Premier Guitar | 1 decade ago
Read the review: http://bit.ly/NeunaberWetReverb
The last four years have seen a veritable explosion of incredible-sounding reverb pedals, starting with the Strymon BlueSky Reverberator, and followed by stuff like the mind-bogglingly powerful Eventide Space. But the overriding philosophy of most manufacturers seems to be that reverb fans fall into two camps—dyed-in-the-wool spring devotees or those who want a command center filled with a jillion algorithms.
Neunaber’s Wet Mono Reverb falls into a logical, largely neglected middle ground: Designed and built in Orange County, California, it offers a single, studio-quality digital reverb in a roughly MXR-sized box with a simple, 3-knob layout and no distracting bells or whistles. Two Wet Mono versions are available: The standard v4 (tested here) features buffered bypass, while the v4tb has true-bypass switching.
Given the Wet Mono’s ’90s-Photoshop visual vibe and lack of toggles and LCD readouts, it can seem almost quaint at first glance. Indeed, perhaps its most sophisticated function is the ability to use the soft-response footswitch during power-up to select between normal, trails, or two-stage bypass modes, the latter of which allows already-played notes to continue at their normal rate of decay while you hold the switch down (an option that perhaps has more allure and practical use on the true-bypass v4tb). But once you hear the Wet’s fidelity and interact with the knobs a bit, you get the sense that a lot of care and thought went into making this a quality pedal with the no-nonsense allure of an amp-style reverb.
Only two construction aspects struck me as potentially problematic: First, the manual warns that removing the bottom plate will void the warranty because the circuit is sensitive to electro-static discharge. A lot of players are going to think you should be able to take a gander at the innards without such drastic consequences. Second, the amount of vertical give in the plastic pot shafts makes me wonder how much the Mono will stand up to gig abuse.
To finish reading the review, visit: http://bit.ly/NeunaberWetReverb
