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Old 09-14-2020, 04:50 PM
Heinrich Heinrich is offline
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Default GFI Specular Tempus for acoustic guitar

I am still on the fence which reverb pedal will be the best choice to add to my acoustic board. Maybe some of my findings on the way may be of help for other forum fellas here.
- Source Audio Collider: Basic algos like room, hall, plate are more true to the environment they try to replicate. More on the airy and more on the presence side to my ear. Tone knob for treble and control 1 for bass alter the tone of the effect signal only very gently. Others might say: they don’t do much when you keep the mix low at around 20 % or so. Reverb and delay in one pedal are hard to beat, loads of routing options - true and buffered bypass also. I might use it for my electric guitar pedalboard. Even the Spring algo will beat the spring tank in my Wonderdawg Fender Clone.
- Baggs align reverb: right out of the gate a pleasing effect signal that wraps around the original signal of the guitar. Very easy to dial in. Adds warmth, a darker “roundness” and also a punch to your overly bright guitar tone, especially when you have a transducer under your guitar’s saddle. Few features, limited options with only two knobs to deal with the reverb, and also: mono. But on the other hand: if you can live with its limitations it is the shortest way to a perfect reverb for acoustic guitar. Expensive! I borrowed this for one day.
- GFI Specular tempus: Many demos of this pedal really put me off because the pedal seemed at first sight completely unusable for me and people adore it for its ambient and more way out sounds. Also, the character of the various reverb algos like room, spacious, spring etc. do definitely show a common signature and the typical chatacter of a room or hall or whatever will not come through like on the Collider. But that common signature reverb sound of the Specular Tempus sounds gorgeous! I had a hard time to replicate it on the Collider and did not quite manage it. If you regard the ST as an effect rather than than a pedal offering your basic verb algos being true to the original, you should be fine. Not to mention the ambient experimental sounds that are lost on me. Yes, true, the shimmer of the ST and the collider are the only ones I can listen to without getting pimples ��.

To treat my acoustic guitars tone with The Specular Tempus, maybe have this “wrapped around the notes experience” and avoid fizziness or overly “clean-/clearliness“ I did this:
- Turn up “Warmth“ (not available with all algos, just the bread and butter algos) to almost maximum, kills the very bright and disturbing particles of the chosen verb.
- Highcut all the way up, lowcut all the way down or maybe, rather down (Does not change the effect signal by a large margin and you need to do this on the PC editor, not possible on the pedal). The “Warmth” dial is more noticeable.
- some carefully dialled in modulation where available.
- carefully set blend/mix with settings under 30 %.

This helped me to find suitable sounds for acoustic guitar.
First I wanted to put the collider on my acoustic, and the Specular Tempus on my electric board, but more and more I tend to think that these pedals will do their best the other way round. My recent tests with the ST kept me from selling it and buying the Baggs insTead. If I find the time I will post some sort of comparison between the Collider and the Specular Tempus in the next week.

Last edited by Heinrich; 09-14-2020 at 05:09 PM.
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Old 09-15-2020, 07:03 PM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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I look forward to the Tempus demo, I've heard good things about it. I posted a demo of the Ventris a while back, going from subtle to overkill, all just direct out of my rig, with a pickup:



In practice I just use the simple reverbs, like the first one or 2.
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Old 09-15-2020, 08:27 PM
Song Song is offline
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Some guy posted this a few years ago.
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Old 09-15-2020, 10:29 PM
Song Song is offline
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My specular replaced my rv-500 because I think it sounds better and is easy to use.
So much for the continuity of my boss board.

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Old 09-15-2020, 11:18 PM
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dogdog49 dogdog49 is offline
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I was super fascinated with shimmer and modulation effects for a while and currently own the Specular Reverb, the Neunaber Seraphim and the Baggs Align. I had lots of fun fooling around with the tones of the Specular but in the end found everything but the basic reverb not really practical or useful. I also stopped using the shimmer on the Seraphim after a short while for the same reason but really enjoyed the basic wet reverb. In the end I decided to sell them both because I couldn't achieve any tones with either of them that were as satisfying, natural and as complimentary to everything I play as the Align. I find I can create everything I need with the reverb level and decay knobs and I enjoy it's basic tone and character more than any other pedal I've tried for acoustic guitar.
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