The Catalinbread Talisman delivers era-defining plate reverb with
studio-style controls and is 479.99% smaller than the leading plate
reverb!

Listen to any recording from the ’70s and youll
most likely hear the sound of a plate reverb, a giant mechanical
contraption roughly the size of a king size bed. It was ubiquitous in
the studio, and was the only reverb used on Pink Floyd’s iconic “Dark
Side of the Moon” album for example. What made plate reverb so cool? It
adds lush ambience, dimension, thickness, and depth in an unobtrusive
way. When you listen to your favorite albums from the ’70s you probably
don’t even realize how much plate reverb you are hearing. Go back and
listen and hone in on the reverb sound and youll probably be surprised
how much reverb is actually there. In the studio the plate reverb signal
was often processed on the way back to the console where the things
like filtering and delays were applied.

What is plate reverb?
Plate reverb is an artificial effect that utilizes a sheet of metal that
vibrates sympathetically with a soundwave that hits it. The basic
architecture of a plate reverb unit has a large, thin sheet of metal
(nearly 6.5×3 in the case of the legendary EMT140) that has a
transducer at one corner driving the sheet in much the same way as a
speaker would, on the other end a pickup to capture the vibrations of
the metal sheet, and a mechanical dampener that reduces the plate
vibration. The reverb sonically stays out of the way of the dry path due
to the minimal initial reflections and a full warm reverb that tapers
smoothly fades out into a tail. In the studio, plate reverbs were
routinely employed due to the way they added a natural ambience without
interfering with the original program material That and the fact that
even though they were nearly 7 feet long and 4 feet tall, plate reverb
units were a heck of a lot smaller than a giant room or hall when
ambience was needed on recordings.

Plate reverb units were used
on just about every instrument including vocals. Though they sound
particularly great with electric guitar due to the minimal early
reflections which keeps plate reverbs from sounding too “effecty” and
obvious. The warm quality of the full-bodied reverb naturally tapering
off compliments perfectly the voice and range of the guitar. The problem
has been until now, the giant size made plate reverb units prohibitive
to use on the road. The Talisman is 479.99% smaller than the leading
plate reverb!

Catalinbread always felt something was amiss with
so-called “plate reverb” settings on many products in the marketplace.
Lets be honest, they often simply sounded thin, metallic and lacking. It
was almost as if the programmers said while tapping on a cookiesheet,
“yeah I know what a metal sheet sounds like, Ill program it to sound
that way!” Catalinbread’s goal was to capture all the goodness of
classic studio plate reverb by actually experiencing a maintained EMT140
at Jackpot Studios with recording engineer Larry Crane.

Because
plate reverb was born in the studio, on the Talisman Catalinbread
included studio style sidechain effects that are routinely paired with
plates. These controls are PRE DELAY, which delays the reverb by about
100mS. And HIGH PASS, which rolls off the low frequencies of the reverb.
Both of these controls allow you to tune the reverb, in order to keep
it from interfering with the dry signal.

Handbuilt in beautiful Portland, Oregon by a mostly caffeine-fueled staff of musicians, gear heads, and artists.