Eventide continues to shock and surprise me. The latest addition to their stompbox line is the Eventide Space – Reverb and Beyond. Reverb is one of the earliest and simplest guitar effects but is still o’ so understood. The book Audiology defines reverb as ” the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed”.
When I think of reverb, I think of Paul Horn. Paul Horn is a new age flute god that traveled the world looking for locations with the most beautiful natural reverbs and echoes. If you listen closely to his recordings “Inside the Taj Mahal I & II” you can hear his flute paint a sonic picture of the inside of the mausoleum.
As the flute bounces off the walls, ceilings and through the chambers of this great building. The original note is answered by a congregate of echoed tones and reverbs. Horn puts the listener inside the hallowed halls of the Taj Mahal with his flute. Now image the beauty of the Taj Mahal’s architecture in a box.
Most reverb stomps or even racks are single tap effects. You produce a tone and you get one tone back . Eventide Space is a multi-tap reverb unit. This allows you to paint the many chambers of the Taj Mahal and more.
The presets range from gentile true 1960’s Fender spring reverb to trippy heady delays with lush modulation. This is not your daddy’s reverb; what is built into your amp can’t come anywhere near this pedal. The settings Shimmer and ModEchoVerb allowed me to play crystal-like shimmering jazz chords. When I switched to the Fishman piezo pickup in my Parker Guitar a tear came to my eye.
The guitar sounded so crisp clean and full. The sustain seem to go on forever. The reverb enveloped the room in a way that made me feel like I was sitting inside an acoustic guitar. Loud, crisp clean, deep, rich and clear.
Space features 12 of Eventide’s signature reverb combination effects culled from the H8000FW and Eclipse V4 along with some startling new magic. Space includes 100 presets, including presets crafted by Flood and Alan Moulder (The Killers, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, My Bloody Valentine, 30 Seconds to Mars, PJ Harvey and Them Crooked Vultures), Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Nine Inch Nails), Richard Devine (sound designer, synthesist, performer, remixer), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Amedeo Pace (Blonde Redhead), Alex Somers and Jonsi Birgisson (Jonsi and Alex, Sigur Ros), Amadeo Pace (Blonde Redhead) and John Agnello (Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., and Kurt Vile).
These unique effects, previously available only in Eventide rack processors, are now available in a compact, roadworthy package. Never before has there been a more dazzling collection of reverb algorithms combined with delays, pitch shifting, tremolo, modulation, and spatial effects in such a compact and affordable package. Eventide stompboxes are available at your favorite authorized Eventide dealer.
The polar opposite for me when thinking of the perfect reverb tones is Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lot Of Love from “The Song Remains the Same”. The cavernous natural reverb of the Madison Square Garden mixed with a Maestro Echoplex, it doesn’t get better than that.
Being a rocker at heart I had to give the Eventide Space a roll in the mud. I paired the Spring reverb with my Fuzzface and cranked my Marshall. I haven’t had this much fun in years. I ended up playing some of the volume swell riffs from Alex Lifeson’s lead on Rush’s La Via Strangiato. I was transformed. The tone is so deep and full, imagine throwing a Marshall into the Grand Canyon and hearing the sound fade away.
The Reverse setting brought me right back to Jimmy Page. I cleaned up my tone and came pretty damn close to duplicating the reverse reverbs on The Yardbird’s Ten Little Indians. I popped on my Fuzzface again and instant Hendrix. Stepping away from the classic rock genre there are also a ton of cutting edge modern tones in this box. I even found myself playing a bit of country with the TremoloVerb.
This delay has so many applications in and outside of the guitar world. Keyboardists, bass players vocalist and live or studio engineers can get so much from this box. Eventide Space has a street price of $499.00. This is modest seeing you are getting a lot of the processing power of the Eventide H8000FW ($5,495 street price) and Eventide Eclipse V4 ($1,995 street price) at a fraction of the cost.
My challenge is – go to your music store and try this stompbox out. Make sure you bring $499.00 with you because once you play through this box there is no way you are leaving the music store without it.
So if reverb is “the persistence of sound in a particular space after the original sound is removed”. I am going to build on that and say Eventide Space creates the perfection of sound after the original sound is removed.
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