Keeley Nocturner

The Keeley Nocturner is a reverb pedal introduced by Keeley Electronics in 2015. It offers three switchable reverb modes, Shimmer, Reverse and Halls, and sits on the darker end of the Keeley reverb range. The pedal is now discontinued: Keeley's own product page for it lives in the maker's archive section¹.

Keeley describes the Nocturner as darker in voice than the Keeley Aurora, with its Shimmer and Reverse tones taken from the Sojourner¹. Audiofanzine's launch coverage agreed, noting the pedal "is darker that the Aurora"².

What it does: Shimmer, Reverse and Halls reverbs

The Nocturner gives a player three reverb flavors in one box, selected by mode switching²¹:

• Shimmer: a reverb with a pitched, shimmering wash layered over the tail
• Reverse: a reverb that swells backward, the same tone Keeley used on the Sojourner¹
• Halls: a large hall-style reverb space²

Keeley's own description of the pedal emphasizes experimentation: it is "simple to let the pedal do the work and start experimenting with deep and rich watery layers of reverb, or switch modes" for shimmering washes¹. Audiofanzine's 2015 launch report listed the three modes as "Shimmer, Reverse (like on the Sojourner) and Halls"².

The pedal launched as a limited edition: a first batch of 30 models, signed, at a special price of $199, with the regular price set at $219 afterward². For a player shopping in 2015, that placed it in the mid-range of Keeley's reverb offerings, and the signed first batch gave early buyers a collectible version of the pedal.

The controls

The Nocturner keeps things to four knobs²:

The layout is a straightforward one-knob-per-function design. Decay and Blend handle the two dimensions every reverb pedal needs, how long the tail runs and how much of it sits under the dry guitar, while Tweek and Warmth give two separate paths into shaping the character of the wet signal. The Warmth control in particular is the knob that leans into the pedal's darker positioning against the Aurora, letting a player dial the effect toward or away from that voice rather than being locked into it²¹.

That control set is one of the clearest ways to tell the Nocturner apart from its name-sake successor, the Keeley Andy Timmons Nocturne Reverb, which uses Tone, Level, Decay and Modulation controls instead³⁴.

Nocturner versus Nocturne

The names are close, but the two pedals are entirely different products.

The Nocturne was designed by Robert Keeley together with Andy Timmons³⁴. It is built in Keeley's Core enclosure with RCA Bakelite knobs and a larger footprint than the compact format, and carries four Mode LEDs⁴. Gearnews reported it available from Thomann at $325.00 / £289.00 / 349.00€³, while Guitar Pedal X gave the price as $399 with £319 and €399 equivalents⁴.

Guitar Pedal X's reviewer, Stefan Karlsson, compared the Nocturne against his own reference pedal⁴:

For a player weighing the two, the practical differences come down to the modes and the feature set. The Nocturner reaches for ambient territory, with its Shimmer and Reverse modes aimed at shimmering washes, while the Nocturne's MIDI compatibility and Modulation control give it a deeper feature set than the Nocturner's four knobs¹³².

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