Monster Reverb

Ok, so this will be a long review since I plan to give a broad impression on all the modes.

To start off I want to say that this is the best reverb I ever had, my previous reverbs were the MXR M300 and the Catalinbread Talisman. To me Dark World is by far a superior reverb workstation then the previous two.

To start off it has a huge headroom that I wasn't able to clip in anyway (unlike the Talisman which clipped very easily), just like the MXR M300 with it's internal voltage doubler. It's just super clean and defined.

World Channel: The difference between Plate and Hall is subtle, I will describe the Plate as more focused, fuller dynamic range, and fuller bodied sound where you feel your guitar sound hitting this thin metallic wall. The hall has a softer attack, your reverb fades in rather than "kicking" in, it sounds to me that it has less bass and less high-end compared to the Plate, overall it's a softer reverb. Both sound absolutely fantastic, pristine and evolving, very natural sounding, and the dynamics of the reverbs with a long decay really tell that these are top notch algorithms (great job from Robert Keeley's crew!). The Talisman's Plate with high pass all the way CCW felt more "realistic" compared to the DW's Plate, but the clipping rendered it useless. The spring reverb maybe has the "cleanest" tails, what I mean is that it sounds closer to your original wet sound, with a quite pronounced spring drip, although it doesn't feel as responsive or authentic as my Deluxe Reverb's spring tank it is still very usable and sounds great for rockabilly or surf slapback type of tones. If your amp doesn't have a spring reverb this will definitely make you happy.

Dark Channel: The World Channel sounds glorious, but the Dark Channel is really what sets this pedal in whole different league. Mod sounds beautiful... You heard it, you loved it... I can only add to that saying that it you fell some short delay lines in there, almost like a warped slapback. The modify is very responsive and I would say it has 3 stages of dirt. The first third of the knob goes from very clean digital reverb with short and subtle delay lines to the same with a very mild modulation (almost like a vibrato being introduced after the reverb). The second third the modulation gets deeper and more unpredictable. The last third starts adding noise and kicking all those lovely vhs/retro filters, besides giving the modulation perfectly random rate, with moments of greater depth (more warp) and others of milder depth. A lovely nightmare.

Shimmer mode is for me the most innovative of all. The problem I had with previous shimmers was that it kinda of allways sounded the same, always had the same vibe to it. Please note something if you're considering getting the DW: It may sound like a "glitchy" effect with little usability, but once you start routing it into the world channel you really understand that what Joel has done here was to give the user the maximum possibilities on shaping this shimmer. Yes it can sound pretty glitchy, but it can also sound majestic and as "natural" as any other shimmer pedal, it just requires some time to get acquainted to it's tricks. Note that with the modify knob at 12 o'clock there are no octaves being introduced, so you're left with "two freeze pedals that have an LFO attached, one is freezing incoming audio, the other is playing back the frozen audio, and they're switching roles (LFO) and the rate that that's happening is determined by the Decay knob" (Joel Korte). It's hard to describe, but it has a very interesting feel to it, sometimes sounds like a gated or reversed reverb. Being able to blend in just the right amount of octave up or down is killer. Since the decay knob controls the rate that the two freezing blocks change roles a smart way (and only way) to actually make it have a longer decay is by routing any World program into the Dark's Shim. Route it the other way around D>W and suddendly the glitchiness is tamed and melted inside the World's reverb's. Lush and magnificent.

Finally Black. You can think of it as a more standard freeze pedal, where the Decay knob sets the threshold for new incoming audio to be frozen and played back. On it's own it sounds very digital (naturally), but again, route it into the World Channel and it completely changes its character. You can play a hard note and play a bit more quiet over it's infinite trails. It's great for studying scales and it's also a very creative tool. One of my favorite tricks is to have the Dark World Channel set to Momentary Bypass and into > the World Channel. This way I can control with greater precision when I want a new chord or note to take over the previous frozen one, I just temporarily hit the Dark footswitch, play a new note, and let go of it - infinite trails on the World Channel (note that this is only possible if you have Trails set to ON). Also thanks to the Pre-Delay (which is another fantastic feature, especially when routing D>W or W>D) you can determined if the new note fades in faster or slower.

Just a quick mention to the tone knob also, it's SUPER versatile on the Dark Channel since it's a resonant low pass filter. In mod mode you can have a full crispy degenarated sound with defined white noise or various mild versions of it where there is not much noise anymore, this allows you to keep the modulation vibe and getting rid of that noise and take more advantage of the modulation.

So I'll finish with some of my favourite settings:

1 - Black (momentary) > Plate. Minimum decay and maximum modify on the Black side. Dwell at around 2 o'clock, Mix, pre-delay and tone at 3 o'clock. Dip switches: MODIFY; MOT B D; TRAILS; MODIFY (RISE). Ramp set to 2'clock.

2 - Shimmer > Hall: Decay at around 2 o'clock, modify at 9 o'clock. Pre-delay at 4 o'clock, Tone at 10'clock, mix at 1 o'clock. Dip Switches: MODIFY; TONE; BOUNCE; TRAILS; SWEEP (TOP). Ramp set to taste, I prefer it slower.

So a lot is happening in this mode, we are ramping not just the tone (giving it a swoosh feel) but the octaves as well. And also we are getting a mild modulation via the pre-delay ramping. You can also flick the Modify or Tone control to Fall instead of rising wether you want the upper octave to coincide with full tone or not.

3 - Mod > Hall: Any setting of knobs is great but I like to have the modify almost maxed out and the tone quite low around 10 o'clock. Very haunting sounding. If you want it sound even more haunted just route W>D. Actually it also sounds great in parallel.

What an amazing pedal on such a small footprint. Any other reverb with this level of complexity and quality of sound will be at least double of its size. Another keeper from Chase Bliss.

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