Deep Space

Crazy Tube Circuits presents a dual-engine ambient reverb workstation that spans the traditional and the esoteric

- Words Trevor Curwen Photography Phil Barker

CRAZY TUBE CIRCUITS MIRAGE £285

CONTACT FACE bvba WEB www.crazytubecircuits.​com

Technically speaking, Crazy Tube Circuits' latest pedal, Mirage, is a dual-engine ambient reverb workstation, although the company's founder, Christos Ntaifotis, describes it in one word - “shoegaze”.

We can go for that; it can certainly create the dreamy, atmospheric quality that many would attribute to the word. Perhaps more telling is the inscription on the pedal’s circuit board: “Music is a mirage that throws a party, nothing is real but everything grooves.” This is clearly a pedal that aims for the ethereal!

The Mirage comprises two fully independent reverb engines, R1 and R2, that can each load one of 16 distinct reverb algorithms. Those algorithms are collected in two banks of eight and displayed as symbols in two arcs around a rotary Voice switch. The outer arc has the more traditional and familiar reverbs - Plate, Cathedral, Hall, Room, Gated, two different spring reverbs (Spring and Springier) and Inchindown, based on an oil tank - while the inner arc is host to modern ambient effects with various shimmer, modulated and infinite reverbs.

Each reverb engine has four dedicated adjustment knobs. While the Mix and Volume knobs have a fixed use, the other two are more flexible with function varying per algorithm. Swell controls the size or length of the reverb effect in most cases, whereas Excite is a context-sensitive control so controls brightness on some of the more conventional reverbs but has pitch-shift and modulation adjustment functions for others. Swell and Excite can also be put under foot control for performance options such as ramping up the decay via a press-and-hold of the pedal's right footswitch for R1 - but only via an external expression pedal for R2.