Disintegrating Reverse reverb!

Hi there,

New user here, I am contemplating buying a ribbons as I am finding my CB ‘blooper’ and ‘mood2’ too complicated to use live. I have this idea/need for a pedal that can do SPX90 style reverse reverb that ‘distintegrates’ like William Basinski. Would this be possible on the ribbons?

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Hey there,

Thanks for posting! I feel like reverse reverb and disintegrating loops are kind of different things so I’m going to talk about those and then share what Ribbons can do.

Reverse reverb

Reverse reverb from the SPX90 is a very specific algorithm where a delay with 13 read heads spaced apart at different times and amplitudes give the effect of a swell-in. The shortest delays are low in amplitude whereas the longest delays are unity gain. It has a pretty short decay time of less than 200 msecs.

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Disintegrating Loops

Disintegrating loops are basically long delays but the feedback might be slightly less than 100% so they decay over time. There may also be other artifacts or nuances added in the feedback loop that are re-printed to the loop, creating a "disintegrating" effect.

What can Ribbons do?

Ribbons has a reverb in it. It has controls for mix, decay, and where it goes in signal chain - either near the beginning or near the end. This reverb is more closely related to Lexicon algorithms than the the SPX90 but because you can set the reverb to 100% mix, the attack/transients from your instrument will be smeared by the reverb and give a similar effect.

Ribbons also has a touch mode called "Disintegration Loop" that does the latter effect. You record your first loop to set the loop length and then you can endlessly overdub over it. You can adjust the feedback and determine how fast old material decays over time. You can add tape crinkle, filtering, and warbles in the feedback loop too, which will add to the disintegration effect.

I’m not very familiar with Chase Bliss pedals so I can’t really say whether or not you’ll find it easier to use in a live setting. I think if you spent some time with Ribbons you could easily use disintegration loop and the reverb to achieve what you’re going for.

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thanks for the detailed reply. I wish to pre-order one, are you able to do PayPal Payin4?

We don’t determine eligibility for Pay in 4 but we do support PayPal so you can see if it’s an option at checkout. :slightly_smiling_face:

Ok done! thank you. Look forward to playing with it in December! Probably be some firmware updates by the time it gets here!

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Shipping will be more like September / October. This batch of pre-order units will come with a 2.0 firmware update installed.

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Are there any examples of the ‘disintegration loop’ feature? The online demos out there are pretty dull! You need Knobs or Mark johnson on ya case!

We’ll be releasing a full video manual for Ribbons before the next batch starts shipping.

Here is a recent example from IG.

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