Catalinbread Cloak

The Cloak began after unearthing some ancient texts containing some forbidden incantations on how to introduce spectral elements within a decaying echo. Ok, we’re embellishing a bit; but the inspiration came from the land of academia and the acoustics department at Stanford, where a treatise on the optimal shimmer effect was penned a handful of years back. In a similar pursuit of perfection, we’ve drawn inspiration from a combination of research and our own endeavors to craft a truly superb take on shimmer reverb.

At its core, the Cloak is a “room” style reverb that sounds amazing on its own, but with a twist of the Shimmer knob, rich, harmonically-laden overtones creep in, emphasizing three different orders of harmonics within the trails.

A specially-designed low-pass filter steps in and smooths the harmonics out before they get too out of hand and wreck up the signal path. The size of the room can be effortlessly dialed in, from a cramped broom closet to as close to infinity as we can possibly muster. This comes in handy when deciding on which type of switching you prefer; the Cloak offers up true bypass switching that cuts off the reverb trails when the Cloak is disengaged, or buffered bypass, which keeps the decay going even after switching off—your pick.

Either way you slice it, the Cloak is ready to impart a little black magic unto your rig.

CONTROLS

• ROOM SIZE: Simultaneouslyadjusts both reverb decay lengthand a slight gain enhancementfor a more natural decay
• MIX: Adjusts the amount of drysignal present in the output, from 100 percent dry to 100 percent wet
• HIGH CUT: Cuts higher-order harmonics from the signal to soften the edges at higher Shimmer settings
• SHIMMER: Mixes the amount of shimmer present in the room reverb. Fully CCW gives you a rich room reverb and fully CW serves up a harmonically rich shimmer

We ship the Cloak in trails mode. This mode is buffered, and the preamp will be active even in bypass. We call it "Trails" mode because the reverb signal will continue to decay even after the Cloak is switched off. Removing the back panel gives you the option to turn the Cloak into "true bypass" mode. In this mode, your signal is unaffected by the Cloak when it is turned off. However, turning off the Cloak will immediately cut off the reverb signal.

The Cloak runs from 9 to 18 volts using a standard DC center-negative power supply for pedals. Make sure you’re using a supply that provides at least 100mA. 9 volts will sound great all around. But if you want even more output and an even healthier boost to your dry signal with increased headroom, try all the way up to 18 volts! The Cloak does not run on batteries.

Designer Notes

One night, I was relaxing and browsing a cache of old DSP papers, as one does, and one struck me in particular, this one. The paper was so eye-opening that it led me to start writing my own harmonic reverb algorithms, naturally. Having written a handful, the ones that really stood out were ones without harmonic modulation and a separate shimmer effect tailored to the base reverb sound.

Combining these in a pleasing way yielded a satisfying tone but at the cost of some extreme frequency crispiness. Not good! Then again, I was testing on a Fender Princeton. After tinkering around with a couple filtering options, I decided on a bit of attenuation code that keeps a little crispiness for those using darker amps, but could also cut the high end completely for some really cool “dark shimmer” effects. I think it rules and I think you will too. – Lee Brady