[bcresci]

I've been playing through a Trio with a Valverb as my external reverb (in the Trio's effects loop). For a while I've thought that the Valverb's reverb hasn't really been all that lush. My general approach has been to set the Valverb's tone settings 12:00 and leave them alone, using the Trio to dial in a sound I like. Well...a couple of days ago as I was tweaking the Valverb just for kicks - turned treble up and bass down - and whammy....lots of reverb magically appeared.

I'm curious as to whether anyone has an explanation for the huge difference in reverb levels that come through (or are perceived) by the slight changes in bass and treble. My Trio has the bass turned down to about 2.6 and the treble up around 8. Does this have anythign to do with it? Could the Trio have been cutting reverb level out because of it's high treble setting?

For those of you using external reverb units, what's your approach to how you set reverb tone? Trial and error?

[playingdead]

I don't think the settings on the Trio would have a whole lot to do with the basic reverb sound.

On my Real Tube Reverb, I run the treble high, see the photo. There's a lot of bright springiness in the higher frequencies. Some people prefer a "darker" reverb, which is why some of the rack units have controls on them. I think Garcia's reverb was very bright.



I also run the Real Tube in parallel, which you can do as well if you have a two channel power amp. Split the output from your Trio (or other preamp) into two signals. Plug one into one side of the power amp. Plug the other into the reverb. Set the reverb fully wet (mix control dimed). It will sound terrible by itself, but you can turn up the non-reverb guitar signal where you want it, and then adjust the amount of reverb in the other channel. For my setup, I wind up with the preamped guitar sound at about noon on the power amp, and the wet reverb at around 8 or 8:30. It's much better than just inserting the reverb between the preamp and power amp because your guitar signal isn't going through another device, extra gain stages, additional noise, hum, etc.

I think John Suhr makes something called a MiniMix which would let you do the same thing if you're power amp is one channel.

[strumminsix]

Valverb

IIRC the front input is unbalanced instrument level (~-20db) and the rear is balanced line level (+4db)