December Birthdays 
Right up front, I will state that I’m writing from my own experience, and I will be leaving out a lot of pedals. I don’t mean to slight anyone’s favorite pedal, but I’m going to stick with pedals that I know from firsthand experience.
Reverb is a big part of the Surf Guitar world, and few, if any, would argue that the sound of the Fender 6G15 tank can be significantly improved upon, but not everyone has a vintage 6G15. For that matter, there are probably not nearly enough surviving 6G15s for all of today’s Surf players to have one of their own.
It’s also good to remember just want a 6G15 is, and what it does. Essentially, a 6G15 was a Fender Champ, driving a reverb pan, instead of a speaker, and a tube to recover the signal from that reverb pan, plus a control to mix the wet and dry signals. A 6G15 was driving through the gain stages and probably overdriving somewhat, when pushed. The signal from the 6G15 drove the front end of the amp a bit harder than the average guitar.
Because there are not likely to be enough vintage tanks to go around, this leaves us several options. The Fender ‘63 Reissue Tube Reverb is based upon the 6G15, but they aren’t exactly identical to the originals. Even these are out of production and prices are going up. It’s one option, but not the cheap way to go, these days.
Amps with built-in reverb tend not to produce the drip Surf guitarists value. That is not to write them off completely. If you aren’t shooting for prominent reverb drip, a Fender Deluxe Reverb will take you a long ways. It’s an excellent setup for overall playing and I’ve played a lot of Surf tunes with nothing more than a Deluxe Reverb.
To put reverb into pedal form is challenging. Reverb pedals came into their own when DSP chips became readily available. A Digital Signal Processor can be tasked to do many different things, but reverb is said to be somewhat resource intensive, as compare to some other effects that DSPs are programmed to do. But modern DSPs can do some impressive things.
The EHX Holy Grail
The Holy Grail, by Electro Harmonix made a big splash, and deservingly so. It truly is an excellent sounding pedal. To the best of my understanding, these have been digital, from the earliest models. To this day, you could do a lot worse than a Holy Grail.
The Boss FRV-1
Boss, in collaboration with Fender, made the FRV-1, which was designed to emulate a Fender tank. For their time, these were impressive. I’ve heard one of these back to back with the Fender Tube Reverb tank, from the ‘90s, and it was surprisingly close. There is a bit of metallic harshness to the reverb trail, but it’s a reasonably decent pedal. Keep the Dwell within reason, set the Tone carefully, and it does alright.
The Catalinbread Topanga
While the FRV-1 was a step forward, the state of the art continued to advance, and Catalinbread came out with the Topanga. The Topanga has been with us for a while now, but still stacks up well. This is a dedicated spring reverb emulator that gets a lot right. Beyond that, there’s a Level control which allows the pedal to be a clean boost, and a darn good one, at that.
I’ve played a lot of gigs through a Topanga, in fact, in many cases that was my only effect. Crank the dwell up and it drips reasonably well. Back off the Dwell, and it becomes a still powerful spring reverb. The Mix lets you bring it somewhat back into the sonic territory of an amp with built-in reverb, but it never forgets that it’s trying to be a tank.
TC Electronic Hall of Fame
The TC Hall of Fame features several types of reverb, including three slots for TonePrints, which allow you to experiment with a variety of reverbs. There is an excellent Spring reverb emulation built in, plus a number of Spring TonePrints. There is also Hall reverb, Plate reverb and a host of options. Considering the price, there are a lot of reverb choices available in this pedal for someone that wants to experiment with different reverb types.
TC Electronic Hall of Fame Mini
Basically, a simple little mini pedal that comes with Hall reverb, but can be TonePrinted to be any number of other reverb emulations, including spring reverbs. My favorite TonePrint for this pedal, however, is Plate reverb. Plate, BTW, can drip with the best of them. Single knob operation makes this pedal fairly desirable, for someone that wants one reverb sound, without tweaking numerous settings. There is only one TonePrint available at a time, but it’s easy to change the TonePrint on the fly, from a smart phone.
A Detour Off the Beaten Path
Spring reverb was the first truly portable form of reverb, and it made its mark. Hall reverb describes the natural reverb of a large concert hall. Plate reverb describes reverb created using a large steel plate. Recording studios had echo chambers, but when plates became available, even fairly small studios could have impressive reverb.
A plate was big, think of an 8’ long bed, set on its edge; but it’s much smaller than having a dedicated echo chamber. Later on, plate reverb became available in a solid-state form, in a unit that was slightly larger than a business paper shredder. Plate is somewhat a favorite of mine. As I mentioned earlier, plate will drip nicely, and lacks harshness.
