- Build Rating
This is a build of the Gravitation Reverb, based on the Earthquaker Devices Levitation Reverb. It was a surprisingly easy build - my first reverb, and my first belton brick build.
I chose to call this the Kestral Reverb due to the "Levitation" name of the original pedal. Kestrals have a remarkable ability to hover and keep their head completely still, even (or especially) in heavy gusts of wind. They "levitate". The American Kestral is very small falcon, about the size of a dove. It can be found across the Americas, often sitting on power lines above fields. They're one of my favorite birds. They're compact, cute, and good hunters. The kestral on the pedal is in the "hovering" pose with stylized sunlight in the background. (I would have chosen a hummingbird for the pedal as a somewhat more iconic "levitating" bird... but I have another hummingbird-themed pedal coming up).
The build was simple and a bit of an older build for me, so the jacks and cabling aren't quite to my liking, but I'm not scrupulous about the guts. I rehoused it from a plain enclosure to a custom Tayda UV-painted one, once I determined I liked it. There were no problems with the build, it powered right up and worked from the start. The only challenge was fitting it into the enclosure, and I couldn't use a daughter board for the footswitch, as I normally would. There were no substitutions, except for trying to use up a too-large order of bulky film 1uF caps in place of electrolytic caps. I wasn't sure what to expect with the belton brick... but besides the cost of the component, it was as simple as soldering ICs - just go down the line.
As my first reverb pedal I don't have a lot to compare it to, but so far this has been an always-on pedal. The reverb can range from a lush intense swell, to very modest an unobtrusive. Very versatile. I tend to keep it towards the middle, with atmosphere and tone set around 12 o'clock, decay on the shorter side, and mix between 11 and 2. I find I don't dial in the decay too much - if I want it longer I just flip the switch to bump up the length. Sometimes for more ambient playing I push the atmosphere all the way up, but that can be overwhelming.
At times I've noticed that the decay has a certain "grainy" sound, almost low-fi, which I don't like. Maybe this is just characteristic of the Belton Brick? The only other problem is sometimes I noticed a soft high-pitched background sound. I'm not 100% sure, but this seems to have happened have playing pedals into this at high volume and with a 100mA power cable. I bumped the cable to 300mA and haven't noticed the problem since.
I have a few other reverbs on my to-build list, but it seems the industry is mostly going towards DSP or custom ICs for reverb, and so after those other builds, I'd like to try my hand at customizing or writing a DSP-based reverb pedal.
I chose to call this the Kestral Reverb due to the "Levitation" name of the original pedal. Kestrals have a remarkable ability to hover and keep their head completely still, even (or especially) in heavy gusts of wind. They "levitate". The American Kestral is very small falcon, about the size of a dove. It can be found across the Americas, often sitting on power lines above fields. They're one of my favorite birds. They're compact, cute, and good hunters. The kestral on the pedal is in the "hovering" pose with stylized sunlight in the background. (I would have chosen a hummingbird for the pedal as a somewhat more iconic "levitating" bird... but I have another hummingbird-themed pedal coming up).
The build was simple and a bit of an older build for me, so the jacks and cabling aren't quite to my liking, but I'm not scrupulous about the guts. I rehoused it from a plain enclosure to a custom Tayda UV-painted one, once I determined I liked it. There were no problems with the build, it powered right up and worked from the start. The only challenge was fitting it into the enclosure, and I couldn't use a daughter board for the footswitch, as I normally would. There were no substitutions, except for trying to use up a too-large order of bulky film 1uF caps in place of electrolytic caps. I wasn't sure what to expect with the belton brick... but besides the cost of the component, it was as simple as soldering ICs - just go down the line.
As my first reverb pedal I don't have a lot to compare it to, but so far this has been an always-on pedal. The reverb can range from a lush intense swell, to very modest an unobtrusive. Very versatile. I tend to keep it towards the middle, with atmosphere and tone set around 12 o'clock, decay on the shorter side, and mix between 11 and 2. I find I don't dial in the decay too much - if I want it longer I just flip the switch to bump up the length. Sometimes for more ambient playing I push the atmosphere all the way up, but that can be overwhelming.
At times I've noticed that the decay has a certain "grainy" sound, almost low-fi, which I don't like. Maybe this is just characteristic of the Belton Brick? The only other problem is sometimes I noticed a soft high-pitched background sound. I'm not 100% sure, but this seems to have happened have playing pedals into this at high volume and with a 100mA power cable. I bumped the cable to 300mA and haven't noticed the problem since.
I have a few other reverbs on my to-build list, but it seems the industry is mostly going towards DSP or custom ICs for reverb, and so after those other builds, I'd like to try my hand at customizing or writing a DSP-based reverb pedal.
