EBS Dynaverb Guitar Edition review

Swedish company EBS primarily offers a range of pro-level products for bass players, which includes amps, cabinets and that oft-neglected corner of the guitar world-bass effects.

While they're aimed at our four-string cousins, some of these bass pedals have been taken up by guitarists in the know, and as a result, EBS has decided that it would like to get more guitarists onboard.

That brings us to the Red Label Guitar Edition pedals, a new range of EBS effects that are adjusted for optimal performance with guitar, the first three of which we have on test here.

Physically, the pedals exude a quality that you'd expect at this price point - sporting a weighty metal body with the knobs partly recessed into the top surface, metal sockets and a soft-touch footswitch.

The EBS DynaVerb Guitar Edition is a digital reverb pedal offering a choice of Hall, Plate and Room reverbs, each having a choice of variations with fine-tuning taken care of via a Reverb and a Tone knob.

The reverb knob sets the amount of reverb mixed in with the dry signal in normal in-line use, but you can also use the pedal in parallel mode (set with an internal switch) where there is no dry signal present so it can be used as a send and return effect - in this instance, the reverb knob sets its overall volume.

The tone knob is designed to be rolled back from fully clockwise to reduce top end, so can go from a bright reverb that is quite prominent to something darker that may blend better into the background.

The three plate reverbs featured here offer useful variations on the length of the reverb tail from a tightly- controlled dampened plate, through one with naturally short decay to one where the reverberations take a lot longer to die out and that is a viable substitute in the absence of a dedicated spring simulation.

The room simulations offer a typical studio room, a small warm room and a large room and sound nicely authentic, while the two hall variations offer the large ambiences that you'd expect for adding more of a widescreen cinematic ambience to your playing.

At £159, the DynaVerb is by no means a budget pedal and will likely face stiff competition from other pedals on the market that offer a wider range of variations on the reverb theme at this price point. However, in its favour, that very solid build quality and easy user interface are definite assets for the gigging guitarist.