Catalinbread Talisman Reverb

Era-defining plate reverb with studio-style controls. 479.99% smaller than the leading plate reverb. It adds lush ambience, dimension, thickness, and depth in an unobtrusive way.

Listen to any recording from the 70’s and you’ll most likely hear the sound of a plate reverb, a giant mechanical contraption roughly the size of a king size bed. It was ubiquitous in the studio, and was the only reverb used on Pink Floyd’s iconic Dark Side of the Moon album for example. What made plate reverb so cool? It adds lush ambience, dimension, thickness, and depth in an unobtrusive way. When you listen to your favorite albums from the 70s you probably don’t even realize how much plate reverb you are hearing. Go back and listen and hone in on the reverb sound and you’ll probably be surprised how much reverb is actually there. In the studio the plate reverb signal was often processed on the way back to the console where the things like filtering and delays were applied.

CONTROLS IN DETAIL

The MIX control allows you to dial in the amount of effected signal from completely dry to 100% wet.

The HIGH PASS control gradually filters out lower frequencies as it is increased. If you find the signal to be muddy, you can turn up the HIGH PASS control for increased clarity and a more detailed reverb sound.

The TIME control adjusts the length of the reverb tail from a short ‘small room’ type decay to an almost infinite pad of soupy fog. It’s possible when the pedal’s internal slider switch is set to BUFF to then bypass the pedal and play over that ‘infinite pad’ with an unaffected signal.

The PRE DELAY control adjusts the time between your dry signal and the onset of reverb reflection. AS you turn the PRE DELAY knob up, you can hear the reverb detach from the dry guitar signal up to about 100mS. If you want your guitar signal to cut through the mix more and be less obscured by the reverb tail, this is where the PRE DELAY control comes into play.

The VOL knob controls the overall output volume. When the pedal’s internal slider switch is set to BUFF mode (the Talisman ships from us in this mode - see the INTERNAL CONTROLS section below for more info), the VOL control is still active in bypass. This allows you the ability to use the Talisman as a global master volume for your entire pedalboard if you wish. The discrete preamp is also capable of a healthy amount of boost! Unity volume versus your bypassed signal (when the internal slider is set to TB mode) will occur at different settings based on whether you are powering it at 9V or 18V.