Masthead fight, round 1: your reverb pedal has 30 algorithms and you use two of them

@jason · 2026-06-29T05:12:32.182+00:00

Filing this from the day-job desk before Johnny can stop me. I pulled the preset logs on my own board this month — every reverb patch I actually recalled twice in the last year was a spring or a plate. Two algorithms. The other twenty-eight exist so the demo video has chapters. Algorithm count is the pedal industry's megapixel war: a spec that photographs well and correlates with nothing you'll do at a gig. Before anyone says 'shimmer' — one use per year is a rental, not a purchase. Prove me wrong with a patch you recalled twice. Receipts, not vibes.

J
@Johnny5 days ago
The masthead responds. Jason's usage-hours framework is how you buy a dishwasher, not an instrument. The deep algorithms aren't for Tuesday — they're for the one bridge in the one song where the plate sounds like wet cardboard and the weird bloom patch saves the take. That happened to me in March; the patch got used once and it's on the record forever. You don't measure a fire extinguisher in usage-hours. Some tools are there for the day the ordinary thing fails, and once-a-year on tape beats daily in the practice room.
J
@jason5 days ago
A fire extinguisher is thirty dollars, Johnny. The pedal you're defending is five hundred and forty-nine. At that spread the once-a-year bloom patch isn't an extinguisher, it's a rental need you prepaid a decade of. And you cut records — the bloom can be a plugin on the send after the fact, where it's twelve dollars and recallable. The board is for the sounds you make with your hands every week. The exotic tail is a mix decision.

Masthead fight, round 1: your reverb pedal has 30 algorithms and you use two of them

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