AMAZING Affordable Reverb Pedal! (Keeley Omni Reverb)

Want oodles of spacious, drippy, ambient goodness? In this video, we check out the Omni reverb by Keeley Electronics. More affordable than many of its competitors, this 'little reverb that could' packs a mighty punch for it's size! Small footprint, great value, killer sounds—a compelling offering, to be sure. Could this be the next pedal on your pedalboard? Let's find out...

Product Featured

Keeley Omni Reverb: https://robertkeeley.com/omni-reverb

Video Transcript

Hi! You’re here with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. In today's video, we’re checking out a fantastic little reverb pedal that was recently sent to me to take a look at. And I think there's 3 key reasons why you might be interested in this pedal. Firstly, it sounds absolutely fantastic. Which, let’s face it, is the most important thing. Secondly, it’s from a super reputable US-based company that have been around for a long time. They have solid customer service—we really like all of that. And thirdly, you can pick this pedal up any day of the week even when it's not on sale for under 130 bucks—we really, really, really like that!

I teased you with some of the ambient goodness that this pedal is capable of at the start of this video. Today we're going to look at what this pedal is, what it sounds like, and we're going to go through some of my personal favorite sounds and settings as we go. So if that sounds interesting to you, then please click on that like button to let me know about it and to help out that all-powerful YouTube algorithm. Also, feel free to leave any thoughts feedback questions and comments you have in the comments section below and I'll do my best to respond. And finally, if you're looking to sharpen your playing skills a little bit, then I encourage you to head over to GuitarIQ.com when you get a chance to check out some of the great books and other learning resources we have waiting for you over there. Everything from topics like fretboard memorization and chord theory to warm-ups and workouts for guitar players. And a whole lot more! So if that sounds interesting, make sure to check all of that out at GuitarIQ.com. And with that, let's fire up the pedalboard cam and jump into the video.

Okay, so here we have the Omni reverb by Keeley Electronics. As you can see, this reverb pedal really couldn't be simpler. We just have two basic controls over here. We have the ‘Level’ knob which controls the overall mix or blend of the reverb. And here we have the ‘Dwell’ knob which does a slightly different thing depending on the algorithm. But overall, it simply controls the size of the reverb that we're listening to. Speaking of the algorithms, this toggle switch moves between three. Firstly, we have this ‘Room’ mode. Then, in the middle position, it’s a ‘Spring’ mode. And finally, down the bottom, we move to the ‘Plate’ mode.

So, let’s hear what this thing sounds like in action. For the demo today, I’ve got a pretty straightforward setup. The Omni reverb sits last in the signal chain on my pedalboard. It’s then going straight into the clean channel on my Series One head. And I'm using a t-style guitar for the sounds today. I did want to point that out. As you can hear when I wind the volume up on the guitar, because these are single coils you may hear a bit of extraneous noise. But, rest assured, if you hear that throughout the demo, it's not coming from the pedal itself. It’s just the nature of these single core pickups. So let's get started!

The first thing I wanted to do was give you an idea of the sounds you can get by winding up that dwell knob. So, what we're really listening for here is just how the character of the reverb changes and how the tail of the reverb decays out. I'll just play some simple chord stabs to help demonstrate that. First of all, this is the clean sound:

(Audio example)

And the reverb:

(Audio example)

So, you can hear that we're really getting everything from a super-tight room sound all the way up to a very large room, bordering on a small hall-type reverb. Now, let's do the same thing with a more musical playing example:

(Audio example)

Okay, so you can hear there's a lot of variation there. Probably my favorite way to set a room reverb is to go for a tighter room sound. And just to blend it in quite subtly to add just a touch of thickness and space around the sound. Here is turning the pedal off:

(Audio example)

And with it on:

(Audio example)

So, I really like that they've included a room reverb algorithm on this pedal. Probably the obvious choice would be to go for a hall. But I find room reverbs are really useful when it comes to guitar. Just again, for that really tight ambience that doesn't get in the way of your playing. As a side note, I also think that this particular algorithm might work pretty well with acoustic guitar as well—if you're wanting to use this pedal with a variety of guitars.

