Afterneath question (short decay)

[oscillateur]

I have a question for people who have an Afterneath : how does it behave with short decay times ? And how short can they be ?

I know that this is not what this pedal is focused on but part of the appeal for me is that there are no presets and that you can continuously change the parameters while performing (kind of like on the Erbeverb in Eurorack but with less complexity).

So, basically : can it do decent room type reverbs with small decay times at "minimum" settings ?

Any sound examples of this (decay at minimum, drag at maximum) would be great too .

Thanks.

[Eivind August]

Not usually the sounds I go for with this, but yeah, it can kinda do it. Would say that the big benefit for me personally with the Afterneath is how well it keeps your dry signal unaltered. It's not consumed by the reverb (unless you want it to), the reverb just adds ambience "around" your guitar. So I think that should work well for room-type reverbs? I'll check it out later today and get back to you.

[oscillateur]

Cool, thanks a lot. I'm almost already sold on this one (I have a crappy behringer thing if I really want spring reverb or something for now anyway) but conformation that I could start with a simple room-like reverb and progressively tweak towards more extreme sounds would be great .

[Eivind August]

Dude, i tried it out with some different settings. It does not do room reverb, unless your idea of a room is like a church or a cave or something. It always sounds kinda "grand", even with minimum decay and maximum drag. If you want to be able to do room as well as crazy stuff, the Dr. Scientist reverb might be more up your alley. That being said, if I can influence your opinion, I've never seen the need for a room reverb. You're always in a room or some kind of space anyway, right? I prefer big, unnatural verb that I can't get in any ordinary surroundings.

Hope that helps!

[oscillateur]

Thanks for testing this. Hmm, I'll try to see if I can find a shop in Tokyo that has one to hear it myself then. I'll try to see if I can find somewhere that has the Miku Stomp tomorrow (for science), I'll see if I can find the Afterneath too...

If I get another reverb I'd much rather have something with no presets that I can tweak as I want rather than something with presets (even if presets also means different models and different sounds, it's just not the best match for me for live stuff).

Anyway, thanks again .

[oscillateur]

Ach, I went to several shops today that had tons of pedals but sadly not many Earthquaker devices, and no Afterneath. I quickly tried the new TC T2 and the Walrus Descent in a super noisy shop but they're not really what I'm looking for. The reverse reverb on the Descent is nice but it's twice the price of the Afterneath anyway.

So, do you have an idea of the duration of the reverb trails for a simple short percussive sound with minimum decay time ?
If it's not too long it should still be ok. I would like to use it to "spice up" a bit some minimal electronic stuff (think Pan Sonic/Mika Vainio style), that's why I'd be interested in starting with a short decay and then gradually tweaking the settings.

[Eivind August]

Not very long, no. Just a quick burst of cavelike ambience. I'd say buy it, try it, and if you don't like it, trade it with someone. Shouldn't be too hard on this forum. I think you'd like it. It's pretty different from any other reverb I've heard. Great for getting the new sound!

[oscillateur]

Thanks again for the info. Hmm, I'll probably end up getting it indeed. It looks like it's the only reverb pedal (except probably the Space in another price category) with more control over the sound than just some variation of mix/decay/tone (and sometimes predelay).

And if the Mighty Boosh approve, it's even better .

[oscillateur]

Aaaaaaaand it's ordered.
Amazon Japan is super fast so I might even get to play with it this week-end.

Impressions later...

[Eivind August]

Nice, dude. Looking forward to hear your take on it

[oscillateur]

I just got it this morning...

My very first impressions were a bit mixed, it at first seemed a bit hard to control but once you understand that most of the controls are pretty sensitive to the other parameters, it starts to make sense. Diffuse is basically the attack of the amplitude envelope of the reverb, drag is used for both pre-delay and some custom stuff it seems.

I read in an interview that this pedal is basically the guy from Earthquaker messing with some reverb code without being too sure about what he was doing and ending up with a happy accident, I wish I could check the code and tweak it a little bit to make the pre-delay more independent of what's used later to handle the repeats .

It's actually possible to get a simple enough reverb (indeed not room reverb but not too cavernous either) with minimum length, max diffuse, minimum damping (i.e. low pass filter at that setting), max drag, min reflect and just a bit of reverb in the mix.

So far I like it but it's definitely not as immediate as most reverbs. And it has some limitations, for example you can't completely reduce the predelay to 0.

One of my only complaints is that it does not have a lot of headroom. All my Boss pedals (and my mixer) and even my crappy Behringer reverb handle signals from my modular with just a bit of attenuation (or none at all sometimes), but the Afterneath definitely does not like hot signals. Line level or so is ok but not more or it starts clipping and not in a nice way... It also seems to slightly boost the volume even with the mix at 0. And it's sometimes hard to stop the last little bits of reverb trails even with low reflect. You sometimes have to reduce the length to get the algorithm to stop regenerating the reverb.

Anyway, I'll have to spend more time with this one. Lots of potential but you have to earn it. Seems more "forgiving" with guitar than synths, too (i.e. it's easier to make something that sounds good on guitar).