Recording - July 2015 - 46

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Longtime Recording readers know that when we do a guitar issue, I love to feature at least one pedal from a manufacturer that our audience has probably never heard of... but
should. There are dozens of boutique pedal makers out there
nowadays, but it's always a pleasure to find someone doing
something that recording musicians simply must know about.
So allow me to introduce you to GFI (Gear Fault Interrupt)
System, a tiny pedal shop that makes its home in the city of
Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia. GFI System ships its pedals worldwide, and is a cult favorite among guitarists looking for something
genuinely new. These pedals are digital devices with very big
brains; they not only sound fantastic, but they pack a surprisingly
extensive feature set into a very small space.

GFI System Specular Reverb 2
A tiny pedal full of huge and beautiful spaces
Since its founding in 2010, GFI System has created and updated a variety of time-based effects pedals, and for this review I
received the Specular Reverb 2. Shall we?
The pedal
Packaged in a small but rugged metal chassis weighing just over
1 pound, the Specular Reverb 2's footprint is roughly that of a standard guitar stompbox, turned sideways. Considering the massive
size of most high-end reverb pedals, this is a big (well, small!) surprise.
The topside controls seem straightforward at first: four knobs,
two excellent-quality clickless footswitches, a half dozen LEDs, and
a tiny switch marked M/S/E. As we'll see, there's a lot more going
on than first meets the eye. Around the back are four 1/4" jacks,
stereo inputs and stereo outputs (In 1 also acts as a mono input).
The Specular Reverb 2 requires an external power supply, but one
is not included. The pedal uses any supply that follows the well-known
standard of 9V DC center-negative (I used the Godlyke Power-All),
and it makes economic sense for this small firm to sidestep this issue
for pedals that are going to be shipped all over the world.
The features
The Specular Reverb 2 takes a somewhat different approach than
other reverb pedals. It contains only one reverb algorithm, one that
isn't specifically meant to be a "hall" or "room" or "chamber"... the
idea is to provide something that just sounds lush at all decay times
and serves as a basis for the many tricks the pedal can do.
Those tricks are called Atmospheres by GFI; they are ways in
which the reverberant signal is modified to create distinct sonic
effects... actually, "atmospheres" is a very good word for them.
The original Specular Reverb had three of these Atmospheres, but
the new version offers six: Modulated, Shimmer, and Echo (hence
the M/S/E switch), plus the new Tremble, Voices, and Infinity.
The four knobs, marked Blend, Decay, Damping, and Intensity,
take on slightly different roles in the various Atmospheres. The
small but very readable user manual explains them all in a detailed
chart, with plentiful instructions.
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RECORDING July 2015

The two footswitches are marked Preset/Bypass and
Select/Atmosphere; they allow the user to bypass the effect
(a dedicated orange Engage LED shows if it's on); switch
between the two banks of Atmospheres (three each); and call
up, load, and save presets (four per bank, eight in all). Four
small bright white LEDs indicate which preset is selected and
ready to load (flashing) or loaded and running (on).
The tiny switch labeled M/S/E is how one changes
between Atmospheres; the letters refer to the ones in the first
bank, and you have to remember the corresponding settings
for the second bank. The label on the Atmosphere LED,
"M.S.E/T.V.I", serves as a bit of a cheat sheet as long as you
remember what the names are.
To switch between the two banks of Atmospheres, you have
to hold down both footswitches at once for a couple of seconds, making the Atmosphere LED change from green to red.
This is a little awkward when controlling the pedal on stage
with your foot, but turning your foot sideways to use heel and
toe at once does the job. There are four presets per bank.
You can tell that the GFI folks wanted to double the capabilities
of the original Specular Reverb without redesigning the box and
adding expensive hardware. They did so by adding a way to
shift back and forth between two independent sets of presets and
Atmospheres, essentially creating two different reverb pedals in a
single box that don't coexist as easily as they might. On the other

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2015