True Spring Reverb w/ Favorite Switch Pedal Review

The absolute best spring reverb pedal ever made!

I picked this up about 7 weeks ago and now that I have played with it for a while, I thought I would write a review. I am not a gigging musician and just play at home. I like to run in stereo and play with headphones most of the time. When I am amped, I have a Vox AC30 (that is way too loud for our home and neighbors) and a Strymon Iridium running into a Line6 Powercab 112+ (which… read more is awesome at allowing cranked tone at lower volumes). I also have an HX Stomp that I sometimes use instead of the Iridium. I previously had a Strymon Flint and loved the tremolo side of it but never really loved the reverbs. They were good, but I just never LOVED them. I bought it years ago and for the longest time, it was my only pedal going into the AC30. I think I wanted to make the AC30 sound more like a blackface Fender. Honestly, I think my main criticism of the Flint is the stereo routing through the TRS jack was a pain. A while back I picked up a Source Audio Collider and I absolutely loved it. Lots of usable reverbs and delays with easy stereo inputs and outputs and routing. The only thing that was missing was that vintage-ish drippy spring reverb sound. Since I love the Collider I thought I would give the True Spring a try. Again, it has easy stereo ins and outs and makes cabling and wire management easy. The Reverbs: They sound great. I think I watched every video on Youtube and they do a great job of capturing the three main preset sounds. The controls are interesting in that there is no reverb time control on the knob by default. There is just Mix, Level, Dwell, and Tone. The controls are set up to be the controls of an old Fender reverb tank. Out of the box, the three basic reverbs (Short, Long, Tank) sound great but I do wish they had included another knob for decay/time. So on the surface it looks like there are just these 3 reverbs and 4 controls. But then you plug in the Source Audio desktop app (I haven't really tried the mobile app) and it unlocks lots of options. You can reassign the knobs however you want. And these assignments can be saved to presets. So if you like the dwell level and don't anticipate changing it much, reassign the Dwell knob to be the reverb time or pre-delay. You can tweak the diffusion and modulation. It is a great app because it lets you have as much or as little control over the pedal as you want. The other thing that almost nobody mentioned in the YouTube videos is that there are more reverb engines than just the three default ones. There are 8 more that you can choose. My favorites are the "Hall S" engine that is a combination of 80s Lexicon hall and a spring reverb. I love the "Trash Can Spring" which sounds as you would expect. You can also assign three additional engines to a second bank of presets giving this pedal 6 presets to easily choose from. This is another thing none of the youtube reviews mentioned. So yeah… it sounds great. You want old drippy reverb tank sounds in a small package, you got it. Mono or stereo? No problem. Weird spacy and character reverbs? Yep. Subtle reverb that emulates an old blackface Fender? Yep. There is way more here than at first glance. I love the reverbs on this pedal. It is by far the best spring reverb pedal on the market. Between it and the Collider, I don't think I will need any other reverb pedal. Tremolo: This is where I am a slightly disappointed. I bought the extra foot switch so I could control the tremolo independently of the reverb. That works well, but the rate and depth are adjusted as secondary functions to the Dwell and Tone knobs. One nice thing about the Flint is that it had its own dedicated knobs for the tremolo side. It has the same three tremolo options as the Flint (Optical, Bias, Harmonic) but they just sound more distinctly different in the Flint than they do in the True Spring. The one thing the True Spring has over the Flint is that the Tremolo has a Stereo control where you can control the stereo offset/panning. This is a great function. If you want it to fully ping-pong between left and right, it can. Want it more subtle? Just turn it down. Having the extra switch is tremendously helpful. Summary: I think this pedal has finally given me my completed dream pedal board. I can get almost any sound I want. I can play in mono or stereo, through amps or headphones. I think people often skip over this pedal thinking it may be just a one-trick pony, but it is a hugely versatile small pedal with 6 onboard presets controlling 11 possible reverb engines and 3 tremolo engines. Adding in the stereo component makes it even better. The desktop software is killer. I like it so much, I ended up selling my Flint.

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Fantastic but needs tweaking

I owned this pedal for 1-2 years and could not find a convincing "Fender" spring reverb sound. The android phone app does not have the same settings as the desktop/windows app. Within minutes of connecting to the desktop app I immediately found THE BEST "Fender" spring reverb in a pedal available. (Better/more convincing than the Strymon Flint.) I suggest any users do the following.… read more 1 - connect to desktop app 2 - start with the Long engine an select the "Large" spring type 3 - assign Decay time to replace the Dwell control (also set Dwell very low) 4 - reduce Decay time to suite your preference (presetting is WAY TOO long) BONUS Tips 1 - buy the SA tap switch (used to activate tremolo on/off) 2 - re-assign Dwell and Tone to control tremolo Depth and Speed 3 - re-assign Decay Time to the secondary Dwell control 4 - re-assign the secondary function of the Dwell knob to be the Decay Time. Now you have tremolo Depth/Speed without needing to use the secondary (hidden) functions. This is useful because typically you would not need to adjust your spring reverb Dwell/Tone settings during a gig. It is sometimes useful to adjust the Decay Time and this is why I suggest to assign this to the secondary control for the Dwell knob. The mix knob is crucial therefor I would not suggest to re-assign this knob to other functions. If you do all of this you will end up with the most convincing Fender spring reverb available. It is actually astonishing how accurately this pedal models the spring drip where most pedals lack.

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Great if you don't mind the tweaking

Overall I am very pleased with this reverb pedal. It does a reasonable job of simulating a spring reverb in short, long, and tank styles. Now, I know there are a lot of surf guitar players out there who immediately want to know the answer to the "Does it drip?" question. The answer again is yes, it does so "reasonably" well - the mix, dwell, and tone knobs pretty much behave… read more like a real reverb tank unit and have a decent range of sound options. The classic pingy/echoey sounds are definitely present in the sound and all of it can be driven fairly hard with the Dwell knob just like a real tank. As for the tremolo sounds, the opto, harmonic, and bais modes each sound very nice. I freely admit there is a certain vibe to the harmonic version that is most pleasing to me. Default controls for those work via holding down a little button on the top edge of the pedal and then working the Dwell and Tone controls for tremolo depth and speed. Overall sound quality is very nice, and as far as I can tell it's pretty much dead silent with no noticeable hiss or noise. The only real concerns are that it packs in too many options in too small of a package, requiring you to do more serious tweaking via their app. Additionally, the provided manual doesn't correctly explain how to make the pedal work with the provided tap switch (look for a "hidden features" demo out there). Some of the best sounds of the pedal are hidden in the app settings, so if you get one of these pedals and don't immediately like the sounds, give the editor a try before giving up completely. And there appears to be no help file available for the editor, so unless you're app proficient beginners might want to look elsewhere. Regardless, I really dig this pedal and it suits my needs perfectly. It's far cheaper than an actual reverb tank and I doubt the average listener would know the difference anyway.

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