Roll your mouse pointer over a control below to see the operation:

Input stage

The Hot and Not jacks are identical to vintage American amps and are relabeled according to their affect on gain. The new labels are an effort to assist you in getting better tone. The input stage was designed with three goals in mind; fat tone, smooth overdrive and pedal friendliness. Go ahead and hit it with a booster and listen to what happens. If an overdrive tone is what you’re after, start here with a little boost to liven things up.

Volume Control and Tone Stack

These work like good, old vintage American controls. The volume control has an internal bright cap that adds shimmer at lower settings and is much less pronounced at higher settings. The tone stack operates exactly like Leo Fender’s famous 4x10 bass amp from the late 1950s. The deep switch extends the low bass and boosts the overall volume a little. The volume and tone stack also determines the amount of overdrive in the second gain stage. Higher volume settings will produce more overdrive.

Drive Control

This is simply a volume control for the third gain stage and allows you to dial in the exact amount of signal drive for the third gain stage. By closely matching the amount of drive in the third stage with that of the second stage the Blueverb is able to achieve super-symmetrical overdrive. Very smooth overdrive with great dynamics. Cleans up with a twist of the volume knob.

Dwell

The Dwell controls the amount of drive sent to the reverb tank. For a surf sound run the Dwell at the higher settings. For a smoother Reverb run the Dwell lower. As you add overdrive to the preamp with the Volume and Drive settings, this will impact the Dwell setting. Higher Drive settings require less Dwell.

Reverb

The Reverb controls the amount of wet signal coming back from the tank. The Blueverb has a completely independent reverb-recovery stage for better Reverb detail. It is also a separate channel and bypasses the Pre-Master volume. This means that by turning down the Pre-Master volume control you will hear only the Reverb (Yes. You’re right. It’s very cool) You can use this setting to dial-in your Dwell and Reverb settings.

Vibrato

Works just like mid-1960s, vintage-American amps.

Soul Control

The Soul Control varies the amount of negative feedback folded back into the phase inverter stage. Turn it down for tight and up for loose. Let your ears be your guide. The stock vintage American clean sound is 1. The 0 setting is a super clean and tight tone for jazz. 10 is just right for that SRV tone.

Pre Master

The Pre-Master volume works just like a traditional master volume. It is merely a volume control for the input to the phase inverter (driver tube for the output stage). When you turn it you’ll notice a hump in the response where it sort of swells quickly. This is the sweet spot for the phase inverter and the position of the hump will differ depending on where you have your Volume and Drive controls set. Settings well below this hump will produce a dry and lifeless tone. Settings well above this point will send the phase inverter into overdrive.

Post Master

The Post-Master volume is of the phase cancellation type. It feeds each side of the phase inverter output signal to the other side. What is common among these two inverted signals gets canceled first. Because of this, lower settings of this knob allow you to better hear the overdrive of the phase inverter stage.