Old Blood Noise Dark Star Stereo Soundscape Reverb

The Old Blood Noise Dark Star Stereo Soundscape Reverb is a stereo reverb pedal aimed at players who want long, dark, degraded reverb rather than a clean studio plate. Old Blood Noise describes it as "a characterful lo-fi reverb, ideal for slow attack and pad generation"¹. Where a conventional reverb pedal gives you one algorithm with tone shaping, the Dark Star starts with reverb and layers a high- or low-pass filter, two pitch shifters each with a two-octave range in each direction, plus bit-crushing and distortion on top of the tail². Premier Guitar called it "a digital reverb pedal that lives beyond simple effect categorization"³.

The pedal is the stereo evolution of the mono Dark Star Pad Reverb, which Old Blood Noise released at the tail end of 2015⁴. The stereo version shipped in 2024⁵ and is hand-made in Oklahoma, USA⁶.

A lo-fi pad reverb with pitch, delay and crush

The original Dark Star was a 3-algorithm reverb with three separate and independent modes of operation: Pitch, Delay and Crush, which introduce pitch shifting, delay and bit crushing to the core voice of long, dark reverb⁹. You picked one mode at a time and worked within it.

The big change in the stereo version is that those elements are no longer either/or. Guitar Pedal X described the difference: where the compact original gave you "3 separate and independent modes of operation - Pitch / Delay / Crush," the new enlarged stereo edition lets you "use all those textural elements together - with more options and" a far higher degree of granularity than the compact original⁶. Dedicated knobs control filtering, pitch-shifting and bit-crushing/saturation, so a single patch can carry a filtered, pitch-shifted, crushed tail⁶.

What that means in practice: a chord can bloom into a slow pad that shifts up or down an octave, gets roughed up by the bit crusher, and swells behind you with feedback, all inside one reverb. Delicious Audio noted the original became a go-to pedal for many ambient guitarists for its ability to create a wide range of original reverb sounds full of character and interesting textures, and the Stereo adds the three things every modern ambient guitarist wants: stereo, presets and MIDI integration⁹.

The controls

The Dark Star Stereo carries dedicated knobs for each textural element alongside the core reverb controls. Guitar.com's reviewer found "Plenty of control over the reverb's tonality and texture"¹².

The Aux switch deserves a note for ambient players: depending on how it is set, it can hold the trails open indefinitely, snap the filter shut for a muffled fade, or jump the pitch shifters up an octave¹⁰. Premier Guitar's review lists controls for lag (pre-delay), multiply (feedback) and decay as the core of the texture engine².

Stereo, MIDI and expression

The Dark Star Stereo has TRS stereo input and output, with analog dry through, so your dry signal stays untouched while the wet side is processed¹⁶. It can be routed in mono, in stereo, or mono-in/stereo-out². Premier Guitar's reviewer found that this iteration of the Dark Star, which follows the mono Dark Star and Dark Star V2, "really comes alive" in stereo².

Beyond the knobs:

• Presets: 3 onboard presets to save favorite blends of the different elements⁶
• Expression: expression control over every knob¹
• MIDI: MIDI In and MIDI Out, with MIDI control over every element of the effect¹⁶
• Bypass: soft-touch bypass footswitch for true bypass and minimal switch noise, with a trails option so the tail rings out after bypass¹⁰

Power: 9V, 350mA

The Dark Star Stereo requires a 9V DC center negative power supply with a 2.1mm jack, capable of 350mA, and the supply is not included¹⁰. That current draw is more than three times the 110mA of the mono Dark Star⁷, so a dedicated isolated output is the practical choice; the pedal has no battery option.

From the Dark Star Pad Reverb to the stereo version

The Dark Star line began with the compact mono Dark Star Pad Reverb, released at the tail end of 2015⁴. It ran three modes, Pitch, Delay and Crush, one at a time, on 110mA⁷⁶. Noveller's Sarah Lipstate, interviewed by Guitar World in 2019, used one and noted it was "pretty easy to tell the difference by ear between the two Dark Star modes: delay and pitch"¹³.

The stereo version, released in 2024, allows you to blend all three modes at once¹⁴. Guitar Pedal X's take on the upgrade:

The same reviewer called it "a really fabulous Stereo Reverb," appealing even where he generally prefers reverb workstation pedals in that role⁶. It shipped in a blue standard colorway plus Black/Monochrome and Pink/Red options⁶, and a Green Galaxy variant followed at $329.00¹⁰. There is also a Dark Paw, a B's Music Shop-exclusive reimagining of the Dark Star V3¹⁵. The enclosure art across the line is by Jon Carling¹⁰.

For players comparing within the Old Blood Noise range, the mono Dark Star remains the compact option, while the Dark Star Stereo and this Soundscape version carry the full feature set. More broadly, it sits among the reverb pedals built for ambient and textural work rather than traditional spaces⁶¹⁴¹⁰.

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