In this life there are reverb pedals and there are reverb pedals. You know the kind, multiple modes, full stereo operation, maybe some presets, too. But if you are a heavy user of one of electric guitar’s oldest effects, then maybe it’s time you sought out an Advanced Reverb Laboratory.
That’s how Electro-Harmonix describes the Oceans Abyss, and it is not so much a guitar effects pedal as it is a workstation for the hopelessly addicted to reverb. Oceans Abyss is as feature-packed a reverb unit as you could find.
At its heart are a pair of reverb engines, each independently programmable, each with 10 different reverb algorithms – presented in mono or stereo – and a host of effects to add to your sound.
The core reverbs include the essentials such Room, Hall, Spring and Plate, but we also have some more exotic flavours of ambience, with Reverse, Dynamic, Auto-Infinite, Shimmer, Polyphonic and Resonant modes, too.
You can engineer some truly complex signal chains. Oceans Abyss allows you to run up eight effects blocks together, with two blocks for reverb (double reverb!?), plus six for the effects. Those effects include various forms of modulation.
Add tremolo, chorus, phaser, and flanger to taste, giving your sound some extra movement, voluminous depth. There is also a graphic EQ, Saturation and Bit Crusher for adding textures, volume effects, and if that is not enough there is an external effects loop so you can integrate some choice cuts from your pedalboard.
EHX says you have complete control over “nearly every” parameter and has the connections to prove it. You’ve got MIDI, expression/CV inputs, dual-action footswitches, and there’s an OLED screen to help with on-unit editing. Of course you can take it to the EHXport app, which will no doubt be essential when managing the 128 user defined presets.
The reverbs are presented as A and B channels on either side of the unit, each with identical controls that include a sliders for Blend, Low and High, knobs for Pan, Pre Delay and Time, plus buttons for Edit, Moment and Tails.
At the centre of the unit you’ll find the NaveCoder knob, which cycles through menus, parameters and presets. It is appropriately nested in a compass graphic. Under the OLED display, there are buttons for Preset, Home and Settings.
All of this functionality probably requires a read of the manual to get the most out of it but there’s something about EHX design, and how this is laid out, that makes us suspect you could just dive right in and start experimenting.
For those who have plateaued out on common or garden variety reverbs, have maxed out the big digital beasts, what else is there out there? Well, what else but the Ocean Abyss.
Find out more over at Electro-Harmonix. At $495 it is not cheap. But it’s a lot of ‘verb.
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