It turns out Italian “tube master” Mastro Valvola (that’s what the company’s name means) excels also at designs lacking tubes, like the Area Reverb, a digital reverb featuring 4 mono reverb flavors: Reverb (Room, Plate, or Hall), Mod (chorus with reverb), Shimmer 8th (2 octaves higher) and Shimmer 8th/5th (higher octave and fifth).
Controls for Decay, Damp and Pre-Delay/Shimmer (depending on the selected algorithm) allow for a fair amount of tweaking, while the analog Mix control and dry signal path prevent the effect from getting too washy, so it retains clarity even when using a cavernous reverb sound.
It’s a fairly simple reverb that can cover a lot of space with 3 foot-switchable presets.
We added this pedal to our list of Best Multi-Mode Reverbs. Read our feature and Q&A with Mastro Valvola here.