The Stanley FX Blue Nebula
This pedal has proven itself to be interesting, and versatile. The built-in reverb for these is modeled after Abbey Road’s plate units. The pedal also has a three stage preamp, which uses discrete Field Effect Transistors, to both boost the signal level, and enhance the harmonic overtones in the mix. This is a truly amazing pedal. There are any number of tape delay emulations available on this pedal, plus some great emulations of magnetic drum delays, and even a tremolo. If you want to copy Hank Marvin’s sounds, there are built-in patches, hard coded into the pedal, named for various Shadows songs. This pedal is a powerful effects processor, and if you have some basic skills in configuring computers, you can do much more with it. Patches can be arranged into a setlist, and I’ve used it that way on gigs.
EarthQuaker Devices Dispatch Master
Not really marketed as a Surf Pedal, the Dispatch Master combines what I would describe as a Hall Reverb, with a digital delay. No one, is going to confuse this with a spring tank, but it is a good, all-purpose reverb, and a competent digital delay. I tend to use this for a Chet Atkins sound, but it’s also not bad for straight-ahead Country or Rockabilly. It gets surfy, if pushed, but it’s not going to have the same character as a spring reverb emulation. However, if you want reverb + delay, in a $199 package, it offers excellent value.
Stanley FX Abbey Reverb
This is a compact version of the same Abbey Reverb the Blue Nebula has, in a single, miniature, pedal. While not a bespoke Surf pedal, I’ll let you in on a secret; Plate Reverb drips nicely. It’s quite usable for Surf, and lacks the metallic trail that some folks find harsh. For something the size of a Three Musketeers bar, this pedal really speaks for itself.
Source Audio True Spring
This is my most recent reverb pedal acquisition, and a quite impressive pedal, at that. There are three basic reverbs: Short Spring, Long Spring, and Tank. There are also quite a number of alternate reverbs such as the Ventris True Spring, the Ventris Outboard reverb, the Drip Machine and Trash Can Spring, and a Hall/Spring Hybrid.
Beyond that, there are tremolo effects that can be added to the spring reverb as secondary effects. The choices are Optical, Bias Varying and Harmonic. The tremolos are excellent Activating the tremolos involves pressing a button while turning the Dwell and Tone knobs to set tremolo depth and speed. There is also a provision for a tap-tempo pedal, which I really like. The tap tempo divisions can be 1/4 notes, 1/8 notes, dotted eight notes, triplets or 1/16 notes.
The Source Audio Neuro Editor allows you to do a lot. The three position switch selects the patch, and If you hold the bypass switch down for a few seconds, the LED changes from green to red, allowing you to select three other reverb/tremolo combinations with the three way switch.
But that’s just the features; how about the sound? In a word, great. It’s probably the best tank emulation I’ve ever heard. Besides that, if you dial back the Dwell and Mix, it mellows into an onboard reverb sound, quite easily. IMO, the True Spring is a lot better at this than the Topanga. For my purposes, versatility is important; I want to be able to cover a lot of ground from as few pedals as possible, and the True Spring holds up its end of that bargain.
Fender ‘63 Reissue Reverb
When Surf saw a resurgence, in the ‘90s, Fender built a reissue of their tank, but it was not a perfect copy of the 6G15, as referenced above. One problem was that the 6K6 tube of the original 6G15 is not, to the best of my knowledge, in production. Instead, they used a 6V6. There were differences in some component values and the ‘63 Reissue Reverb doesn’t enjoy the reputation of a real 6G15.
I have one, and it’s decent. The average person, listening to it, would probably find it pleasing. They drip, they have all of the controls of the original, and bring a lot to the table, but I’ve played vintage 6G15s that I liked much better. To put it in a nutshell, I would consider it about equal to a Catalinbread Topanga, which is to say pretty good, but there is room for improvement. I recall playing an outdoor gig with mine, through my Twin, with the tank as the only effect. It acquitted itself well; handling the non Surf material quite well, and provided plenty of drip on the Surf tunes.
My Conclusions
If I were king of the world, I’d see to it that everyone had a mint, vintage 6G15 and a 6G14 Showman to play it through, but I’m not king. For most of us, a vintage tank is not likely to happen, so we look elsewhere.
If I had to choose one, it would be the True Spring. I like it better than my ‘63 RI tank, and even the Catalinbread Topanga. The Topanga would be a strong second place, in my opinion. I think that it represented the absolute state of the art, 10 years ago. The Abbey Reverb is my favorite, outside of tne Spring reverb realm, unless you want the multiplicity of options that the Blue Nebula offers. None of the pedals I mentioned have disappointed me, and the quality and durability seem excellent. There’s not a loser in the bunch.
I left out several, such as the EHX Ocean’s 11 or 12. No slight intended, but I’ve never played through one, so I won’t offer any opinions. Likewise for several others. Ultimately, the field is wide open, with many good choices.
—The artist formerly known as: Synchro
When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.
