BOSS RV-200 £259

CONTACT Roland UK

WEB www.boss.info/uk

Boss has had the delay and modulation genres amply covered in both its double-footswitch 200 Series and triple-footswitch 500 Series pedals for some time, but there’s only been the one large multi-reverb pedal in the RV-500. Now, however, it’s time to meet its smaller sibling, the RV-200. This pedal gives you access to 12 different reverb types that you can dial in quickly from an uncomplicated hands-on interface, 127 onboard memories, a pair of footswitches that can be assigned to a range of different tasks if desired, plus various hook-up options in mono or stereo.

In Use

Initial impressions of the RV-200 are of excellent ease of use with everything you need for everyday operation instantly available from the front panel. There are certain settings, such as configuring different functions for the footswitches, that can be changed from a menu that’s accessed by holding down the Density and Memory buttons, then selected and adjusted with the Time knob. Still, a nicely appointed default configuration straight out of the box means that you may not even need to go there.

All 12 reverb types are adjusted by dedicated knobs for Reverb Time, Pre‑Delay and Effect Level (dry/wet mix), plus Low and High EQ (both with boost and cut), and there’s also a Parameter knob that adjusts one thing specific to each reverb type. For the Room reverb, it selects four different room sizes, while for the Modulate reverb it sets the modulation depth in a range from 0 to 100. In addition, you can set six different degrees of reverb density using a front-panel button, subtly thickening the reverb trail.

With this amount of tweaking available, it’s good that there are 127 onboard user memories to which you can save your favourite sounds. Four memories are available by default on the front panel, making things nicely manageable, and you can increase this up to the full 127.

Besides scrolling through presets, the Memory footswitch can be held down to put it into Hold mode in which a press will sample a portion of what you played and let it playback continuously, allowing you to play guitar over it. Besides Hold, you can alternatively configure Fade, Warp and Twist facilities for different outcomes.

So, what of the reverb types? Well, the four traditional staples are all here – Room, Hall, Plate and Spring – and all do their job with plenty of variation to dial in what you need. Beside the four different room sizes, you get Small, Medium and Large Halls that give you an accurate rendition of the size of the emulated space, while the Plate reverb has adjustable damping via the Parameter knob, which does a great job of blending the sound exactly into your tone. Next, Spring offers you the choice of one, two or three springs. The single spring sounds boxy and has a bongy resonance to it, creating a lo-fi vibe that some might find a use for, but we preferred the two- and three-spring renditions of an amp’s onboard spring tank.

If you like sustained pad sounds sitting behind your tone, the Shimmer reverb has a bright, metallic cloud of upper-octave harmonics with adjustable shrillness. More engaging is the newly developed Arpverb, said to produce “dreamlike reverberations based on an arpeggio sound theme”. Here, sympathetic pitch-shifted arpeggios are generated for interesting harmonic movement to complement your sound. Adjustable attack via the Parameter knob emphasises the individual notes in the sequence for a pleasant trickle of sparkle and chime. For a more conventional fairy dusting of the reverb trail, Modulate builds in classy chorus in varying degrees.

Moving on, Sloverb has Boss’s vintage Slow Gear pedal in its DNA. Here, your guitar and the reverb swells in. It’s a really nice musical effect and is at best when the Parameter knob is set to zero. Advancing the knob adds in dry sound, so you start getting your note attack back. Interestingly, if you set the Effect Level to zero and the Parameter knob the same, you can have the swell effect without reverb.

Giving your delay pedal a break, the +Delay type combines delay and reverb,

This pedal is a doddle to use with easy hands-on tweaking and instantly accessible presets

and the Parameter knob turns up the level of delay, while the Time knob sets a delay time between 10ms and one second (there’s no adjustment for delay feedback, but then the number of repeats programmed in here seems to work really well). Low down on the Time knob there’s some metallic trash-can ambiences, but further up the dial you can balance the delay and reverb for some very practical combined sounds.

Of the final three settings, Lo-Fi is just plain nasty by design! It’s not just lo-fi reverb that’s added to normal guitar sound; an overall harsh distortion is applied as well, with the Parameter knob offering 10 different levels of distortion. The Gated reverb cuts the trail dead, rather than letting it decay, and you can set how long the burst of reverb lasts. Finally, Reverse does as you’d expect and has a high-cut filter to determine how sharp or dull it gets.

While the pedal’s own footswitches offer useful performance capability, there’s plenty more control to be had by adding an expression pedal or external footswitches, or by hooking up a MIDI controller to which many functions can be assigned. MIDI also offers the opportunity to chain multiple 200 Series pedals and select memories on all of them at once, making the RV-200 an ideal ambience companion to the DD-200 Digital Delay pedal.

Verdict

The RV-200 puts a large selection reverbs at your fingertips: plenty that you would use in everyday playing, some that you’d throw in as a wild card, and one or two that would maybe have you scratching your head and wondering how you’d use them. However, we’d say that most multi-effect pedals do exactly that, and you’re not going to run out of options here.

Besides the wide range of sounds, however, this pedal simply screams practicality – it won’t take up much space on your ’board and it’s a doddle to use with easy hands-on tweaking and instantly accessible presets. Overall, a competitively priced way to add full reverb flexibility to your pedalboard!

1. You choose from the 12 reverb types with this rotary switch and each name is briefly shown in the display when you switch to it. The Parameter knob adjusts a parameter that is specific to the selected reverb type – all values are clearly shown in the display as you tweak 1

2. The red LEDs (1, 2, 3, 4) indicate which of the pedal’s first four presets is selected. The first green LED shows you’re in manual mode. No lit LEDs denote a memory somewhere between 5 and 127 (the actual preset number can be seen in the main display) 2

3. The Memory footswitch (or button) scrolls through Manual mode and the four presets by default (you can set by which direction in the menu). You can set it up to scroll through a larger number if desired 3

4. The Density button scrolls through the different amounts of density, indicated by how many LEDs are lit (0 to 5). A long press locks the controls to prevent accidental operation of the panel 4

If you’re using both outputs, you can configure them to deliver left and right effects (with or without the dry sound mixed in) or to have effect from one output and dry sound from the other