Visual Sound H2O Liquid Chorus & Echo

No manual necessary. three knobs per side. If you are familiar with delay and chorus pedals it is a no brainer. I like that it has two separate stomp pedals that can be hit individually or both at the same time. I was able to get decent sounds out of it within a couple of minutes. you will find that there is some tweaking to be done on the width and delay time on the chorus, and the effects level and repeats on the delay to help the effects cut through better.

I have had this pedal for a couple of years now. Overall, i am still very happy with it.

The chorus is pretty good. I use very subtle settings on chorus pedals. I keep the speed very low, around 7:00 or 8:00, the width around 11:00 and the delay time around 1:00 or 2:00. it does add nice warmth but i have two minor complaints. first there is a definite volume boost that i get with the chorus side and not with the delay side. not a big deal but kind of annoying because i can't bring the effects level down on my loop because then it will be too low for the delay. Second, the chorus causes and earlier break up, which can be unpleasant in the clean tone. sometimes it sounds nice for leads with delays.

I think that the delay is excellent. for the money i have not found a better delay. It is very warm and round sounding. i have compared it to boss delays and they sound brittle in comparison. I think that this pedal is technically a digital pedal but it definately sounds analog. I know of a lot other delay pedals out there, but i can't justify paying $300 or $400+ to get one of these. i use delay alot, so i had to go rack and went with a korg SDD-2000 which is very good.

no problems to speak of.

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I know of a lot other delay pedals out there, but i can't justify paying $300 or $400+ to get one of these. i use delay alot, so i had to go rack and went with a korg SDD-2000, which is very good. i don't have time to bend over and change settings anymore and i cannot afford to have 10 delay pedals. I will however keep this pedal and use it when recording unless the korg can prove to be better.

Very straight forward to use. I never really use the second dry output because I dont have a second amp so I dont know the difference in the volume of the two outputs, and I know the delay time knob on the chorus does something but not exactly sure what. I can hear the sound change but its not as straight forward as the speed knob or the repeat knob on the echo.

I love the chorus and the echo. Its just great. BUT, I do know that the signal is altered just a tiny bit even when the pedal is off. Its either because of the extra cable or the fact that the pedal is not true bypass, I think its the pedal. Having said that its tho only pedal that isnt true bypass in my chain and one pedal is really not going to make a difference. The chorus is great, and real easy to get a great sound with. The only problem with the chorus is the volume jumps up when you turn it on. If you try it with a small practice amp you can really hear the increase in volume but when your playing loud its fine; I personally got used to it and either keep it on for an entire song or use it to emphasize. The echo is also good, but only if you keep it in the long mode. The short is really short, I mean really short and if you dont have the time knob set to past 3:00, its almost non existent, and besides thats almost exactly the same a 9:00 on the long mode. But its simple, no fussing with numbers like a delay pedal, its great to build an atmosphere. It can be used like a powerful reverb to double lead phrases. But the thing about the echo is, unlike the chorus, the volume drops when you turn it on. If you turn both the chorus and echo on at the same time the changes in volume almost cancel out but individually, its kind of annoying.

Very sturdy, but one thing, it eats batteries so use an adapter. The structure is heavy duty (and quite big!).

I bought this pedal on ebay for I believe it was something like $80 or $90, but it was broken. I had tried it at music shops and loved it but knew it was cheeper online, and Im all for used stuff but this experience has taught me to NOT buy pedals online. The seller was rude and not helpful at all and was actually kicked off ebay, so naturally I ended up with a pedal I had to get fixed. I realized the phone number for Visual Sound was on the back of the pedal so I called them up and they said they would fix it and upgrade it if I wanted for $30. I thought great!, shipped it off and within a week I got an email saying the pedal is fixed and upgraded, call this number during these times and you can pay over the phone and we will ship it back. Paid them $30 and got the pedal in great shape. Thanks a lot.

