« Nice Tones on Both Sides, but with a Boost. »

The Visual Sound H2O V1 is a “home plate” shaped chorus and echo pedal. The pedal has a solid metal housing and two sturdy switches. One switch is to engage the chorus and one to engage the echo. They can be used separately or pressed together. The unit has a single input, but has outputs that can be used for mono or stereo. The chorus has three knobs to hone in the sound; speed, width, and delay time. The echo has three knobs and a switch; delay time, repeats, effect level and a switch for short or long delay times. The pedal can run off of 9 volts of battery power or a power supply.

UTILIZATION

The idea behind this pedal is great; two pedals that are commonly used in conjunction with each other that can be used simultaneously or independently housed in the same pedal. The pedal seems to be built very well from the outside, though I have had issues with reliability with this pedal. The echo side of this pedal has never let me down, the chorus side is another story. I had used the pedal one day during a practice session, and the following day the chorus side of the pedal just would not work. Signal still passed through the pedal and the echo side worked fine, but when trying to turn on the chorus side there was no effect to the tone whatsoever, even though the LED was turned on. My first impression was that it was a switch issue, but after talking with Visual Sounds customer service I found out the issue was probably something with the board. The people at Visual Sound were very helpful, so there is a plus on their side. Though I bought the pedal used and had no warranty for the pedal they were willing to send several emails and schematics so I could check a few things on the pedal. In the end I sent it to them and for a bench fee of 25 dollars they were able to get me back and running. Not bad customer service for an old product bought on the used market. This may have been a fluke with my pedal, but at least if a Visual Sound pedal goes down you know you’ll be able to get it fixed without having to buy a new one.

SOUND QUALITY

The chorus side of this pedal is very lush and warm sounding. It can handle swooshing and swirling sounds to make a clean sound very lively and dreamy, or it can do an almost vibe pulsating sound. You can cope several different styles of modulation out of the chorus side, but it does a very smooth Pink Floyd type chorus very well. The echo side of the pedal does around 800 ms of analog voiced echo. Since it’s trying to sound analog it’s a little on the warmer darker side of the spectrum, so you aren’t going to get those crisp clone repeats like you would from a Boss digital delay. I find it to be very natural sounding with a nice taper in the decay. Slapbacks or medium length echos are available, but the pedal is not capable of super long delays. This doesn’t bother me because the pedal is right in the range of delay I use. The one problem I have with the sound and the pedal as a whole is the volume boost I get from the pedal. There is a very noticeable boost in the volume when I use this pedal. Though it is less noticeable with different amps, it is still apparent

OVERALL OPINION

Overall this is a nice sounding pedal if you want warm liquid tones and short delay times. The volume boost on these early pedals leave the pedal useless for me at a gig, but for use during an entire song or recording it wouldn’t be bad. If I had it to do over again I would not buy this pedal, especially at a new price. I like the idea of the two in one pedal for using the switches, but as your tastes in sound change you might end up using only half of the pedal and it takes up a lot of pedalboard real-estate. I feel it’s a little over priced and the volume boost is just ridiculous at this price point. I believe it has been addressed in the new versions of the pedal though. Visual Sound as a company earned some points with me through their help with fixing my pedal, but this pedal is lacking in areas that have made me turn to other pedals.