u/cognitive_dissent

For pedal and guitar nerds, every now and then I get the urge to go on a quest for the Quadraverb, which I love even outside the Buckleyverse. I’m sharing this here so that maybe someone, through a search or via Google, can find these options if they don’t want to deal with the usual hassles of those old Alesis units placed in front of the amp. They’re certainly not perfect, but they’re convenient if, for one reason or another, you already own these pedals.

Years ago, I experimented with Source Audio Ventris and got what I think was a reasonably good result with a patch you can find on the Neuro app called “Jeff Buckley’s Taj M.” The patch was featured in a blog post by Source Audio and shared on their social media platforms, here's a snippet https://www.tiktok.com/@sourceaudio/video/7170844099938012462

I also tried to recreate that vibe with the H90 a few days ago and you can find it here https://patchstorage.com/quadra-mahal-ish/

Catalinbread has also made a pedal recently called the CB Paint that replicates some of the Midiverb’s presets. It’s no Quadraverb, but the grainy texture of old reverbs created by stacking echoes really stands out.

I sold my only boost a while ago in a futile attempt to streamline the gain stage, and I regret it. Since I have a Twin, my "more amp" options were limited as my other pedals are more Marshall-style, so I've been waiting for this pedal since it was announced. I pre-ordered it and it arrived literally the day after its release, so I've already spent some time with it.

For my purpose, which is to have the sound of a BF pushed to decent volumes, it's PERFECT, and the trick is that "Comp" switch, which sounds extremely good. It's not comparable to a normal comp; it's more "amp-like" than "comp-like," meaning it fakes the working power amp better than the forced emulation you can do with a normal compressor, and I think this is because the circuit is specifically designed to interact with itself, so to speak. The EQ option is really cool, especially thanks to the Presence knob, which adds a very important tone-shaping tool. I noticed that if I set the EQ similar to the Twin with the pedal off, the pedal really sounds like a simple boost, so good job, Mad Professor, this thing really does sound like a BF preamp.

I'm attaching a sloppy-played-and-poorly-recorded demo from my phone because I don't have a professional setup + red light anxiety (the second take sounds a bit better)

There are very few clones of Zappa's muff out there, and I didn't like the enclosures. I'd had this idea in my head for a few months, and I stubbornly stuck with it, creating something I couldn't buy right away lol. It took me a few months to plan the rehousing and the logic behind the wiring, which included an ultradeep crash course on how to use vector programs, measurements, and so on.

I was in love with a friend's rectangular mini muff, so I took inspiration from that design, and the enclosure is the same size. The first one I ordered from Tayda had misaligned the LED hole and the lines on the right, but more than anything, the enclosure wasn't deep enough to hold the larger capacitors. So I ordered another one, deeper, and I was convinced I'd fixed the misalignment, but apparently I moved it even further to the right. My OCD friends, I feel sorry for you, and I'm disappointed aswell.

What I would change: LED realignment, try a different color palette, perhaps fuchsia instead of red, and figure out a way to better fit the LED into the hole, which is "floating."

Oh well, I'm very happy with the first rehousing.

Maybe this was too much for a first build for a newbie. I had some issues with the input/output cable order, but I managed to resolve them. The only problem is that the left phasor (from the front view with the knobs facing up) is the only one with a working LFO. The right bulb lights up but remains static.

Do you see anything wrong that I can't see? What could be the cause?

I don't have an audio probe yet, I'll try to make one this week.