Van Amp Reverbamate

Two outputs, one wet (reverb) one dry (not reverb). Plug these into an amp with two channels to have an extremely adjustable variety of reverb sounds. Dwell and output controls contribute to the range of sound you can get from this unit.
Some people see the two outputs as an annoyance, but that is really the beauty of this unit; otherwise you wouldn't be able to mix in just the right amount of reverb into your sound.

I use a Gibson Les Paul with a 57 classic and 57 classic plus pick up, along with an SG with the standard pickups.
I run this thing through a '59 Fender Bassman, and it is nuts. The Bassman has an awesome tone, but when it comes to playing at home or small venues, you really want to have reverb to give it your sound that extra third dimension. Whether it is set for a tiny touch of reverb, or set to make you sound like you're coming out of a deep well that's 50 yards away, this unit produces the most authentic, true spring reverb sound imaginable. With this unit, it's like having the best parts of a Twin Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, and Super Reverb all thrown into the warm tone of a '59 Bassman. It's nasty.

I haven't looked inside it yet, but they're handwired with great care, so I have faith in it. No problems so far.

If you call customer support, you will most likely get Tim, who invented and handwired your Reverbamate himself. I don't think you'd be able to get Leo on the phone if you called Fender. Anyways, I called when I was first considering buying it, and Tim talked to me for about ten minutes about the advantages and disadvantages, and how it would work with my amp. He was great.

Someone should shout about this from the top of a mountain (and the sound would probably still be within its range of reverb). Everyone is always complaining about how various pedals or reverb units lack quality in various ways. This is the answer. If you don't have a 2 channel amp, then the Solemate is the answer.
This is a true analog spring reverb (it houses an 8" Accutronics spring), so it's not like most other pedals that try to imitate spring reverb: it is spring reverb. That's what gives your tone the depth that we're all familiar with from the music that we love out of the 50's, 60's, and 70's (the 80's was when the cool factor of everything plummeted).
I haven't found anything that can beat the '59 Bassman for the tone I want, and I'm glad I never gave up on it for its lack reverb. I defy anyone with a Deluxe Reverb, Twin Reverb, Super Reverb, or anything else to produce a better tone than I have with the Reverbamate.

Features are minimal but very functional. The the way this unit operates takes about five minutes of getting used to, but once you've mastered it you're away. There are controls for dwell and mix - between them you control how much reverb is mixed into the signal. Also there are two outputs - one direct and one wet, your 2 input (or more) amp acts as the mixer. Trust me, it works.

There's also a handy jack and footswitch to operate you tremolo, allowing you to combine two functions into one pedal.

MIA Strat and MIM Tele, both from the 90's. I love the reverb produced by this unit. It's a very neutral but very powerful effect. Like Fender reverb, you can wind it up to the point where the reverb is so overwhelming that that sort of becomes an effect in itself, if you see what I mean. There is a full range of gorgeous, natural sounding 'verb on tap from a very light effect to all out cavernous cacophony. Fantastic and just what I was looking for.

I looked inside just because I always do when I buy new gear. It's all made in the USA and seems very nicely put together both inside and out. Soldering, lead dress, etc. is flawless, as is the construction of the case and the tolex job (mine's black). It uses a power adaptor, which is supplied. You can use batteries, but why would you? I don't know why people always whine on about wall warts, I 've never had a problem with them. Overall, top hole!

Never had any reason to contact them.

I really like this unit. In fact I've been waiting for something like this to come onto the market for ever as I never really got on with digital reverbs like the EH Holy Grail and Fender units are just totally impractical for me in terms of size and cost. I can't really fault it at all. Very highly recommended!!

I thought I'd post a review of this in the 'effects' section (there are already some in 'amplifiers') since that's what it actually is.
In essence, this unit sounds fantastic. Running through a couple of "vibro champ - amps" the reverb it produces can get pretty massive and I concur with those posters who say that it's neck and neck between this and Fender tube reverb. I had a great '75 Silverface Deluxe Reverb serviced to perfection with a NOS RCA Grey plate 12AT7 in the reverb stage. This, to my ears, sounds better. The dual outputs give you total control over the wet and dry mix. The Fender reverb is brighter, more "splashy" and undoubtedly suited more to surf but this, to my ears is a far more versatile, natural and simply better sounding effect.


