Took me over a month after asking for recommendations in this thread to finally pick a pedal after watching tons of videos; I ended up ordering a Zoia
I really wanted to get into the HoF2, because of its feature set plus affordability, and every time I hear it on guitar or keys I really like it, but every time I hear it on bass (including keys playing low notes) I am a little underwhelmed and feel like it might just get buried in a mix. I also tried liking the EHX Oceans, but it had a very noticeable coloration of the dry signal that I don't want to settle for in this band in which I play my TB2000. Next I watched a lot of demos on the Meris M7 and CBA Dark World, but the CBA underwhelmed me as well and thus struck out considering it's price point (the Keeley side just sounds boring in all the available demos). The Meris sounded plain awful to me. I kept noticing a chirpy kind of quality in the sound in every single demo that I just couldn't get over. Scratched as an option. I considered DBA Rooms, but I ultimately feel like every DBA pedal is inflated, both in price and in size, and even though some of the settings sounded good, I didn't think it sounded €470 good, maybe €200 good. I really wanted to like the Context 2, and almost settled for it, but ultimately felt like the modulation was somehow lacking in most modes, even though every mode has its own type of modulation, and modulation is a must in this case (if it wasn't I wouldn't need a new reverb to begin with). Walrus Audio Fathom was a contender for a while but ultimately I felt like the modulation's swirly LFO nature was too noticeable and there wasn't enough control to tame the swirl without essentially removing the mod altogether.
Next I expanded my search into washy delay territory, but the actual The Wash pedal I didn't like. Considered the Lastgasp Transroom but felt like the maximum decay wasn't long enough for my intended use, even though I really liked the pedal's unique character on subtler modulation settings. After seeing Zachary Rizer's Strymon Volante bass demo I was dead set on getting that one, because it can do beautiful echo delay sounds as well as washes that get into reverb territory, but then I saw it was €435, and started second guessing, because it could really only give me delay and reverb sounds, and that together is usable in like 4 songs max. in this band.
If money was no object I would've just gotten the Volante, but it kind of is. Not that I was necessarily against dropping serious coin, or unable to do so, on a great pedal at this time, but if I did I wanted more bang for my buck (and pedalboard real estate) than the Strymon Volante could offer.
So I looked into an old forum fave, the BitQuest, because I remembered I liked its reverb algorithm based on the Knobs demo from 5 years ago. After closer (re)inspection the reverb really would be the only usable algorithm on the box for this specific band, so I continued in the direction of the Organelle (a friend has one), but that wasn't it either for this scenario because it's more of a desktop device (and a huge one at that), and then I remembered the Zoia, which seemed to check all my boxes, and is a lot of bang for the buck (even at €545, which was the cheapest I could find) in a medium sized package. It's currently on its way to me from Belgium and I hope it'll serve me well as reverb + multi fx.
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)...i'm going to get the Lexicon 500 multi-FX. i need that endless cavern of atmosphere. also, they're $150-200. i'll put it in the rack along with my other rack-mount reverb/FX units: an Alesis Midiverb II (Bloom!) and a Yamaha GEP-50 with an SPX-90 in its effects loop. i use the Yamahas to simultaneously generate a reverb patch and an Early Reflections patch, which makes for some nice room sounds; i edited the hell out of the presets to tune them to my liking. my number one rule for programmable gear is to never, ever use the stock presets.