ALEXANDER
PEDALS
GOLDEN
SUMMER
REVIEW BY ERIC TISCHLER
STREET PRICE $189.00
The marketing copy around
Alexander’s Golden Summer
Ambient Reverberator
evokes a sense of nostalgia,
invoking “mom” and “neverending summer.” Now, I
was in my early 20s when
Slowdive’s Souvlaki came
out, so maybe I’m older than
the target audience, but
“Ambient Reverberator?”
That I get.
Golden Summer provides
reverb—and gobs of it—
but it doesn’t go for a
spring reverb vibe or a
recognizable acoustic space
(although it does very well
at providing the latter, if not
the former), but is based on
a “virtual reverb chamber.”
52
GEAR REVIEW
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Plug in and, at almost
any setting, you get lots
of dreamy, shimmering
space. How dreamy
and how shimmering is
determined by the pedal’s
deceptively elaborate
controls.
Golden Summer offers the
standard Reverb (depth
of the reverb chamber),
Mix (which controls that
amount of the effect that’s
applied to your signal) and
Delay (the amount of time
between the initial clean
note and the onset of the
effect…usually; more on
that in a moment). The
Golden Summer then adds
a three-way toggle for three
Alexander Pedals Golden Summer
different settings, and a
Tweak control that affects
how those settings are
applied to the signal.
In the Mod setting, Golden
Summer offers its least
shimmery (read: most
traditional) setting with
the Tweak knob at noon.
However, as you move the
knob in either direction, you
add tremolo-like modulation
to the trails; clockwise is
slower, counter-clockwise
is faster. With a distorted,
busier part, there’s a My
Bloody Valentine-esque
pitch-shifting feel with these
settings that adds texture
without calling attention to
itself. With a cleaner signal