A Match Made in Heaven: How to Combine a Delay and a Reverb Pedal

Have you ever wondered how to maximize the sound of your guitar or how you could make that classical ambient effect that’s so popular among guitarist these days? Well, the answer is pretty straightforward: the trick is to use both a delay and a reverb pedal. The goal of this post it’s to see how reverb and delay can work together to complement each other.

Like many things with guitar effects, there’s no right or wrong, but the conventional approach is to put your reverb pedal at the end of the signal chain, so the reverb effect produces an echo of everything that’s being placed before on your pedalboard, which emulates what would happen if you were actually playing on an empty space.

The classic ambient sound is achieved by having the delay mix above 50% and the feedback around 5 repeats. You then proceed to add the reverb with a decay around 70% and your mix should be surpassing the 50% threshold. You get to pick which type of reverb would you like, but room and hall are usually the standard ones. These days reverb pedals also have modulation settings so you’re encouraged to experiment with that too.

A Brief Definition of Reverb

This sonic effect happens all the time around, the problem is that our ears (and our brain) have accustomed to this effect that we no longer notice it. To put it simply, imagine you enter into an empty room and you clap your hand. What’s the sound you hear? It’s going to be the clap but with some echo.

Reverb is then created when the sound bounces from one place to the other creating a reflection that in the end is captured by our ears, giving you the impression you are hearing individual echoes of the same sound. When the room is large enough (imagine a stadium or a big cathedral), the sound keeps going on and on, and on… You get the idea.

Classic Reverb Sounds

Have you ever heard the term “surf guitar”? Dick Dale is known as the “King of Surf Guitar” and his classic song “Miserlou” is an extraordinary example of the use of a special type of Reverb called “Spring Reverb”. It was an important milestone for this particular reason: for the first time ever, the reverb effect was portable.

Remember that first, we used the picture of an empty room to understand how reverb works? Well, it may seem obvious but you can’t pack your favorite room with you for your next gig! And often times you don’t end playing in a big stadium so, bye, bye reverb. To deal with this, studios first created mechanical reverb, like the “Plate Reverb”.

Plate Reverbs where basically a steel plate hanged (and stretched) in the room that would capture the sound of the amp, make the plate vibrate and finally, with a microphone at the other end of the plate record the produced sound. Needless to say, this created some “interesting” issues. It was just a matter of time for sound engineers to come up with another solution…

That solution was Spring Reverb, which was achieved by sending electrical signals through a series of springs (hence the name). It was also more convenient because microphones or speakers were not needed. It was first introduced in the 60’s by The Hammond Organ company and the device was so successful it was later on marketed as a separate product.

Leo Fender (from Fender guitars) saw the opportunity and installed those devices on the guitar amps which helped to catapult the usage of this effect for guitar players. Up to this day, Fender amps are considered the bee’s knees of spring reverb (see what I did there, “bees” and “spring” ;)).

So, you may be wondering, ok, how did we go from mechanical reverb to a stompbox like the Big Sky from Strymon? Well, enter…

Digital Reverb.

It was first introduced by studios as rack mount units, but later that quickly derived into effects pedals. For me was hard to track which was the first ever reverb effects pedal, but chances are it was the DOD FX45 from the year 1985. Two years later BOSS came with the RV-2 which presumably was the first digital reverb pedal on the market.

Reverb Rack Effects — Image 3: A Yamaha rack reverb.

Today digital stompboxes allow guitarists to have reverb on the go, providing a big array of sounds and parameters. Which for us the players, represent an awesome opportunity to create and shape different soundscapes and expand our sonic creativity.

Image 4: The Boss RV-2, presumably the first digital reverb on a stompbox.

Which goes First? Reverb into Delay or Delay into Reverb?

This is a common question everyone asks when adding a reverb pedal to their board. The classical approach for doing this is to put your reverb pedal after your delay. There’s a logical reason of why to do that and you can read more about this on this post, but just to make it straightforward, reverb is a natural sound effect that occurs when there’s enough space for the sound to bounce.

In the end, like a lot of things concerning signal chain, there’s no such a thing as right or wrong; it obeys more to the preferences and final sound you want to achieve, but yes, the conventional approach is what I mentioned before.

That leaves us pretty much with 2 options so to say. This means that:

You can reverb your delay (this means you put the reverb after your delay pedal).
You can delay your reverb (this means you put the reverb before your delay pedal).

The first option will give your repetitions more clarity and you’ll hear them more properly. The reverb is enhancing the sound of them but it’s not making them muddy. Depending on how you set up the knobs on the reverb, you can get this “far away” type of sound which is really great when you want to make volume swells.

The second option will make your sound a little muddier. If you think about it, makes sense because the notes being repeated are carrying the reverb effect. The notes also lose some clarity because of this.

I guess it depends on how much effect you have on both sides. If you are a “moderate” pedal user, you may be tempted to think they sound the same, so you’ll have to add more mix to the signal to hear the difference.

