Rise and shine
The masterminds at Old Blood Noise Endeavors are no strangers to pushing the proverbial envelope. With their latest creation, the OBN crew answer a call from players around the world who can’t get enough of their reverb – those who like their reverb resonating, trailing, everlasting, even. Shelf your extra footswitches and external controls for a moment, open the curtains and take a gander at the day before you with the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Sunlight.
Infinite Reverb
Born from that natural desire within us all to hear our reverb trail out infinitely, Old Blood Noise set out to do what they do best – reinvent an effect. The setup for Sunlight theoretically is fairly simple, but when executed, this show of effect pedal bravado is sure to make any reverb aficionado turn their head and lean in closer.
Dynamic reverb is the name of the game for Sunlight, and the way through which OBN faces this challenge is striking. Gone are the days of infinite hold switches that strain your ankles and lock you into a sustained note. Today, Sunlight and OBN’s new “dynamic hold” function offers a new outlook on infinite reverb. Dynamic hold essentially produces reverb trails note by note. Pick one note and have it trail out to your desired limit – no extra footswitching required.
One great quality about dynamic hold and Sunlight is in its responsiveness and flexibility to follow along in your playing, so instead of having to wait out the first note to fade, Sunlight sustains notes as you play them. These trailing notes can layer over one another to quickly form an expressive and ethereal soundscape from a single guitar and a couple of picked notes, but we’ll talk about that more later. Let’s get into some controls.
Intuitive Controls
Players will feel right at home and ready to rock with the control interface of Sunlight. With a couple of intuitive controls, it will not take long for you and the Sunlight to take flight. Sunlight’s primary setup lays within its Input, Mix, and Decay dials. These three controls will be the building blocks of your reverb.
The Input dial controls the dynamic sensitivity of Sunlight, essentially, the more pushed the control, the more sensitive and receptive Sunlight will be to your signal. Input makes for an easy avenue to feel out Sunlight in response to your playing. With Input, you’ll get the hang of Sunlight’s responsiveness before long, in addition to how the pedal interacts with your picking and strumming patterns.
The Mix knob rolls in or rolls out your dry signal. All the way up, you’ll be at full wet signal output which removes your dry signal completely, making for a spacious and ethereal tone completely removed from any basis in reverberated reality, but of course, that’s all part of the fun.
Your Decay dial might be the most central control in your Sunlight experimenting experience. With it, your handle on the decay times of your reverb trails is tight and responsive to dial in your perfect decay mix. Take your time and roll through the parameters of Decay to find your sweet spot or push it to its limit and get the full scope of Sunlight’s reverberating power. If you’re looking to cut to the chase and get lost in infinite reverb trails right away, you’re certainly not alone. Sunlight delivers on its promise of infinite reverb and passes the test with flying colors.
Seamless Playability
The infinite reverb fun doesn’t stop at the promise of infinite trails. Always ones to open their full bag of tricks, Old Blood Noise introduces three new reverb effects with Sunlight. New Tape, Comb, and Pass modes all enter the fray with Sunlight to build upon the reverb experience. Between these three modes, players have the choice of different reverberated voices to add to their dynamic reverb formula.
Pick between Tape, Comb and Pass modes to find your own key into the Sunlight’s deep effect experience. Starting out with Comb mode, this will be your most straightforward reverb option. Use Comb mode to layer resonant delays on top on one another as you play along with Sunlight. These layers easily build up to form a formidable wall of sound with a single guitar and a couple picked notes when you want to push Decay and Mix to their limits. Roll Decay, Mix, and Input back to make for a more subtle effect, but as always, the choice is yours when it comes to this pedal and its resonant voices.
Focusing in on Tape mode, this warped setting adds an extra touch of vibrato to your dynamically-held trails. Adding vibrato to reverb trails works just as you would expect – your trails get that extra off-kilter element to build upon a resonant tone that wavers and wobbles with modulated bliss. Warp Sunlight with vibrato one way or the other to get great pitch modulation in on the fun.
A truly unique feature of Sunlight comes in the form of its third reverb mode, Pass. You may find yourself surprised once again by the deep functionality of Sunlight by the time you reach this checkpoint. Pass mode is built upon step filtering. Where you might usually find step filtering on synthesizers or synthesizer-centric pedals, Sunlight breaks that barrier to top off its third mode. Pass mode will take your note and scatter it like a synthetic step-filter. This rhythmic tone scattering works in conjunction with your reverb trails to fade out with some fun and unique resonations. Pass mode will give you a distinct reverb voice that you might not find in other reverb pedals, so this function is a treat for players looking to step outside the conventional.
Rate and Depth knobs work intuitively with all three modes to easily control your modulation. Ramp up or slow down to find your modulated rhythms for any jam session or modulated sequence in your song catalog. Sunlight is sure to give you a new take on modulation and reverb simultaneously, all while showing off its dynamic, reverberating power.
Deep Interaction
Sunlight’s inventive outlook on reverb makes it an awesome centerpiece for a board or an excellent candidate for your “wild card” effect. Building extensive soundscapes with Sunlight is made easy with Decay and Mix knobs on any of the three modes as well as popping in with warped voices when a song calls for it. The three modes work well for harmonious leads higher up on the fretboard as well as laying down undercurrents of lower notes. Dynamic and musical range on Sunlight are particular highlights you may not immediately expect from an effect this experimental. While Sunlight can be made into a noise machine effect, musicality also plays a large role in its setup.
The pedal is also deeply interactive with a classic Old Blood Noise expression out jack to control Decay, Rate, Depth, and Input parameters on the fly. Get creative and jam along with Sunlight to let its tonal character loose. If you’re looking to still stay grounded and get experimental without losing your place, the Alt switch allows you to program a preset for your effect parameters and snap into it on command with the push of a button. The Alt switch cannot swap modes or Mix settings, but it will build upon interactivity nonetheless. After holding the Alt and bypass switches down for a couple of seconds, you can change the Decay, Rate, Depth, and Input settings to a preset, and with another couple seconds pressing down both switches, your Alt switch parameter settings will be saved. After that, clicking the Alt switch will jump Sunlight to your preset saved settings. This function allows for on-the-fly interactivity and creativity with Sunlight to make it play the way you want it to. Sunlight does quite a bit to give you a fully interactive experience in a compact pedal.
Old Blood Noise Endeavors Sunlight Final Thoughts
Steeped in functionality to get you knee-deep in reverberated sweetness, Sunlight delivers upon its mission of dynamically-held reverb. The pedal’s expansive sea of tones is tempting to dive in and endlessly explore. Sunlight encourages extensive tweaking and tinkering to find your reverberated sweet spot, but rest assured, there is no shortage of them. Reinvent the Sunlight’s tones over and over to your heart’s content and still have space to set up your own dedicated reverberated home base. Sunlight’s functionality covers an enormous amount of tonal ground for its compact casing and makes for a quick addition to any board. For fans of ambience or noise, Sunlight passes any test you throw at it. Dial in an ethereal musical landscape or a fun romp through off-kilter noise territory – Sunlight can handle both. Sunlight will go as far as you would like to take it and still be able to reel back in for a start at square one. It’s a reverb powerhouse with elegant art and an inviting interface – this pedal makes a name for itself.
Step into the world of Sunlight. The future’s never looked brighter.
