tc electronic Skysurfer Reverb

It's amazing that you can get such a rich sounding reverb at such a low price - of course it's no Big Sky (15 times the price), or even a Hall of Fame (three times the price), as you're very much limited in the sounds you can coax from the pedal, but for a set-and-forget live pedal, it's hard to beat.

One thing that's not clear without reading the manual (and who does that..?) is that with the Mix knob dialled up to the max you're getting an entirely wet signal, making this super-useful in your home studio, either as an aux send, or by recording the wet reverb signal on e.g. your guitar as a separate track, giving you much more control over the sound when mixing. Of course you're not going to get from it what you would from pro outboard gear, but the pedal sounds great, and you have to keep coming back to the price.

It's also worth mentioning that the build quality is top-notch - it's built like a tank, and the knobs have a great feel to them.

Brilliant pedal - you should get one!

Reviews about sound are not really needed, just listen to the soundbytes here and on YouTube, the clearest tones will be obvious. The chassis is all-metal with grippy sides, nice ergonomic touch. The knobs are oversize and knurled, another cool handling touch, but the overal shape does not handle as well as the less flattened Boss pedals. Just a detail, we don't manipulate the pedals for long, we put them on the ground and stomp them. The knobs are not too close to one another, you don't turn a knob by accident when touching another knob. All three sounds are very pretty.

The on/off switch makes a little mechanical noise but it's electronically silent, that's what matters. At first I thought the tone knob on a reverb was not needed but I changed my mind. When your guitar has a trebly tone the long repetition of that tone can make it seem like there is too much treble in the echo sound even if there is not too much in the basic sound.

So now I like that feature a lot. The battery compartment is rubberized and tight, it won't jiggle inside. The circuit board is clean with a clear layout, all the soldering points are clean. Steel studs reinforce the pedal close to the switch. The input jacks lock firmly on the Planet Waves, Klotz and Neutrik plugs, same for the 9 volts input.

The paint job is done right without the distasteful and sometimes gory visuals that are the fashion now. I listened to tens of reverbs here and on YouTube, the one offering the best clarity is this one, and by a wide margin, to boot. Plus it's among the least expensive reverbs, so it's a winner's winner, and I recommend it above all others of any price.

Bought this because I just wanted a simple reverb on my acoustic guitar. I was honestly happy with my one-knob reverb on my Blackstar amplifier, thinking it couldn’t be any worse than that. I was wrong.

This pedal has a messy sounding reverb, and goes from off to too much very quickly. It also makes a clicking noise when stepping on it, audible in the amp/speaker. Very annoying and unprofessional. The moment you activate the reverb you also get an overwhelming amount of noise. It’s so bad I won’t even use it when practising at home. It’s discouraging to use.

Dodge a bullet, buy quality gear. Cheap gear is cheap for a reason. I’ve learned my lesson.

I'm a sucker for cheap but good pedals, so I wanted to like this pedal, but it just falls short of being good. Yes, you get spring, plate and hall - but they are poorly calibrated, so dialing them to get a good sound isn't easy. The mix needs to be set around 8 to 9 o'clock or the reverb quickly drowns out the dry signal. Once you get the 'verb dialed in, the sound is passable but doesn't live up to their marketing claims of studio quality. I a/b'd it with an MXR300 which is like 8x more expensive. For a subtle effect, if you tweak the decay and mix its definitely comparable. But anything longer or deeper, and it starts to sound artificial. The real let-down though is it does put some white noise in the signal when engaged, which the MXR does not. I think if you are starting out, get a delay pedal first, and save up for a better reverb. For the price, it was worth a try; but this is destined to be a paper-weight. I would hope TC would revise this pedal, because there has to be place in the market for a decent basic reverb. The search continues...

I suggest if this is your 1st pedal, that you watch a tutorial 'cos it can be a bit confusing, in fact I still haven't grasped the understanding of this pedal yet, and I am now ready to follow my own advice.

Other than that I'm pretty happy, just beware that if you've got a crappy combo and you wanna play with distortion while having this turned on, it's gonna sound pretty bad.

I've recently bought Joyo VIVO banTamP and it sound pretty good even with distortion.

Have a nice day...

TL;DR : Pretty good for a begginer, but can be confusing to work with.