As a classical guitarist working on cruise ships, I was looking for a mini reverb pedal that is very small and lightweight that would just “add air” to my sound without the effect being really overpowering. I usually use the LR Baggs Align Reverb which is great but, is too heavy and bulky for my specific needs.
The Fishman AFX Acoustiverb Mini does all this perfectly! It has three reverbs; Spring ,Hall and Plate which suit different styles of music. For me, as a classical guitarist, the Hall reverb suited me best as it subtly adds air which livens up the “one-dimensional” sound of piezo pickups. Playing with this reverb gives me more confidence as it helps to mask little inaccuracies in left hand placement. It has three knobs; Level, Decay Time and Tone. The Level controls the amount of effect added to the dry signal and the Decay Time controls the length of the tail. Just these two controls can give you a huge amount of variation of reverb if used intelligently. The interesting thing about Fishman effects is that they are very “musical” even when pushed to the extreme and don’t sound over the top like some other brands. Then to add more control there is the Tone knob which controls the tone of the tail, moving from fully counter clockwise to clockwise the tone is changed from rich and dark to a slightly brighter tone, again, it’s subtle and not over the top. If you have a duel source pick up system, you can use the selector switch to send the signal to the tip or ring of a TRS lead (Tip, Ring , Sleeve) which will give you a lot of flexibility in sculpting your sound at the mixing desk. Or, like me, keep it simple and send just a mono signal, which is still rich and full. Also there is a switch to select True Bypass or Buffered Bypass, no other reverbs I know of have this capability. This is part of a series of Fishman AFX pedals including an EQ/Preamp pedal, Compressor, Looper, Chorus and an AFX Pocket Blender which gives you total control over the single paths of all the pedals in this series, (when sending the signal to Tip or Ring of the TRS cable). In conclusion, this is a highly versatile reverb with really useful options to control your sound, the reverb is very musical and natural, it work for different styles of music, the pedal is the lightest on the market and it is also the cheapest good quality brands. I love it!
