And though the Blackhole has clearly been optimized for performing players with overflowing pedalboards, it's easy to see the Blackhole finding favor in studio production situations-just as its big brother Space did.Įventide's Blackhole reverb is a fantastic creative tool. If I was a engineer aiming for the mood and color of a mid-'60s studio guitar sound rather than perfect spring-reverb-in-an-amp authenticity, I might be inclined to use this setting instead of the finest spring reverb emulation. Smaller size settings, lower feedback, and careful EQ can generate awesome garage-y reverbs that sound a lot like a spring reverb amp recorded to tape and mic'd at a distance in a big, reverberative studio. Reverbs that suggest interstellar expanses and submarine environments are far from the only ones on tap. Even if you aren't a disciple of Shields, you may find a whole new way of relating to your instrument in those modes, and create unexpected sound worlds that can become the foundation for entire songs or melodic hooks. My Bloody Valentine fans-especially those who chase the deep, slow-reverse warpage of “To Here Knows When" or “Moon Song"-will find immersive and addictive approximations of Kevin Shields' reverse reverb settings when the gravity is set about half-way to its deepest reverse position, the pre-delay is fast, and the mix is set to aggressive, if not 100 percent, wet mix settings. The Blackhole's most appealing attribute might be its ability to generate organic, cloudy, diffuse, and complex ambience. For instance, adding quick delay and using the powerful EQ creatively along with reverse or long feedback settings can yield all kinds of artifacts and reverberative collisions that you may rationally recognize as digital in origin, but which sound deeply mysterious and relatively unpolluted by the hard-clipping, sterile tones, harmonics, and artifacts that make many big digital reverbs sound cheesy. Though you can get many pristine, soaring, and seemingly infinite reverb tones from Blackhole, its most appealing attribute might be its ability to generate organic, cloudy, diffuse, and complex ambience. You can also save and recall five presets via a sequence of footswitch and push-button maneuvers, though as many as 127 presets are available via midi. Other practical features include a freeze footswitch, stereo output capabilities, and a guitar/line level switch. Others, like “Gravity" (which regulates the level of reverse reverb) and “Q" (which controls the resonance of frequencies emphasized with the EQ ), are less-common reverb functions, but shape the reverb color profoundly. Each knob has two functions, and secondary functions are accessed via a small, LED-illuminated push button at the upper right of the pedal. But it's still very powerful, and its features have been distilled to a functional, practical group that facilitates intuitive, creative experimentation, reveals tremendous textural range, and is easy and super fun to use.Īny player that has messed with the Space-or Eventide's other larger-form stomps-will recognize the basic functionality of the Blackhole's control set. Thanks to a well-conceived control interface, Blackhole isn't much more complicated than, say, a Boss pedal. What is striking is how functionally streamlined the Blackhole is compared to the Space and H9 processors that are also home to Blackhole-mode sounds.
So the fact that Eventide elected to give the Blackhole a dedicated stompbox of its own is no surprise. Later, out in the wider world, I started running into engineers that were using the Blackhole mode in the studio and even in live settings to add ambience to mixes. I was happy that the Blackhole settings sounded fantastically, cosmically expansive without relying on some of the more overt “shimmer" tricks that can be a big-reverb cliché.
But I also distinctly remember spending more time in the Blackhole mode than any other. Reviewing Eventide's Space reverb back in 2011, I was impressed with how many shades of ambience had been stuffed into one box.
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