Recommendations for Newbie - SimpleOutboard Reverb Unit for Mackie 1604-VLZ board

[mountainmike]

Hi All,

Been doing sound for my band at a monthly restaurant gig since January this year. Its a local-musician consortium with a backline - drummer, bass (me) and guitarist - where we back up anywhere up to 16 guest musicians of all types of backgrounds and experience levels. We quickly outgrew my Mackie FX12 board so I picked up a Mackie 1604-VLZ3 this week. Now I need a simple reverb unit.

What would you folks recommend as a simple reverb unit to get the job done in this small venue? As a bass player my experience with reverb is some home recording and using the built-in reverbs on my Mackie 12FX board over the past 6 months - so something that sounds decent, isn't too big (tabletop-small box would work) and has a few adjustable reverb options. I'll feed this through one of the aux sends on the board - tested with some home pedals and they are working fine - but read online not to use guitar pedals as they aren't working at line level and will break up under load.

We'll probably have up to 6 mics working at any time - only putting reverb on vocals. Guitarists have their own effects. Not mic'ing the drums.

Thanks in advance all! learning a lot here.

 

[dasdoing]

this is not a recomedation, as I don't have the experience. But I wonder if reverb on vocals is really needed in a real venue. there should be enough natural reverb in a restaurant

 

[dasdoing]

but if you really want it, you should probably kind of mimic the real space, else they wont add. So I would be looking for a hall reverb

 

[dasdoing]

one thing I can tell you is that most vocal reverbs we hear on the radio seam to be a lexicon 480l

 

[Philbo King]

This might work for you. Inexpensive, reasonable for the job...

alesis microverb for sale | eBay

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Alesis also had rackmount versions for not much more.

A light touch of reverb can help sometimes in a dead club (as long as the sound man is not a drinker... )

 

[BBest]

The pedal-based digital reverbs are actually very good these days. The tc electronic hall of fame or any of the ehx holy grail pedals with hall would probably work great.

 

[mountainmike]

this is not a recomedation, as I don't have the experience. But I wonder if reverb on vocals is really needed in a real venue. there should be enough natural reverb in a restaurant

Room sound is flat - vocals sound flat without reverb. Also many guest singers are still learning - want to give them a little something

 

[dfuller]

Any cheapish digital reverb unit will do the trick. Doesn't have to be anything expensive. Behringer Virtualizer is probably fine.

 

[audio2920]

Agreed with the above. Personally I'd just go on eBay and look for anything made by Lexicon, sort by price and then pick something in budget!

Alternatively if you've got a laptop and at least 2x2 IO, maybe you could look at running a VST host and using plugins? Maybe free ones. There will be latency of course, which is the same as pre-delay in this case, but it should be possible to keep it low *enough* with small buffer sizes.

 

[Rja4000]

If that's just for live vocals, you may just need a delay.

I have a TC Electronic D-Two.
A classic.
You should be able to find one second hand.
(I see quite a few for sale around 150€ in Europe)
Just make sure the Tap button is working properly.
.

 

[JayGilb]

Behringer used to make an excellent outboard reverb unit called REV2496. They can still be found used.

Analog and digital (spdif and AES/EBU) inputs make it very versatile.

 

[Waxx]

If it's just for adding reverb to singers in their headphone, almost anything will do. I used (20 years ago or so) a Alesis MidiVerb. I did sell it but it's still in use by the guy i did sell it too. Condition may be an issue as these are very old devices. These are (old) rather noisy digital reverbs, so they got grain and are lofi. But it served me very well for 10 years on the road (rough conditions) on a reggae soundsystem, and without any issue. It's rock solid build.

A cheap good sounding reverb for live, there is not much anymore, as all is build in into the modern digital consoles used. Second hand you may find cheaper Lexicon (MX series, MPX1, PCM series or or TC Electronics units (M-One) that are great (if the condition is great), but new they are not sold anymore in rack format. Guitar pedals are great these days and can be a solution. But i'm not up to date what is good, i use vst plugins for my (production) stuff and play on other people's reggae soundsystem (and use what is there) and there it's mostly only delay (custom or a Boss RE20 or a real analog tape delay). Live sound or own rig i don't do anymore, my back won't allow that.

 

[mountainmike]

If it's just for adding reverb to singers in their headphone, almost anything will do. I used (20 years ago or so) a Alesis MidiVerb. I did sell it but it's still in use by the guy i did sell it too. Condition may be an issue as these are very old devices. These are (old) rather noisy digital reverbs, so they got grain and are lofi. But it served me very well for 10 years on the road (rough conditions) on a reggae soundsystem, and without any issue. It's rock solid build.

A cheap good sounding reverb for live, there is not much anymore, as all is build in into the modern digital consoles used. Second hand you may find cheaper Lexicon (MX series, MPX1, PCM series or or TC Electronics units (M-One) that are great (if the condition is great), but new they are not sold anymore in rack format. Guitar pedals are great these days and can be a solution. But i'm not up to date what is good, i use vst plugins for my (production) stuff and play on other people's reggae soundsystem (and use what is there) and there it's mostly only delay (custom or a Boss RE20 or a real analog tape delay). Live sound or own rig i don't do anymore, my back won't allow that.

Thanks Waxx - I have an older 16-channel Mackie board that doesn't have built-in effects but my partner and I decided to go back to using our 12-channel Mackie board for these small shows - it has built-in reverb. So - I using the 16-channel for my home studio/rehearsal space and I'll probably find something cheap like the Alexis to work. I picked up one a month ago but it arrived dead. Just got the refund. Finding something made recently is a challenge.