TC Electronic has fired up the old shrinking machine, thrown its powerful Sky Surfer Reverb through it for a new, mini-pedal version – complete with top-mounted jacks to further save valuable pedalboard real estate.
Under the hood, the Sky Surfer Mini Reverb features the same three TC-designed reverb algorithms, offering studio-grade hall, plate and spring reverbs at the touch of a three-way toggle switch.
Its other controls are set up exactly as its larger sibling, with Reverb, Tone and Mix arranged in a triangular formation.
“Skim effortlessly across a deep-blue, churning ocean,“ says TC. “Swim in a cavernous grotto; or soar through the ambient spray of the surf.“ Indeed. With three reverb flavours onboard, you can certainly, err, channel surf through the classics.
Spring will give you an amp-like spring reverb, the algorithm mimicking the spring tanks found on old valve guitar amplifiers from the likes of Fender. Max this out for your surf rock and spaghetti western needs.
Plate offers a little more studio polish, evoking memories of plush carpets, quite corridors, sound-proofed rooms and, well, the classy disciplined ambience you get on records in the 80s. Hall, meanwhile, let's you add some natural reverb to your signal, and as you dial it up this can get nice and cavernous.
The Tone knob is on hand to adjust for brightness, while the invaluable Mix knob controls how much of your dry and processed signals are in the mix – very handy for when you overdo it, which is easy to do when you get carried away with reverb.
The Sky Surfer Mini Reverb weighs just over half-a-pound, takes a 9V DC power supply and draws around 100mA of current. Oh, and the best bit? It is as cheap as chips. Available now for £29 / $49 from all good retailers.
See TC Electronic for more details.
