Electro-Harmonix has added to its collection of ambient, shoegaze-friendly pedals with the Oceans Abyss Advanced Reverb Laboratory.
At its heart, it’s a reverb pedal with dual engines that are independently programmable, with a bunch of full-stereo algorithms to boot – and that’s a recipe for spacey sound plundering aplenty.
A 10-strong cluster of reverb voices includes familiar suspects like Room, Hall, Spring, and Plate, alongside Auto-Infinite (accessible via long-pressing a footswitch), Shimmer, and Polyphonic.
Taking a little digital modeler magic along for the ride, a host of effects – including tremolo, chorus, flanger, phaser, and a bit crusher – are also present. Players can create custom signal paths with up to eight effects blocks.
It has space for 128 fully customized presets, reverb tails can be easily enabled or disabled, and footswitches are dual-action for momentary and latching variations of the sounds it has to offer.
Easy-view features include an OLED screen, illuminated slide pots, and buttons for navigation on the darkest of stages. The menu, meanwhile, offers multiple graphic views, with Signal Path, Performance, and Explorer modes on hand, depending on player preferences.
EHX's featured demo kickstarts with some sizable, '80s-infused shred, but as it progresses, it shows the delicate, celestial sounds and downright weird galaxies the pedal can also drag a player's guitar through, with the Polyphonic mode – offering two configurable bidirectional pitch-shifts within the 'verb's tail – one particular highlight of its weirder side.
Holding down footswitches A and B engages Infinite Hold mode, which does as its name suggests: a player could hold a chord and then solo over the top of it. The video example is decidedly Gilmour. Who needs a full band?
Connectivity sees a stereo effects loop included, full MIDI compatibility with “nearly every available PC and CC parameter” accounted for, alongside a tempo clock for time-based effects.
Almost every parameter is also controllable with an expression pedal for more tactical performances, and the footswitch jack accommodates up to three external footswitches that are assignable to different functions.
Finally, a USB-C cable connects the pedal to Windows and Mac computers where the pedal can be controlled via the soon-to-be-released EHXport app.
It comes supplied with a 9.6VDC / 500mA power supply.
“Expanding on Electro-Harmonix’s award-winning reverb technology, the Oceans Abyss is a full-featured reverb workstation with in-depth controls over two high-power reverb engines and additional effects blocks for massive end-of-chain tones,” says EHX.
In all, it looks to be a supremely powerful ambient reverb pedal that looks to wrestle some of the market away from the likes of Strymon and Meris, both of whom have become the biggest names in the world of high-end ambient reverb machines.
The Electro-Harmonix Oceans Abyss Advanced Reverb Laboratory is available now for $495.
Visit Electro-Harmonix to get drenched in its ‘verbs.
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