In terms of "ease of use", however, it's far from perfect. I generally have the Reverbamate runing into the '68 Vibro champ, or split between two vibro champs - you cannot do this with just the dual outputs alone - more about that later.

My main problem with it was that I encountered an incredibly annoying high frequency feedback when both of the controls were raised above about about ten o' clock. This could be solved (unsatisfactorily) by backing off about two thirds on the treble control on the guitar (a U.S.A. natural ash Telecaster). I contacted Tim at Vanamps who confirmed that this was within the normal range of operation. I found that the problem can be solved completely by buffering the signal either between the guitar and Reverbamate or between the Reverbamate and the amp. I'd recommend a high quality buffer stage to prevent signal degradation. I wanted to run a BOSS DM-2 into the reverbamate anyway, so this wasn't really a problem for me, but if you just want to play it straight, be warned, feedback is a problem on these units.

As there were two outputs, it made sense to me to try splitting them between two amps. Cue ground loop HUUUM. I know it's a general problem with splitting a signal and is not really the fault of the Reverbamate, but it seems to me that where you have two outputs, one clean, one wet, plugging into two seperate amps naturally suggests itself. It's even suggested by the manufacturer. This should have been taken into account in the design by completely isolating the two outputs from one another. As it is, I bought a Palmer y-box to do that job and it does it absolutely flawlessly, with no change in sound at all. All this means that if I want to use the Reverbamate split to two amps with no feedback I have to use two buffer stages (the DM-2 and the Palmer) which seems a bit stupid.

Other than that, though, fine. Controls are clearly laid out and the auxillary switch for plugging in the amplifier's onboard tremolo is a great touch.

This gets the most use with the above mentioned Telecaster and a '61 reissue SG with WCR Filmores. The unit, once set up, is dead silent. The reverb really is great, very cavernous and natural sounding. I think the accutronics tank it comes with has 4 seconds of delay, which is plenty.

The reverb effect is incredibly smooth and just beautiful sounding. Using the two controls to mix in the sounds you can go from a lot of 'verb just barely mixed in to the overall output (a very glossy sound) to a subtle reverb to total reverb wetness. The reverb footswitch doesn't turn the unit on or off, but engages/disengages the reverb output, so you always have your basic clean output, and you mix the reverb in with it. A great design in that sense. If you max out the drive on the reverb tank you get a slight amount of distortion, but I've never heard a reverb unit that doesn't do that. good. There are too many great possibilities with regard to splitting the output and running it through different effects to list them here.

Too early to say, only had it for about a month. When I got it I opened it up to install a couple of batteries. It seems pretty well put together. The soldering was all perfect. The sheet steel contruction and Tolex are all flawless.

Tim at vanampps answered my email queries pretty promptly, so, yeah, great.

Overall, very highly recommended. The quality is very high, the reverb is fantastic and the possibilities for different ways of setting it up are huge. This pedal does what many others (Holiest Grail, Little Lanilie, etc.) fail to do - provide a 100% authentic and beautiful sounding spring reverb that goes as deep as you want it to. This high rating is IN SPITE of it being the single most finicky piece of equipment I own. Maybe that's just me though, I haven't noticed any other reviews describing the problems I've had...
I'd give it a ten, but not at $279.00!

two outputs, one dry, one wet, works best with a 2 channel amp (I use it with an old Supro 1688TN) but you can use it with a single channel that has 2 inputs. (All the old fenders and most other vintage amps have 2 discreet channels). It's about 4 times as big as a standard pedal but has an aux input and footswitch to replace your vibrato pedal. They could have spent 2 bucks more and included a light so you could tell whether the damn thing is on! Has a dwell control which seems to control feedback and an output which controls effect level. You can also use the controls on your amp's 2 channels to tweak the sound.

dead quiet, absolutely natural, darker than a Fender unit so not so great for surf/rockabilly but truly fantastic for anything else traditional. (this is an analog spring unit...no digital science fiction sounds available).

built really well..definitely gig worthy but it's weakness is the 12V AC adapter. It would be better if they had integrated power into the unit so you could plug it just like an amp. (you can run on two 9 volt batteries in a pinch).

been playing 35 years, I use this pedal with a guild X-500 through the afore mentioned Supro...no other effects besides the amp's built in tremelo. I tried an EBS Dynaverb, a Songworks Little Lanilei, & an Electroharmonix holy grail. the Dynaverb is compact, has great presets, great sounds, but hisses like a snake whether it's on or off so it's just unacceptable.
The Lanilei has no balls whatsoever. The Holy Grail is the noisiest pedal of any type that I've ever heard. The Reverbamate is the clear choice And I'm happy I bought it but if EBS ever licks the noise problem that could be a viable alternative due to it's greater versatility. I would recomend the Reverbamate to any one looking for a traditional Reverb effect for live or recording.

