Boss FRV-1

It is as true in music as anywhere else that you don’t miss what you have until it’s gone — hence the vast number of new products being built specifically to recreate the sounds of yesteryear. That being the case, it will come as no surprise that the engineers at Boss have turned their attention to a digital re-creation of the much-loved 1963 Fender Spring Reverb, a product made possible by a collaboration with Fender USA. The FRV-1 uses Roland’s own COSM modelling technology to put this classic reverb effect into a standard-format Boss compact pedal that can be run from a 9V battery or a Boss power adaptor.

Spring reverb is a key element in many guitar styles, from country and rockabilly to blues. The problem with the original spring reverb units was that they were quite susceptible to vibration and were often noisy. Stand-alone units were also very bulky. However, the sound suited the guitar so much better than a clinically accurate, digital reverb emulation of a real space, which meant that all those funny little twangs and spring resonances had to be built into the software model to make it sound authentic. Although Boss like to keep things simple, they’ve given the user a little more control than on most amps by adding a Dwell (reverb time) and Tone control to the more obvious wet/dry Mixer control.

Although the format of the pedal is strictly standard Boss, the brown crackle finish and brown rubber pedal pad gives the whole thing a welcome dash of old-world charm. There’s also that famous Fender logo, which is there because Fender were involved in bringing the ‘63 Fender Spring Reverb back to life as the Boss FRV-1. As with most digital pedals, the FRV-1 gets through batteries faster than a Labrador gets through an old bag of chips, so an external power supply is recommended.

With the Dwell control turned up to maximum, the reverb decay time is pretty much what you’d expect from a spring reverb, but it is useful to be able to shorten it to create an effect that doesn’t fill up all the spaces in your music. With the Tone control set midway, you get the typically twang-y resonances you expect from a spring, and these become very pronounced if you turn the Tone control fully clockwise. My preference was for a sound just on the warm side of neutral, but even then the reverb has a much brighter, more shimmery sound than the reverb in my Vox VT amplifier, which is no less musical but much warmer. If anything, I’d have liked a slightly longer maximum decay time for those Peter Green minor blues excesses, though most players should find the maximum setting close enough for their particular genre. When it comes to setting the reverb mix, I found that I’d never want more than you get with the Mixer knob at around one quarter of the way up, so setting a precise balance within that area can be a bit tricky. I guess the idea was to let you run up all the way to 100 percent wet for use as a send/return effect.

Whether you need such an accurate model of a spring reverb depends on your taste, and on whether you already have an alternative reverb device available. However, if you really hanker after that hyper-twang-y Fender spring sound in a format that doesn’t go ‘boing!’ when you kick it, this pedal will deliver it, and with typical Boss build quality, it’s likely to continue doing so for many years to come. 0

Boss FRV-1

Reverb pedal