THREE VERBS ARE BETTER THAN ONE
The controls are Dry Mix, Reverb Time, Diminish, Tweak, Wet Mix, Dry Signal, -1 and +1, plus a three-position mode switch with Hall, Reverse and Shimmer settings. The Hall mode is designed for classic reverb sounds for more practical applications from small rooms to expansive halls. The Reverse mode flips the signal for utterly weird Poltergeist/“Whole Lotta Love”/ Homer-in-the-third-dimension sounds, and the Shimmer mode is designed to really show off the pedal’s octave capabilities, which are hinted at by those otherwise enigmatically-named -1 and +1 knobs. They let you mix in lower and higher-octave reverberated signals which are great for those Misha Mansoor clean tones. There are two foot switches – Preset and Bypass – each with its own indicator LED. Along the top back edge you’ll find various jacks: a mono input, stereo outputs, an expression pedal input, 9v input and remote pedal input (Walrus recommends its factually-named 2-Channel Remote Control Switch with Bypass and Preset buttons). The idea of using a remote switch is simply to allow you to set the pedal out of the way on your board – or indeed up and hand height if you like to tweak the controls while playing – while still giving you foot-operated control of these functions.
RUNNING BACKWARDS
As you can imagine with a pedal that’s so laden with features, there are all sorts of sounds lurking in the Descent from the traditional to the wild. The Hall setting offers some truly beautiful, haunting and natural sounds, and it kinda makes me wish Walrus put Spring and Plate modes into this pedal too. The range of control is wide enough that you could spend all day on the Hall mode and never even get around to Shimmer and Reverse – but once you do you’re in for a whole world of fun.
ALL THAT SHIMMERS…
This isn’t the be-all-and-end-all- of-reverbs, since it only has three modes and only one of them is designed to be realistically ambient, but it’s not trying to replace a studios’ worth of reverb effects. Instead it gives you two radically unique textures that will inspire all sorts of creative endeavours.