This is a very easy to use unit it has two controls: volume and
dwell. Howver it requires an amp with two channels to work correctly
so you will need extra cables. This is a bit of a pain but the
unit works very well and you will be very pleased with the tone!

I have the '57 Fender Twin Amp reissue (read my review under amps).
I run a Fender Clapton Strat and a '57 Historic Reissue Les Paul.
My pedal board has Boss tuner>Radial Hot British>Radial Classic>
Boss Equalizer>Visual Sound H2O>Voodoo Labs Micro Vibe. The Reverbamate runs separately into the amp with just a clean signal.
So you have two signals Dry (effects) and Wet (reverb) for great tone. Very good quality reverb from subtle to surf city. I looked
at a lot of units and bought this based on emails from the sales
people and manufacturer, never heard it but their info just seemed
right, and it was!

I have been using this unit exclusively for a few weeks now and
find it to be very well built. It's mounted on my pedal board
and travels well. I get the feeling it's capable of being around
for a very long time.

As stated above, before buying I emailed VanAmps several times
for explanations of the units hook up requirements (2 channels)
and other issues. They were very helpful so I have no reason to
believe they will be otherwise if there is a problem.

I play blues, classic rock and country. This unit is perfect for all. I've been playing 35 years and I've never used a better reverb.
The digital units just sound sterile. There are more expensive
units (including Fender) but I think you would be hard pressed to
find a better sound. An overall great combo of size, price, quality,
and TONE. I will state again though that you need two separate amp
inputs (necessary for one channel to run overall reverb effect. I
know it sounds weird but it works very well). I would like to see
two changes: 1) add a led light for when the effect is on, and 2)
hard wire the ac instead of the forever painful wallwart.

This is pretty easy to use as long as you have a vintage style dual channel amp. Analog Spring Reverb (ASR) in a relatively small package. The unit has one input and two outputs sending two signals: one dry and one pure reverb. The idea is to give each signal its own channel. I don't really inderstand why they had to do it that way but it works well and allows you to then use your tone controls at the amp to adjust the frequencies. The unit itself has an output level (which seems to control the wet level) and a dwell control for reverb depth or consistancy. I really like the reverb bypass switch and the fact that the unit is designed as a floor pedal. It makes it easy to use. Read more on Vanamps web site if you're seriously interested.

I am surprised and impressed with the sound. I A/B it with a Fender curcuit tube reverb and found it to be purly subjective. I had both at home for a number of days and found myself going back and forth all the time. Both units sound different but neither one really better. The Vanamps unit is darker and more defined while the Fender tube reverb was snappy and rich. I couldn't lose either way but stuck with the reverbamate because of its design, unique tone, and price.

The unit appears to be well built but only time will tell.

For someone with a vintage style two channel amp without reverb this thing would be hard to beat. I wish I could describe it better but reverb is tricky. This is the real deal and sounds sweet not cheesy like digital... I have mine on most of the time.

The Reverbamate has two controls, output and dwell, and two outputs. One for direct sound, one for reverb only sound. There's also a footswitch for (true bypass) and an auxiliary switch for channel switching or tremolo on your amp.

The downside to the two output design is that you can't use it with small one input amps. The upside is that you wouldn't bother getting this kind of unit if you were just using a small amp, it's really intended for older amp designs with no verb, and it works well for that. It also gives you the ability to modulate just the reverb, which is great for certain types of atmospheric music.