An image is worth a 1.000 words they say, so… how about a video? Brian Wampler, the founder of Wampler Pedals did a demo featuring a Hall of Fame and a Flashback delay from TC Electronic. Listen carefully and see if you can spot the differences in sound when the placement of the pedals is alternated. By the way, big props for Mr. Wampler who decided to go with a competitors pedal! Here’s the video:

Combining Delay and Reverb: The Ambient Guitar type of Sound

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the most notable type of sound you can get (at least for me :)) is the ambient guitar stuff. You can also level down the mix on your reverb and get a nice sound for clean guitar picking (or soloing) that will add a nice dimension to your overall plying without being to muddy. This would a similar sound to what David Gilmour achieved playing “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” (especially if you’re listening to the live versions).

But for me, the ambient guitar is the King when it comes to combining both pedals. The basic premise is the same: you need to have both your reverb and delay on a high mix with a long decay. This varies from pedal to pedal and amp to amp so you will have to experiment and find the sound that fits the best for what you’re trying to achieve.

There’s an excellent youtube tutorial on how to get started on playing ambient guitar. I suggest that you watch it so you have a better idea of what you need and how to do it. This particular video shows how to get basic ambient swells without a reverb pedal:

What about Reverb, Delay and Acoustic Guitars?

Great thought! People tend to be inclined to think reverb and delay are an electric guitar thing, but they can complement the sounds of an acoustic guitar really well.

This is especially true in the case of reverb. I used to connect my acoustic to the mixing desk and apply heaps of reverb to it. It sounded amazing! But keep in mind, I did that because I was just arpeggiating and being really conscious about the notes being played; if you start strumming, the sound being produced gets chaotic really quick.

On the other hand, you can lower the mix on your reverb so you have more freedom to play more notes, apply more picking patterns, etc. and the sound you get will be awesome because now you have this “sound tail” that follows what you’re playing.

The Best of Both Worlds: Pedals with Delay and Reverb

Guitar manufacturers have noticed the trend over the recent years concerning ambient guitar playing and they started adding more functions to their reverb pedals. They even took the next step and now it’s not uncommon to find delay and reverb both enclosed in on a single stompbox. For the sake of giving honor to when it’s due, the Boss RV-2 and the Boss RV-3 already had the delay on it (especially the RV-3), and they were developed in the 80’s and in the 90’s respectively. This is interesting because a concept that previously was somehow forgotten is today relevant enough to start producing this type of pedals one more time. Time sure shift things here and there…

Below you will find a list of some of the current pedals in the market that gives the power to have both effects in one unit. Just a quick side note, the list does not reflect any particular order or preference 🙂 :

Wampler’s Ethereal Delay and Reverb. A five knob pedal that allows you to dial up delay and reverb mix. It also has a toggle switch to select the sub-division for the delay repetitions. The tone knob controls both the tone of the delay and the reverb; the more you go to the right, the brighter the effects feel.
Earth Quaker Devices’ Dispatch Master. This pedal might be the simplest solution for having both effects in one enclosure. It has four knobs that allow you to tune the delay and reverb parameters to your taste. The reverb on this pedal can go from subtle to massive; combine that with an organic delay and you have all you need for a beautiful soundscape.
Earth Quaker Devices’ Avalanche. The Avalanche presents a greater array of controls. It includes 2 seconds of delay and allows you to operate the pedal into 3 different modes: Normal, Reverse and Swell. It also comes with a tempo switch and you can even assign an external expression pedal to one of the 6 available controls.
Keeley’s Caverns v2. The first version was already good, but this one excels. With the 8 knobs available there’s pretty much nothing left that cannot be tweaked. The Caverns offers up to 650 ms of warm vintage delay and 3 reverb modes.
NUX Atlantic Delay and Reverb. I’ve never heard much of this company, but Chords of Orion YouTube channel gave his seal of approval to this pedal so it has to be good! This simple to use stompbox offers 3 types of delay (Tape, Analog and Digital) and 3 classic reverb sounds (Spring, Hall, and Plate). The cool thing about this pedal is that each reverb has a secondary effect that can be used holding unto the Shimmer switch.
Boss RV-3. The old boy from the 90’s. This pedal is now very coveted but surprisingly not that hard to get. It is also is not sooo expensive (you can get one for less than USD 100.-). The original representation of the combination of both reverb and delay I would say. It has 11 modes (yes, 11!) and 4 types of reverbs: 2 Rooms, Hall and Plate. Like all the other Boss pedals, this one is built like a tank.

Some Final Thoughts

Thanks for taking your time and reading the article, I hope you enjoyed as much as I did writing it.

Adding a reverb pedal to your board can unlock a new dimensional sound that can help you grow not only as a guitar player but also as a musician. If you combine that with a delay pedal, then you can even unlock more possibilities for adding new techniques and sounds to your guitar playing.

I’m really amazed at how common it has become to hear guitar swells and drone sounds on guitar playing these days. And to think most of it just a combination of creative (but simple) playing, a reverb, and delay…

I would love to hear your thoughts on this issue and your experiences using both reverb and delay. Please leave a comment and share your ideas with the rest of the world!

Until the next time,

M.M