KEELEY
ELECTRONICS
CAVERNS
REVIEW BY PHILLIP DODGE
STREET PRICE $249.00
Come along friends; today,
we’re going on a journey into
America’s deepest and most
musical cavern—the Keeley
Caverns. The Keeley Caverns
is a brand new, dual-function,
reverb and delay pedal from
our good friends over at Keeley
Effects. Featuring up to one
full second of delay and three
reverb modes, the Caverns
provides a ton of features in
one small package.
Speaking of small packages,
the Keeley Caverns doubles
down on the space savings by
utilizing rear-mounted input,
output, and power jacks and
six miniature potentiometers.
Not only do you get one great
delay and three great reverbs,
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but it takes up precious little
pedalboard real estate. For
the delay, you get controls for
Time, Regeneration (labeled
Regen), and Level. On the
reverb side, you get a threeway switch for selecting
between Modulated, Plate,
and Shimmer sounds. And
you get controls for Morph,
Decay, Tone, and Blend. Decay
and Tone are straightforward
and Blend simply balances
between your uneffected and
the effected tone. The Morph
control covers different territory
depending on reverb type—
controlling modulation pulse,
the amount of pre-delay on the
Plate, and the intensity of the
octave shift within the Shimmer
setting.
Keeley Electronics Caverns
The personality of the delay
in the Caverns is like a great
character actor. It supports
the scene—neither receding
too deep into the background,
nor hogging the spotlight.
It starts with clear and full
repeats of what you feed into
it, and allows them to degrade
slowly and naturally into the
distance. There’s no edgy grit
or intense modulation, just
subtle and realistic echoes that
fade into oblivion. Part of the
magic of the delay signal is
Keeley’s new “Inverse Dynamic
Modulation.” Aside from
the cool name, this feature
intensifies the modulation of
repeats as they fade. Initial
repeats are clean and clear with
little to no modulation. As the