I play a Dean Avalanche through a Tone Jam modified GE-7, (loop 1) a Roger Mayer Spitfire Fuzz, and Visual Sound Jeckyll & Hyde Ultimate Overdrive, (loop 2) Dunlop 535Q Wah, EHX Russian Small Stone, Ibanez PH99 Classic Phase, Ibanez FL99 Classic Flange, EHX Small Clone, (loop 3) EHX Deluxe Memory Man, with the Reverbamate absolutely last in the chain (for now anyway.) The VanAmp verb goes great with everything. It's so pleasant and full that it needs no tweaking in the tone department. It really does wonders for the Memory Man, making it just that much more atmospheric.
I play all kinds of music. Some of my favorites groups are U2, New Order, Joy Division, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Starflyer 59, Felt, the Church, Belle & Sebastian, the Smiths, Morrissey, Dick Dale, Roy Orbison, most of Tamla Motown, Hendrix, Goldie, Tricky, Portishead, DJ Shadow and Underworld. There's a little bit of that stuff in everything I write. I also play blues, country and bluegrass from time to time.

Anyway, the verb's not too boingy and it probably isn't as much a surf verb as a Fender product, but it's more versatile, and I find that preferable. It's tail is rather smooth.
I'm a tone freak, an analog freak, and a verb freak and this totally nails it for me. I contemplated selling my Holier Grail, but I'll keep it around as a backup. Tonewise, however, it can't touch the Reverbamate.

It seems quite sturdy. I haven't used it on stage yet, I'm apprehensive that drums or bass could cause vibration, but we'll see. It will feedback if you try feeding both outputs into one channel, and the output or dwell (this is how hard it drives the springs) are too high.

I don't know if VanAmps is more than a one person operation. Tim was very polite and prompt in e-mails, a little short on the phone (some people tend to be), and overall easy to deal with.
I wish the warranty lasted more than a year, but I'll taking a quality, tonefully rich product over Boss's 5 year warranty (and sterility) anyday.

Of course I wish it were cheaper, but I wish everything were cheaper. And I'm sure most everyone else wishes the same thing. The bottom line is that this is reasonably priced and sounds fabulous. It satisfies my demanding tonal needs and provides a lovely and rich analog verb.

This is a 2003 reverb unit built by Van Tassel of Van Amps. I own a Victoria 80212 that is a remake of a "59" Tweed Twin and I love the amp except that there are times that I would like to have reverb and the reverb tanks that I tried (Fender reissues, etc) all didn't like having a overdrive/distorion pedal put in front of them so I was resigned to getting a delay pedal. I found this pedal on the internet and began to gather information, after talking with the folks at "solidbody guitar" I decided to take the risk and try one. The unit is a footpedal with an output and dwell control knobs and two outputs, one is the direct signal and the other is the reverb signal. The unit has a spring reverb tank inside but overall is not all that big. There is a footswitch to turn the reverb off and on and an extra switch to operate the tremolol in the amp has one. A tone control would have been nice.

Using a 52 telecaster RI, American Std. Strat, and a Les Paul Std. I was very surprised and pleased at how well the unit worked. I plugged the direct signal into the Bright channel and the reverb signal into the normal channel and began to try different settings and was impressed at the depth of clean reverb I could get. In fact, this unit actually sounds better than the fender tank that I was thinking about getting. I could never get the controls on a fender unit to go past 3-4 because the sound became to washy and splashing. You can turn the dwell control all the way around and the sounds are still useable. It's easy to get a surf sound if your into that, but the real plus is the depth of reverb that you can obtain with a warm sound, this unit is a Jazz players dream come true. Now for the icing on the cake, you can put a distortion box in front of this unit and it sounds great!! I use a Fulldrive 2 and a Barber Direct Drive and the reverb makes both pedals sound fuller and gives them a nice ambience. This unit actually reminds me a Lexicon type of reverb in that it has that deep sweet body to the reverb. It is in a different class than my Holy Grail, which is a good pedal but I have had to send mine back to EH three times because it quits working during the middle of a set!! The Reverbamate is very musical in that it makes the chords sound fatter. Also you can run the direct signal to one amp and the reverb signal to another amp and I've found that if you seperate the amps by 8-10 feet the sound is huge!!

I will have to wait on this since I have only owned this for a couple of days, but the unit appears to be solidly built. There is a one year warranty.

Van Tassel was very informative and answered all my questions over the phone, the only problem is that he doesn't accept credit cards and asks customers to go through Pay Pal so I bought mine from Solidbody Guitar Shop (a dealer).

I have been playing 30 years and have a Victoria 80212 (59 twin), Victoria 45410 (bassman) and a Vibroverb 64 Custom. If this were stolen I would be on the phone ordering another within 24 hours. I have been looking for ~6 months trying to find a reverb unit that worked with other pedal and this really fit the bill.