the part about noise with a reverb pedal. Mine is perfectly quiet. (??)

I found was that the amount of noise (hiss) was really dependent upon which amplifier was being used. Looking through some of the reviews here and on other sites, reports of noise problems seem to occur frequently when used with Fender Blues Jr and Pro Jr amps. With the Boss RV-5, there was absolutely no added noise.

Also, the HG noise is there regardless of what's in the chain - with only the HG in the chain (no volume pedal or other pedals), the problem is still there. And at moderate to high volumes, it's not a minor hiss - it gets quite loud.

So my suggestion would be to try one out with your amp first.

-Chris

"So my suggestion would be to try one out with your amp first."

That's the best idea and safe. You can look up reviews of pedals and there are all kinds of opinions of the same pedal.