NAMM 2018: Semour Duncan Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb

At NAMM, Seymour Duncan let us take a look at their Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb pedal. If there was a award for the most improved pedal brand, then Seymour Duncan would have to take it. There is no other brand that has risen out mediocracy as well as SD. The Andromeda Delay was impressive in a time where everyone was producing some of the best digital effects that the world of guitar has ever seen. Now we get Seymour Duncan take on a top shelf Reverb. This pedal is packed full of features and designed beautifully. It's priced ($350) to compete with pedals like the RV-500 from BOSS and due to drop soon.


More Information From Sweetwater:

Fully Programmable Reverb with a World of Ambiance

With the wide variety of powerful multi reverb pedals on the market, it's refreshing to see one as intuitive and great-sounding as the Seymour Duncan Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb pedal. Onboard you'll find eight different reverb varieties, with enough tonal tweaking to create the exact sound your music needs. And thanks to Duncan's dynamic technology, you can set the reverb's character to react to the intensity of your playing. And with its MIDI capabilities, the Silver Lake is also the perfect companion for switching-based pedalboards.

Create your own space

At the heart of the Seymour Duncan Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb pedal is a powerful digital engine. It's this power that allows you to access eight separate reverb voices, including room, spring, shimmer, delay verb, and more. From there, the Grit, Damp, Mix, and Pre-Delay controls take over, tuning your delay trails to perfection. Whether you want the vintage sounds of a cranked spring tank, the natural sound of a large hall, or something completely your own, the Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb is a more than capable partner.

Dynamic Expression control

Even with all this tone shaping onboard, what sets the Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb effects pedal apart from the crowded pack available at Sweetwater is its ability to change its character based on your playing dynamics. Dynamic Expression can be tuned to affect the Mix, Mod, or Damp settings of your tone, depending on how hard you hit the strings. With this feature, you can go from a warm, modulated ambiance when lightly picked to a cavernous modulation by digging in, and it couldn't be easier to control.

Power to spare

On top of its multitude of reverb types, tone-shaping abilities, and dynamic expression, the Silver Lake packs a ton of features onboard to make it extremely player friendly. The pedal's MIDI capabilities integrate the pedal into a larger rig for effortlessly accessing your presets on the fly. Stereo I/O allows you to spread your tone across multiple amplifiers. The Silver Lake's ability to run at 18 volts enhances the pedal's headroom and clarity. And a USB jack is there when it's time to keep the Silver Lake's software updated far into the future.

Seymour Duncan Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb Pedal Features:

• Powerful programmable reverb pedal with a bevy of intuitive features
• Multiple voicing options, such as Grit, Damp, and Decay
• Dynamic control changes its sound depending on your playing dynamics
• MIDI switchable
• Over 100 preset locations
• Fully programmable via the top of the unit
• USB connectivity for software updates
• 8 types of reverb selectable with a rotary switch

Ugly Guitar Truth About Pedal Board Amps

Diffidently not a new thing, but a huge trend this year at NAMM, the pedal board amp has seen a huge rise in popularity among manufactures. Seymour Duncan, among others, have put forth product that are designed to basically take the place of the power section of your amp. Vox has put out a tiny amp head that would be easy enough to mount on a board. Hotone has designed a 20 watt head that is to be paired with their amp model pedals to create a varity of tones. A conglomerit of boutique amp called Boutique Amps, have devised a system of enterchangable preamp circuits to recreate a range of... boutique amps. What does all of this have in common? Not very much, I kind of went off the rails there a little bit. What I want to talk about is that we are seeing tiny little power amps flood the market and what that fact means for the world of guitar players. Shall we?

First Things First

Guitar player hate change, or we love it depending on who you ask. I can't wait to see what pedal or piece of kit come out next. Then I plug my Telecaster directly into a Vox AC15... Loopers, Delays, pretty much everything Strymon does, has facilitated progression in the guitarist spectrum. However, we still love playing amps that were designed in the 1950s with antiquated technology. We can plug a pedal into a Blues Jr. to make it sounds like a space ship taking off and then talk about the richness and warmth that you value from that amp (to make space noises with).

Then Something Happens




Something that the average guitarist has is pedals. Collect a few of those, and you get a pedal board. The most common pedals, or the ones that seem to pile up, are drive pedals. The ones that give you a boost or gain can really help your amp be all that it can be. In fact, so pedals emulate completely different amps. Pedals like the 30 Something, or Golden Plexi practically tell you, "This is a Vox sound," or "This pedal sounds like a Marshall." So if your pedal sounds like an amp, what is your amp doing.


What Are We Doing?


On my board there are several pedal that handle Gain, EQ, Reverb... so I set my amp clean, flat and kill any reverb. If I set my amp to a nice tone (not hard) I will be finding it difficult to find a application other than simple signal processing for my pedals. However, set my amp flat, and I can use my pedals to create a wider range or tones leaning more heavily on the pedals to come up with the distinct sounds. What I'm saying is: you can have a range of great sounds from a particular amp, but they are going to sound like that amp, but a flat (pedal friendly) power section can give you more room to let you pedals shine through.


Conclusion


I meant to talk about amps like the one Seymour Duncan are putting out, but looks like I've just chased my tail for 500 words. Long story... still long actually... pedals are covering a multitude of tasks. Some of those tasks have long been associated with guitar amplifiers. As we are doing more signal processing before the amp, we are asking less of the actual amp. Thus, we are seeing amps that compliment this by having few features and simply push our tone into a speaker. I like this, and at the same time, I don't really like this.

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