[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hi, I'm Stan with Fender and Josh Smith
and I are going to go through the Reflecting Pool Delay
and Reverb pedal today.
The Reflecting Pool is super comprehensive.
There's a delay side.
There's a reverb side.
They can work independently or together.
It's a true stereo pedal.
It's got a tap tempo footswitch.
There's a jack for an external tap.
Each side has a lot of different sounds on it.
So let's get into it.
Feature-wise, on the delay side, like the mirror image,
this delay actually has two delays under the hood.
In the case of the mirror image it's preset to a dotted eighth
against whatever the quarter note value is.
But in this case it can be a dotted eighth, a triplet,
or an eighth note against your quarter note.
So walking around the panel here.
There's a knob for the level of the delay.
There's a knob that sets the balance between the main delay
and the sub delay.
There's a feedback control.
And there's a delay time control.
And you'll notice a little clockwork
around the delay time control.
What that's for is with the tap tempo.
If you hold the tap switch down and set that to a note value,
that's the value that you'll get from tapping at a quarter note.
So if you set it to dotted eighth, you'll tap quarters,
the delay will give you back a perfect dotted eighth.
Underneath that are the controls for the modulation section.
So there's a rate and a depth control.
The rate does something really cool
where if it's all the way in the fully counterclockwise or off
position it actually turns into a random, which
is really, really fun for subtle modulation.
Next there's a switch that establishes the type of delay.
This can do three different types.
There's a digital delay model that's
super super clean and studio-like.
There's an analog delay model and there's a tape delay.
Then there's a switch that establishes
the timing for the secondary delay, so at the bottom
it's a dotted eighth.
In the middle it's a triplet.
On the top it's an eighth note.
Lastly, there's a quality switch.
And the quality works with the individual delay models.
So it's labeled one, two, and three.
And basically in the first position
the fidelity is as high as it can be.
And as you start going towards two and then into three
you lose some bandwidth on each end,
and it gets a little noisier and funkier and just
kind of vibier.
There's a tap tempo footswitch and the bypass footswitch.
All right.
Let's go through the sounds.
Let's start on the delay side.
But first, Josh, what are you playing?
Today I've got a Vintera '60s Stratocaster,
and we're playing through a '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb.
STAN: What's it sound like?
All right.
Here's straight into the amp.
[STRUMMING]
And what we'll do is we'll walk through the three
different delay models.
And as Josh is playing I'll flip the quality switch
so you can hear what that sounds like.
So we're starting with the digital delay.
This is the closest thing we have to like
a straight up studio delay.
Kind of perfect bandwidth, no noise,
just exactly what you put in.
[STRUMMING]
Here's the second quality position.
[STRUMMING]
So it's subtle but you hear a little softening of the top end
when that happens.
Let's go to the analog delay models.
Nice.
[STRUMMING]
So there is the difference is much more pronounced.
Very much.
All right.
Let's go look in the tape.
[STRUMMING]
All right.
Let's poke at the modulation a little bit.
We'll go back to the digital model.
And start off with a just normal slow modulation.
It adds kind of a subtle coursing to the delay.
[STRUMMING]
And then the random part of it.
[STRUMMING]
All right.
Let's look at the sub delays.
So right now we're set up for a dotted eighth
against Josh's quarter note.
[STRUMMING]
But I can switch it to a triplet.
[STRUMMING]
Or a straight eighth.
Let's look at the top tempo function.
Right now I'm going to hold the tap button down
and I'm going to turn this to quarter notes.
And go to a single delay.
And I'm just going to tap a quarter in.
Three, four.
Three.
OK.
It's the same tempo.
If I hold the tap switch down and then
turn this over and set it to where it's a dotted eighth.
Tap in the same.
Comes back as a dotted eighth.
On the reverb side there are several different reverb
options available.
So there are halls available.
Halls are super dense and thick and they're
great for single note soloing, really inspiring kind
of sustained playing.
There's a room mode.
And the rooms are much more sparse
and they're better for like staccato rhythm
playing where you maybe don't want the reverb
to be too much in the way.
There's a switch labeled one, two, and three
for each of those.
And what those do is set the size of those reverbs,
so they go from very small to very large.
And then there's a special category.
The special reverbs available are
there's a shimmer that adds kind of octavy harmonics
as you play.
There's a really fun gated function
where you can control the shape of the decay.
So you can make a decay smoothly,
or you can make it more like a gate,
or you can actually make it like an inverse reverb,
and we'll check some of that out and listen to it.
Because we always do this on reverbs that we love.
There's a great modulated space that's
really good for chord swells.
For controls on the reverb there's a knob for the level.
So that's kind of a mix between dry and fully reverb signal.
There's a knob over here that controls the reverb decay time,
so how long it sticks around after you play.
There's a damping control.
And what damping generally does--
it changes depending on the modes a little bit
--but what it generally does is it
makes the reverb kind of get softer and quieter and darker
as it decays over time.
Then there's this extra control.
And the extra control does different things
depending on the mode.
So for example, if it's in a hall or a room,
this damping control sets the high frequency decay.
This actually sets the low frequency decay.
So you can have the low end of the reverb
go away first and preserve all the crisp highs.
In the case of the shimmer the extra knob
adjusts how much of the shimmer-- like how quickly
and how many of the octave harmonics it adds.
In the case of the gated reverb it
sets the shape of the envelope.
In the case of the modulated reverb
it sets how deep the modulation is
or how wide the chorusing is.
Right now we're set to the hall reverb
and we'll set to the second hall reverb, which
is the medium size.
[STRUMMING]
I'm not going to change the decay time.
I'm just going to set it to the smaller setting.
[STRUMMING]
And the larger setting.
[STRUMMING]
Beyond decay, that changes a bunch
of things about the reverb algorithm,
the liveness of the room.
All right.
Let's go listen to the room settings then.
Here's the short small room.
[STRUMMING]
Here's the medium room.
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Here's the large room.
[STRUMMING]
All right.
Let's go check out the specials.
The first special is shimmer.
Shimmer adds beautiful octave overtones
to what you're playing.
This extra knob adjusts how much of the octaves are thrown in.
[STRUMMING]
OK.
Next step is the gated mode.
And we're going to start with the more natural decay setting.
[STRUMMING]
I can also set the control more in the middle
where it's a little bit square.
It cuts off a little more abruptly at the end.
[STRUMMING]
And then if you keep going the same direction
it actually inverts and gets reversed sounding.
[STRUMMING]
Cool.
And you can set really long decay times
and it will have a really long swell.
[STRUMMING]
Almost like flipping the tape over.
The last of the special modes is a beautiful modulated reverb
that's great for rolling chords into.
[STRUMMING]
The extra knob controls the amount
of detuning that goes on.
So when it's over on the left it's
very close to being in tune.
When it's on the right it adds just kind
of a subtle gentle chorusing to it.
[STRUMMING]
And there you have it.
The Fender Reflecting Pool Delay and Reverb pedal.
True stereo, true bypass, awesome sound quality,
great flexibility.
A lot of delay sounds, a lot of reverb sounds.
Straightforward and easy to use.
For more information on the Reflecting Pool
as well as the full line of Fender pedals, go to fender.com
and stay tuned for more videos.
Josh, you want to play us out?
JOSH: Absolutely.
[PLAYING GUITAR]