Old Blood Noise Endeavors has added another spaced-out reverb pedal for all you electric guitar soundscape architects out there. It’s called the BL-37 Reverb, and if you are familiar with the OBNE oeuvre, you’ll note the ‘BL’ in the designation and know that you are in for something a little different.
Okay, you could say that about a lot of OBNE pedal designs over the years – using the Minim delay/reverb is a real trip through uncanny valley for your tone.
But the BL series features a slider-controlled clock function that plays around with the time of the entire effect, and in this instance, the clock function gives you the option of setting the BL-37 Reverb to quick and snappy reverbs that come right back at you or long reverb tails that you can then warp with some modulation as you increase the length of the reverb decay via the Feedback control.
Set the BL-37 for short and snappy and it’ll sound like you’re playing in tiny tiled bathroom. Set it long and it’s described as “a dark, lo-fi stretched reverb, unlike any space in existence”, ideal for finishing up late-night practice sessions at home when you want to take the energy down before bed, or to play for E.T. when it comes into your house in search of Reese’s Pieces.
One of the big plus points of the BL series is the compact size and the format’s straightforward design. Yes, the slider might look a little avant-garde but it’s nested alongside a Volume control that sets the overall output level, a Mix knob for blending wet and dry – splashy and spaced out or subtle ambient depth, and all points in between – and a Feedback knob controlling reverb decay.
The BL-37 Reverb is equipped with a soft-touch bypass footswitch for super quiet switching, and is true bypass. The enclosure art was created by Brandy M Patterson, and its abstract aesthetic looks very much how this thing will sound once you’ve mounted it on the pedalboard.
It will be interesting how those longer stretched reverbs sound when you introduced a fuzz pedal or some delay to the signal path. The BL-37 Reverb is powered by 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and will draw a minimum of 110mA.
For more details, head over to Old Blood Noise Endeavors, and check out the demos, particularly the Dan Explains All introduction video which will make sense of that Clock slider.
