Catalinbread Talisman

[PDC]

Wow, wow, wow. Just picked up a ‘previously enjoyed’ Catalinbread Talisman to fiddle around with. Flame all you want, I’m having a blast chasing the closest approximation to the Ted Templeman VH-1 / VH-II tone that I can find in pedal format. (I have no interest in maintaining NOS tape reverb units or buying studio Plate Reverbs to store in my basement) And I have been consistently let down by the digital ‘approximations’ of Plate settings found in most common reverb pedals. I always hear a harsh, overly bright digital artifact going on in the ‘plate’ setting of even pricy, cork-sniffy reverb pedals, and find myself using the ‘Hall’ settings instead.

The Catalinbread Talisman is just an entirely different animal. The High-Pass Filter lets you dial in as much - or as little - top end as you do or don’t want. And even with a lotta’ highs coming through, the effect never feels harsh or brittle. With both ‘mix’ and ‘level’ controls, you can set unity gain and effect level totally independently. I was able to dial in a huge, lush, ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ reverb within minutes of plugging this unit through the loop of my modded Metro 12,xxx. I also snagged a used Belle Epoch which hasn’t arrived yet ... but I can’t wait to get it running in tandem with the Talisman.

 

[harddriver]

Thanks for the review! I thought most of the video clips sound very good. Is there any extraneous noise that you can hear while not playing when the pedal is on?

 

[PDC]

Thanks for the review! I thought most of the video clips sound very good. Is there any extraneous noise that you can hear while not playing when the pedal is on?

I don’t hear anything - my 12,xxx has a Metro Zero-Loss loop and the Talisman is dead silent in the loop. Of course, you can crank the mix and level to the point where you get some noise, but at that point the effect starts to sound harsh and distorted. If you adjust the mix and level controls for unity gain through your loop when the pedal is turned on and off, the signal remains really quiet.

I also tried it through the loop of my QR - which has a level control - and it was nice and quiet in that amp, too.

 

[harddriver]

Cool, I like what I hear. It was between the Talisman or an RV500, I don't know if the RV500 has an EMT plate reverb patch. I like the simplicity of the talisman but I could sure use the stereo outputs of the RV500 but I guess I could also get a mono to stereo out splitter cable for the talisman. I like the fact that you can keep the tone crisp with the high pass filter.

So it looks like we are both looking for the Ted Templeman style reverb on VH1 and later albums do you hear VH1 reverb from the Talisman?

Your review seems to support that assertion.

 

[PDC]

The Belle Epoch arrived today and I had the chance to run both units through the loop. They play very well together and sound great. There definitely is a ‘limit’ to how much you can expect your guitar speakers to do by running time effects through the loop along with ‘front end’ effects in front of the amp like phase, flange and chorus. The longer I play and louder I turn it up, the more I think I am hearing a little Digital harshness around the edges - which I attribute to trying to get everything out of the amp. It’s funny, I played ‘professionally’ for 5-6 years in my prior life (before grown-upping) and I never used ANY effects live(!) We were a circuit band and had a dedicated, full-time sound man that knew our set and my rig cold. He laid a nice, soft verb on my channel through the board pretty much all night and punched delay in for leads and added chorus during clean parts. I got spoiled. And I can see how and why it just sounds ‘purer’ to get a big, fat, tight guitar signal into the board and add effects after the fact...

 

[PDC]

Also - I will say that in all the countless verb and delay pedals that I have shuttled through my collection, I find the Earthquaker Dispatch Master to be one of the absolute CLEANEST time effects I have ever used. Period. My only complaint is that you cannot turn the verb and delay on and off independently. There are alotta’ times I want verb, but no delay - and I like punching the delay in for leads, etc. So I actually own two Dispatch Masters and had one dialed in for verb only - and left it on all the time - and the second set for delay only and punched it in and out as needed. After an hour of blasting with the Talisman and Belle Epoch at increasing volume levels, I swapped my tried and true Dispatch Masters back onto the board for a quick A/B. Both set ups sound good. Both sound different. I’m not sure which set up I prefer...

 

[harddriver]

For 150 bones used I may pick one up and run it in the left channel after my delays in my w/d/w just to see if adds anything that I like or not.

I am remembering where Templemen put the reverb in the left channel correct? I thought delay and reverb were in left on the album recording...

I am running a Boss DD500 for delays and could not be happier with the quality of the delays, both the echoplex and SDE3000 models are worth the price of the admission for sure and have rack like qualities to them. I still run two old Ibanez echomachine em-5's one set to 100ms and one set to 400ms (and switch them in and out depending on the tune) up front of my plexi at times for certain applications, the boss is run after the line out tap of the plexi into a Matrix GT1000fx power amp.

I sold my EP3 echoplex while it was still operating well, it did sound better than the EM-5's but I just didn't want to get the entire thing serviced for as much as I used it.

Thanks again for your in depth review and descriptions it is appreciated.