Reverb

Reverb simulates the reflections of a physical space — a room, a hall, a spring tank — placing the signal inside an implied acoustic environment rather than repeating it as a series of distinct echoes the way delay does. The two effects are often discussed together because they are both time-based and both frequently sit at the end of a chain, but they do genuinely different jobs to the signal.

The types in this family

• Reverb (rank 110): Reverb after delay puts the repeats in a space; the other way round the delay repeats a reverberant wash, which is a bigger and less defined sound.

Where it sits in the chain, and why

Reverb belongs after delay, not before it: putting the delay’s repeats through reverb afterward places each individual echo inside its own small acoustic space, which stays relatively defined. Putting reverb before delay instead means the delay repeats an already-reverberant, washy signal, producing a bigger but noticeably less distinct result. Reverb-before-delay is a real alternative some players choose deliberately for that bigger, washier sound, but reverb-after-delay is the order most boards default to.

Power notes

Like delay, digital reverb algorithms — particularly anything beyond a simple spring or plate emulation — often require meaningful processing power, and many reverb pedals draw more current than a simple analog effect. Some players give reverb an isolated output for the same reason delay often gets one: a shared ground’s noise is more audible in a sustained, decaying wash than in most other effects. As always, this is a pattern to expect and confirm, not a substitute for the pedal’s own rating.

General guidance for the family, never a specification for any individual pedal — always confirm voltage, polarity, current draw and isolation from the maker’s own documentation before wiring a real board.

Every rank and reason above is quoted straight from pedal-chain-planner.js's PEDAL_TYPES — the same taxonomy this site's chain planner runs and docs/gearwarrior-pedals-contract.md documents. No second table.