NEPD: (New Effects Pedal Day!) Neunaber Expanse 'Wet Reverb' and so much more
A short while back I was looking to add some ambient tones to my arsenal as we play a few mellow acoustic songs in our sets that I thought would really shine with this effect. The effect I had in mind is mostly a very wet reverb with what they call 'shimmer'. Some call it shimverb. After surfing YouTube videos for a few days for candidate pedals a few jumped out - the Wampler Ethereal, the Neunaber Seraphim and the Mooer Ocean Machine. The Wampler and the Mooer are combo reverb and delay pedals that specialize in creating ambient tones that have multiple knobs (the Mooer has a TON of them). The Neunaber Seraphim is a shimverb (reverb plus shimmer) pedal with just three knobs. I leaned toward the Neunaber Seraphim as it seemed like the simplest, smallest, lightest solution and these days I'm all about small, light, and simple. But I had a hard time locating one (looked for a trade in the AGF) so I ended up going with the Mooer pedal because I loved the look and the ability to dial in the multitude of effects and save them. I also liked the built-in looper function. It's a great pedal that's a lot of fun but it kinda got away from the simplicity of what I was looking for. As we continued to streamline our gear and go smaller and lighter I never lost track of my desire for a Neunaber Seraphim. About a week ago a Neunaber Wet Reverb Expanse pedal plus EXP pedal showed up in the classifieds. I made contact and offered up a trade for a pedal I was not using and it was accepted. I received these pedals yesterday.
Neunaber is a small company in California that makes all it's pedals in the USA. They are a high quality pedal with an all-aluminum case so they are very light weight but tough. The best thing about them is what they call their Expanse series of pedals. The Wet Reverb is one of them. What is their Expanse series, you ask? Basically, any pedal you buy that is part of the Expanse series can be programmed to be ANY of their other pedals! The Seraphim is also an Expanse pedal. So I thought I could just get the Wet Reverb pedal and program it to be a Seraphim. In fact, in my original AGF Other Classifieds post looking to trade for a Seraphim I even stated that any Neunaber expanse pedal would suffice. And it does. But what I didn't know about was the EXP accessory pedal which this deal came with. The EXP pedal is a small pedal that attaches to any Expanse pedal with a specialized cable. It gets its power from the effects pedal it attaches to via this cable, so that's nice. It's basically a two button pedal that allows you to program up to four Neunaber effects pedals into a single (well, double) pedal! And then once those are loaded you can set up to two presets for each pedal.
The programming is extremely easy to do. You hook up the pedals together, power them up, download the software to your computer and launch, plug your Expanse pedal into your computer and just download the pedals you want into your Expanse pedal. You download the primary pedal you want into the first slot as when you are not connected to the EXP pedal it will default to that pedal. So I put Seraphim in this slot since this is the pedal I primarily wanted. Within each pedal there are multiple pedal downloads with tweakable features at the computer level to fine tune. Oh, and you can do this with a guitar/amp hooked up so you can hear the effects and audition them on the fly. It's really pretty slick. I didn't spend a ton of time fine-tune tweaking but I did audition and download the shimverb, reverb, chorus and delay pedals to each of the four storage locations and then did a few quick presets for each. Then I unplugged from the computer and also unplugged the EXP pedal and just ran with the Seraphim pedal and dialed in the ambient effect that I was looking for. With three knobs it was very easy and fast to do and now I have the perfect effect I wanted for a few of our songs with just the push of a single foot switch. And if I want/need more I just plug in the EXP pedal. You can also program how the external knobs and foot switch works with a power-up foot switch press operation. There's a video for that too.
Neunaber does excellent YouTube instructional videos that make learning how to program fast and easy. Here's the one that used and is a great demo of how this process works and the power of what it can do.
Using the ExP Controller with a Neunaber Expanse Series Pedal
Here's another great demo and review of some great effects using this pedal combo that showcases some great tones and then the guy does an honest review/opinion of what he likes and what he doesn't like:
Neunaber Wet Stereo + EXP Pedal - Favorite Settings - Review
In summary, I highly recommend the Nuenaber family of Expanse pedals. Buy one with the EXP controller and you'll instantly have all the effects you could want at your fingertips!