Mooer Ocean Machine

GUITAR INTERACTIVE STAR RATING:⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

MSRP (UK) £269 (US) $299

PROS

Great Sounds/Tons of Options

Compact and Quality

Great value for Money

CONS

None! Plus, it's got Devin Townsends Name on It!

SPECS

Reverb/Delay/Looper

Dimensions (L x W x H): 112 x 215 x 55 mm

Weight 1120 g

Developed in conjunction with musical prog master Devin Townsend Mooer Audio's Ocean Machine pedal has been designed to reproduce his vast array of massive delays and reverbs he has used since the beginning of his career. Sam Bell tells us more.

The astounding Devin Townsend is known for his epic progressive metal compositions and ethereal spreads of sound. Devin has worked with Mooer pedals on making it possible for us mortal Guitarists to attain similar levels of epic ambience in our Guitar Rigs with the 'Ocean Machine' This pedal has tons of options for sounds and varying different levels of sound-scapeing potential, however fundamentally it's basically a Double Delay Pedal with Reverb Options. You can use this pedal in two ways, with the pre-set function, by setting your own patches, or you can use it manually as 3 stompable effects for live use.

The Pedal is fairly small and inexpensive considering how many awesome options you get, the Reverbs are high quality, and go from our standard Hall, Plate, Spring, Room Reverbs, all the way up to Low Fi, Flange, Galaxy Reverbs which give us tons of tonal shaping options, especially when put in combination with other effects. Each Third of the Unit gives us 4 controls to change the parameters of each effect, for reverb we can control the shimmer, time, tone and volume of the selected reverb. Moving along to the right of the reverb we have Delay B and A, both of these delays feature similar Tape, Echo, Analog, Stereo Delays that can be used in tandem with each other. For example you may wish to set Delay A to a quicker 200ms delay and Delay B to a longer 500ms delay, which when mixed together can create some really interesting ambient results. Delay A and B also have some unique types of Delay that give us all kinds of options from Modulated Delay to Lo-Fi Delay (as demonstrated in the video portion of this review!)

The amount of combinations we can get from tweaking through the settings here is inspiring and fortunately you can save them as a patch to recall if you come up with something specific that you want to tap into for a song. The unit already comes with a whole host of presets that you can tweak yourself or just play with to get inspired. It's worth bearing in mind that some of these sounds are quite extreme and may not suit a band mix in a live situation, a backing of the level of the effects for live situations will help you cut through a little bit depending on your set up. But the point of this pedal is to get inspired and create some awesome ambient sounds.

In Summary, I strongly feel this pedal is great value for what you get, it's a sturdy unit, with a good footprint, uses only 9 volts to power it, and it has a plethora of sounds that are easily programmable plus it has a great selection of mono/stereo outs and midi capability. Well worth checking out if you're into your ambient sounds or if you're looking for a one-stop shop for all your Reverb and Delay needs!