If you saw my 'Top 20 pedals of 2021' video, you'll remember that I didn't have too many kind words to say about this one. So here are my positive observations, followed by a clarification of my criticisms:
Positive.
I love the size of this pedal. It's the perfect balance between being slim enough to easily fit onto a cramped board, yet being large enough to comfortably fit all the knobs and switches onto it, in a way that doesn't feel crowded. I also love the fact that it has top jacks, despite being a stereo pedal and having an extra control input.
I really appreciate the selection of reverb modes in this pedal. There are very few options out there for reverb pedals with a gated and reverse mode, as well as the more traditional spring, plate, room, and hall modes. The grain mode on this, though, is just the icing on the cake! 😙👌
I also really love the on-board delay and modulation, which can be used globally across all the reverb modes.
Negative.
Despite all of the great things the Context V2 can do, I'm just not that excited by the SOUND of it! The algorithms sound a tad lifeless and sterile to me, apart from the grain mode which I really like.
It also doesn't really get as huge as I'd like it to be. Even with the decay turned up all the way, the trails always seem to give up and go home a lot sooner than you expect them to. The only way to get huge talks is to use the momentary hold function to freeze one of the reverb engines, but at this price point, I really don't want to have to do that in order to get the epic ambience I want.
I don't like the tiny knobs for the 'Hi' and 'Lo' frequency adjustment, as they're difficult to turn, and you can barely see what they're set to.
I know these don't seem like major issues when you weigh them against the positives, but for me, I was expecting this pedal to be close to perfect, so the fact that it fell short of my expectations in a few different ways, was impossible for me to move past.
The hunt for my perfect reverb pedal continues...
Download the official, PDF manual for this pedal, here:
www.redpandalab.com/content/d...
Watch the 'Do Noise' demo, here:
• Red Panda Context 2 Re...
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23 янв 2022