I love this pedal. Im sure there are some high end chorus pedals that have more control over the effect but I like a subtle chorus on most of the time so I just needed a little. I play Blues, Rock and a little Jazz. The chorus makes my clean sound full and warm. The echo is great to use as a reverb, but thats just how I use it. Its capable to be use in more extreme manners, if that makes any sense. If it were stolen I would look around but wouldnt be surprised if I arrived back to the H2O. Its just great for the price.

Easy to use, couple of knobs.

Chorus bugs me on this, don't like the sound. Delay is fantastic. It does cut your signal if you go into it first. I use with an Evans AH200 Hybrid amp.

Reliable and tough.

I play Jazz but wanted to get a nice tone with chorus and delay. This thing chows on batteries so get a wall wart. I mean chows! If you are going to get a pedal and you have to plug it in, why not get a multi-effects floor board? I wanted the ease of battery but I am spending all my money on batteries.

Basically: this is one of the easiest pedals on the market to use.

Having read some of the other reviews, there's two ways to use this thing. You will get more tone sucked out of your signal if you use it on the floor. But if you use it in your FX loop (especially if your loop is buffered with a tube like the Boogie stuff) you will hardly notice any drop. When I sent it back for the newer Panasonic bucket brigade upgrade, it started to make oscillating noise if the chorus was turned up too much. But for the money and the BASIC sound of this unit: it's a jobbers tool and good for most applications. Use good cords, experiment with batteries versus AC. Then make your decision.

Made well: used for 3 years before upgrade. No backup needed unless you use it as springboard or throw it at your keyboard player.

When shipped back to the manufacturer for the upgrade: it took one week! A rarity in the gear world. But when I wrote them about something, they did push their AC adapter.

With Johnny Hiland, Phil Keaggy and other top players using the line: there's reason to be impressed. Gear that affects your instrument's time or modulates it will always be your personal business. After playing over 30 years with mucho studio/live experience, this pedal is small yet rugged. It does eat batteries if you choose to go that route (about 12 hours if you yank the input cord). Great for jobbing, but maybe not quite a TC or Lexicon unit if you can tell the difference. I use DLS stuff for true bypass (Vintage Guitar had a great shotout this past year) and will get a Zoom G2 for small stuff.

Nothing to it.

Playing a LP Custom through either Fender Twin or straight through PA. Also direct to computer for recording. H2O has very, very sweet sound. Only two gripes: 1) A bit noisy when using the AC instead of battery. 2) "Short" echo is VERY short, almost non-existent. Long echo is fine.

No problems.

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I'm sure there're better sounding pedals out there. But for a dual pedal at this cost, I highly recommend.

Not plug-and-play, but neither is it rocket science.

I play a semi-hollow guitar into a Fender amp.

I like that the echoes get murky with extended repeats, and that tweaking the delay control during repeats gives you a "pitch-shift" effect rather than the nasty "zipper" sound that you get from certain digital delays. Both the short and long delay modes have their charms, although the sounds I most often use are from the long mode. I tend to run the delay level quite low, as I like a subtle echo effect for most of my playing.

The chorus side has some good sounds. I've found that it's really important to adjust both the delay time and width controls to avoid the hoky `80s chorus sounds. The manual's "fast Leslie" setting is actually fairly convincing; it's certainly an OK Leslie substitute for live performance.

The buffer sounds really good to me. I think I can hear a small difference between the buffered signal compared to plugging my guitar straight into the amp, but it's subtle and not at all unpleasant. The complaint that I have about most buffered pedals -- that the high-end is veiled -- is definitely not present with Visual Sound's buffer.

The other nice thing about a good buffered pedal is that you get absolutely clean switching with none of the glitches or pops that seem to be unavoidable with true-bypass switching.

It's too early to tell how well this'll hold up with long-term use.

I had a question about the pedal and was very pleased with the rapid, courteous and thorough responses to my emails.

I play improvised fingerstyle guitar, drawing freely from old-school rock, folk, jazz and classical styles. I first picked up the guitar in the mid-`60s, and have been playing "seriously" for the past six years.

