Demoed a EH Cathedral - short review

[Carl_Hungus]

Hello

Haven't found a review here yet, so I thought I'd post one. Excuse me if there is one and I've missed it.

So I spent about 40 minutes in 2 different shops demoing the new EH Cathedral verb box. Overall impressions are that the verbs are clean, sound, and usable. Like the Memory Man Hazarai, it gets more interesting if you go to the lower presets with the Flerb or reverse echos. The regular verbs sound a little like the Grails but crisper. Obviously the main item of interest to me, and probably most of you, is the infinite hold button. For some reason they don't really cover it much in the youtube vids and instead just have some guy playing twangy blues with a slapback echo. Don't really see the point of this since that button is what makes this pedal unique.

So, is the button as cool as it sounds on paper? Almost. I play textural droney guitar stuff, mostly, so I played a lot with holding and releasing the button to create swells and crescendos with simple patterns. It does work really well for this, and I almost bought it for this reason. It can be very interactive and there is no doubt that its capable of some cool sounds. One useful way is that you can often get a droning fundamental tone, like a sitar, and then play along with it. Or you can have a more lush verb and pump the button with your chord changes to keep holding the new verb swell with the previous chord. Sounds great right? It is, EXCEPT that your new motif that you're playing over the holding tone is non-effected. That's right, it goes into the bypass sound for the 2nd part until you release the button and it kicks in again. Now perhaps I missed something, but even with the blend knob adjusted, I couldn't get it to add a 2nd layer of verb. This would be something I could work around, and even be advantageous if it had separate jacks for dry and wet, so that you could take the 2nd layer and pass it to another effect, but it doesn't. It would also be nice if there was an expression pedal option.

I would still buy one, someday, probably for live use as it creates some good drones. But you'd be well served to have a ABY splitter feeding another chain while held the drones. Assuming you play in a similar fashion as I do.

In short, its a so close, yet frustratingly not quite there pedal.

[Jenesis]

I love my Cathedral.

I know what you're saying about the un-effected overdubs, but to be honest I like it that way. If I wanna get down with some wall of sound insanity I just crank the reverb time to max/infinite and go nuts.

[Carl_Hungus]

Yeah, I do think its cool and will probably get one. I just wish there were multiple outs like the Flanger Hoax. Otherwise its a really nice box.

[less_cunning]

i'm sure the regular reverbs are fine. all i care about is the infinite and the reverse. i don't see myself using the infinite reverb while playing over it.