Okay, moving on to the spring setting. I’m going to set this back to 50% and we're going to do a similar thing. Just moving through the range of that dwell knob:

(Audio example)

You can hear that the dwell knob is really controlling the length of those virtual springs or the size of that virtual spring tank. Now, let’s do the same thing with some more musical playing examples. Here we go:

(Audio example)

So a wide variety of sounds there. Probably my favorite sound with this spring algorithm, is just setting the spring to about 50%. I think that's fairly representative of the type of size spring tank you might find in most standard tube amps. And then winding this back to about 25%. And this just gives us a nice almost ‘always on’ reverb sound. You hear a little bit of that fluctuation or that splashiness or drippiness that you get from the spring algorithm reverb but it's not overbearing. I particularly like that this algorithm isn't too bright. I generally prefer mellower sounds that don't get in the way of what you're playing. So here is a comparison with the reverb off:

(Audio example)

And with it on:

(Audio example)

So, a nice little fun spring reverb sound there! Finally, let’s move on to the plate algorithm. And I may have just saved the best for last. Again, let’s set this to about 50%. Now, here the dwell knob is effectively changing the amount of dampening we're adding to the virtual plate we're using in the Omni. Let's hear what that sounds like:

(Audio example)

And that could almost go on sustaining indefinitely. Now, let’s try that with a playing example:

(Audio example)

Just a really lush, beautiful sounding plate reverb. You can almost set that anywhere you like and it sounds great. Having said that, probably above about 75% on the dwell knob starts to get a little bit overbearing. Probably my two favorite settings are with the dwell on zero to give you this really tight plate sound. Here is a reference with the pedal off:

(Audio example)

And with the pedal engaged:

(Audio example)

And my other favorite setting is winding this up to about that 75% mark. And this just gives you that lovely pad-like infinite sustaining feel behind what you're playing. It sounds a bit like this… let’s just knock the level back a touch and here we go:

(Audio example)

I could play that all day. What a beautiful sound. So they are some of the sounds and settings in the Omni reverb pedal by Keeley Electronics. What do I think of this pedal? Do I think this is something you should spend your hard earned money on? Well, as you can see, I currently have this pedal mounted to my studio pedal board. I've had it on the board for a good month or so, mucking around with the sounds and combining it with other pedals and such. And I'm currently using this over some of the slightly bigger, more expensive pedals I have here in the studio. Just because of the simple facts that, 1) it sounds great. And, 2) it couldn't be simpler to use. It’s really easy to get up and running very quickly with a sound that you like.

Obviously, if you're looking for a reverb pedal that gives you a lot more control over the different parameters, or something which allows you to save presets, or something that has midi functionality, then this isn't the pedal for you. Likewise, if you're looking for very specific reverb sounds (like a shimmer reverb, a gated reverb, or a modulated reverb) then you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're looking for a very simple, easy to use, great sounding reverb that can sit at the end of your pedalboard or in the effects loop of your amp (if you don't have a spring reverb there, for example) then I think Keeley have made a really compelling offering with the Omni reverb. Especially, given the price point. I think probably the price of admission is almost worth it just for that plate reverb alone!

One thing I should mention is that this pedal is currently a Sweetwater exclusive. Meaning that you can't purchase this from any other retailer apart from Sweetwater. For those of us outside of the US, however, I do believe that you can currently get this direct from Keeley's website, robertkeely.com. So get in touch with them if you're outside the states and hopefully they'll be able to sort you out. That is my look at the Omni reverb by Keeley Electronics.

​Well, we have come to the end of the video, thank you for watching. Just a quick disclaimer: As I mentioned at the start of the video, this pedal was sent to me to feature in the video. But this wasn't a paid promotion or a sponsored advertisement. No money has changed hands, all thoughts and opinions, as always, are my own. If you're interested in more videos like this, then please subscribe to the channel and click that bell icon to be notified of future uploads. And finally, just a quick reminder. If you're interested in taking those playing skills a bit deeper, then I encourage you to head over to GuitarIQ.com to check out some of the great learning resources we have waiting for you over there. That’s it from me. Feel free to connect with me in the comments below. And if not, I will see you in the next video!