My main rig is a Koll Custom DL Thinline through a Fender Vibro-King. I have a small assortment of special-purpose pedals in addition to the recently-added Visual Sound Route 66 and H2O. If the Visual Sound pedals hold up under regular use, I may consider selling the rest of my pedals.

The most important things to me are that the pedal sounds good and is easy to adjust.

The real stroke of genius is packaging two related effects in a single pedal with the stomp switches close together. With one press you can turn either or both effects on or off or toggle between one effect and the other.

The "home plate" shape of the pedals may also be useful. I have both the Route 66 and the H2O and have experimented with placing them at 45 degrees to each other so all the stomp switches are in a cluster. I've been able to toggle useful combinations of three or four switches at once.

its a pain in the ass to get the chorus to stop sounding ridiculous, but it comes with a booklet that gives you the different types of ranges and settings, so that helps a lot.

i read on the visual sound website that "visual sound pedals do not use a true bypass, but something that may be better: pure bypass". this lasts longer than true bypass and is cheaper, part of the reason why you're getting two pretty high level effects for under $200. upon reading this, i set off to my amplifier and pedalboard to test their hypothesis. the pure bypass is a type of buffered bypass, meaning that your sound is passing through circuitry whether the effect is activated or not. i tested with several different cords and effects that had true bypasses and discovered that this pedal cuts a good amount of high end and brightness off of your tone even when its not activated. both of the effects themselves would be really quite good, but the pure bypass' cutting of brightness renders both of them useless. they also stated on the site that the pure bypass cleaned up the tone of a guitar that had been run through several pedals that cut brightness and whatnot. although this may be true, it is certainly not anywhere near a true bypass or "guitar to amp" as it claimed.

its never failed me, but the buffered "pure bypass" means that circuitry is liable to go bad faster than hardwired pedals. still, i'd trust it for a gig without a backup...if i chose to use it.

never dealt with them.

it is so close to being good. the effects are seriously great and well conceived, but that "pure bypass" and the brightness it takes away is just unforgivable. that being said, it is tremendously superior to the buffered bypasses that are featured in boss, danelectro and digitech pedals, but its still nothing near a true bypass. it is a good idea to have 1 buffered bypass in the chain so that your signal from the guitar is powering just a few feet of cable rather than all the way to the amp, and i'd probably choose this as that one over any other pedals.

Easy to get a good sound out of it? It is hard to get a BAD sound out of it. Very versitile and easy to tweak.

This thing sounds amazing, and I'm not really a huge fan of chorus effects. I needed an echo, and thought I'd give this a try and see if I can find a use for the chorus. Now I use a subtle chorus on a lot of the stuff i do...it sounds very organic and just fattens up your guitar, doesn't alter it in anyway. The echo is perfect for me, simple and warm, even though its digital.

Haven't had it long. but i bought it used and its still kickin

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I play a lot of instrumental, dark yet mellow kind of rock and roll and this is working out wonderfully. The chorus sound great with other effects--ie overdrive and fuzz (it true!)--and the echo is just what i needed for a warm vintage vibe without the hassle and insane expense of tape echo.

Very easy to use, see all other descriptions. The only problem I encounter is the short long swith. First, changing from short to long yields a loud "sreege" sound (not very pleasent during a live gig), second, if you set up the pedal for short echo, changing to lon echo yields useless sounds. In other words, changing to long echo requires fiddling with the knobs. While this is not a bad case for at home/studio applications, it does not make the pedal a two in one pedal in live situations

And this is where I probably differ with the majority of the reviews here -I really don't think this is a good sounding pedal. Why? In any setting it drastically alters the tone of your guitar. It doesn't matter what set-up you use, what guitar you play, but once you turn on the pedal there's this metallic, bass-less mid-range-y tone. My basic rig consists of a Fargen Miniplex, a Boogie Mark II, a '59 Reissue Les Paul, a Custom Shop Mary Kaye Strat and a customised Japanes Custom Tele (great guitar by the way!). My pedals are all analogue: vintage Ibanez AD-9, Pearl AD-5, Fulltone Wah, MXR Script Phase 100.

