Empty Head Effects unleashes killer Seafarer Suboceanic Ambient Atmospheric Modulated Reverb - which swells with lapping, swirling and crashing watery waves

Empty Head Effect’s Nic is a fantastic sound designer - and his latest Seafarer Reverb is surely his most ambitious pedal to date. A proper elemental Oceanic Reverb which goes from gently lapping modulated shore waves to Stormy Swirling and Crashing breakers. This monophonic reverb positively drips with ambience and atmosphere!

It is so incredibly evocative of the marine environment in all its states, with no less than 10 controls to harness its elemental nature.

As mentioned - you can run it soft - to deliver gently lapping shoreline waves, or you can run it hard and atmospherically angry - evoking proper stormy seas.

It’s off to a roaring success - and the 2nd batch pre-orders are almost sold out too now.

Controls - Swim (Dry), Sink (Wet), Oxygen (Distortion), Ocean Size (Reverb Length), Gravity / Buoyancy (LPF Depth), Storm / Calm (LFO Bypass), Wellen (LFO Speed), Disorientation (Random LFO Speed), Water Logged (Tremolo Depth), Medusen (Warble), Liferaft Footswitch (Engage/Bypass), The Light At The End Footswitch (Infinite Feedback).

Readers will know that I tend to favour stereo reverbs, so the Seafarer isn’t ideal for me in its monophonic nature - but it sounds truly phenomenal, and I’m sorely tempted even though its mono and somewhat over-sized. I don’t have those particular oceanic sounds in any of my reverbs - at least not the full range, the Klowra Reverb has a gentle sea-shore lapping mode too - but none of those more elemental textures.

This is a large pedal, but not quite so large at it looks on first glance - its dimensions are 190mm Wide x 120mm High x 53mm Thick, and it weight in at 770g’s.

It’s an imposing atmosphere generator for sure - with deep ocean blue knobs on the stock model, and white knobs on the already sold out limited ’Seafarer Ghost Edition’. I feel it looks pretty striking in its stock colourway - the ghost edition is for the minimalists really.

This is a very tactile and textural hands-on reverb - with output textures to match the gnarly enclosure textures - achieved through liberal amounts of powder coating overlay. All of Nik’s pedals have custom knobs and colourways - and this Seafarer is really perfectly executed - it’s a potent and formidable atmosphere generator for sure.

I can’t say for sure whether there is one of these on the cards for me in the near future, but I would certainly like to think so. It’s really unique sounding and very emotionally evocative in its output. And by applying the Filter you can get those eerie deep abyssal oceanic sounds - as if you’re trapped in a sinking diving bell!

The Seafarer Suboceanic Ambient Atmospheric Modulated Reverb - is yours for just €255 ($295 / £219) on the Empty Head Effects Webstore - a great price for what you’re getting! As of my writing this there were only 3 recorded as being left in stock - there may be none once this goes live - but it’s well worth waiting for!

Props to Nic for another fantastic creation - this and the recent In The Water from Native Audio - are properly redefining what Reverb can be!

Seafarer Key Features

• Variable Length Mono Reverb
• Soft Clipping Diode Distortion
• Separate Wet / Dry Volume Knobs
• Random Wave Pitch Modulation
• Low Pass Filter controlled by Variable LFO + EXP Input
• Infinite Feedback Footswitch