The chorus is very hard to use. Aside from the metalic tone, on low speed settings there's a loud phasing to be heard, more like a phaser/flanger than a chorus. The chorus is harsh and not very musical. On higher speed settings the effect becomes a bit out-of tune -the delayed effect is out of tune with the original effect. This also takes away the dynamics of your playing. I only find the chorus mode usefull for extreme gadget effects: with the speed on ten you get this crazy Leslie-like effect. Compared to my Boss CE-2 (which is excellent sounding, but an one-trick pony), the effect just really isn't good.

The Echo effect is better, but I simply just don't like like digital echo. Do note: this is an echo effect, not a delay effect. All repeats are copies of the original. So, there's no way you will ever get a decent slap back delay like a tape delay or a good AD-9 unit. The echo must degenerate while repeating, and that's not the case. The pedal's main teritory is long echo's, so you can lay dreamy land scapes and layers. But again, I find the way the pedal alters your bsic tone into a metallic, screaching Tele-like style really terrible.

It's solidly made. The casing will last 20+ years, but the paint will be gone by then.

Never dealt with the company, but they seem to be quite active on the market.

I just really don't like this pedal. I don't mind digital per se (check out the new Boss RT-20!), but this pedal just really is harsh sounding, in a very un-musical way. Any pedal that takes away the warmth of a Les Paul is worthless (unless it is a Treble Booster or Big Muff of course). I sold this pedal, and I will never by it again.

Very easy to use. One page manual. Very lush and sweet chorus. Or mega swirly ala leslie-like if ya want it. Very 80's to me. Old school....Police or Gilmore all the way!! NICE!
The delay is simple and no-nonsence. C'mon do delays really need a hold mode?? Or a tap tempo?? Use your ears and buy a sharpie marker!! It is just an echo people. This one is a keeper. Great analog vibe. The second output can be easily modded from clean to effected for a second amp out! I use mine clean for an output to my tuner. I hear no signal loss when the second output is used. Not so with a volume pedal's tuner out...

The Pedal sounds great! Both effects...Not noisy AT ALL but it does have a slight volume boost when engaged. I find that an asset, not a negative. Not a tone sucker either! You will LOVE this pedal!! It has a permanent place on my board.

My Rig:
Guitars... Main->"Barnes Guitar Works"Custom (PAF style bridge,duel blade singles HSS)Swamp Ash body psudo-strat<>Area 51 Wah<><Keeley Modded Sparkle Drive<>Keeley Compressor(Keeley suggests placing it after the main OD)<> Monte Allums "H2O" modded Blues Driver(better than Keeley's IMHO)<>Keeley Ultra Mod Boss DS1<>Visual Sound H2O Chorus/Delay<>Keeley Modded Boss TR2 Tremolo<>Modded Boss DD3 Delay<>Marshall AVT 50 Stack or Behringer Vintager AC112 Combo... depending on the room or stage.

Honesty time here. This is the ONLY problem that I have had was the long/short switch. I have had mine for about 2 years. And used for countless hours. The long/short switch went bad a weeks months ago. One of my students also has the same problem. Hmmmm...they might need a different switch. Or maybe they already do, I have not seen this problem in other reviews. Hey! But have no fear!!!!!! Read Customer Support Section..... really.... read it!

Fastest Email Response EVER.... like 2 minutes per ! AND...mailed me the replacement switch for FREE!! Notice I said I had it for almost 2 years!!! Warranty was only ONE year!! I got the switch right away. The best in customer support!! THIS is what we pay for!

I play Christian Rock ( like Third Day, Audio Adrenaline, and David Crowder Band)...and some old school rock and roll stuff.

I have been playing for 32 years....as a Pro/Semi-Pro live and Session Player and instructor... and just for the fun of it ;-)
Chris Barnes www.productoffaith.net

This is a GREAT sounding pedal!!! And UNREAL support!!!.....Not too tough to repair(if needed) No board soldering needed. They might need a heavier switch.... But on the other hand... two years of being continuously stepped on can give almost any pedal a switch problem.... Hey just ask VooDoo Lab!! lol