Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star Stereo

The Dark Star Stereo is a reverb pedal from Old Blood Noise Endeavors, a characterful lo-fi reverb the maker describes as ideal for slow attack and pad generation. Where a conventional reverb pedal adds space around your playing, the Dark Star takes the reverb trail and processes it, layering pitch shifting, delay and sample-rate reduction or overdrive into the wash so the tail becomes a sound of its own. Old Blood Noise calls it "a reverb for anywhere in your signal chain, and almost an instrument of its own"¹.

It is the stereo evolution of the company's Dark Star line. The original Dark Star Pad Reverb was a compact mono pedal with three separate and independent modes of operation: Pitch, Delay and Crush². The Stereo version, released in 2024, keeps that processing but lets you blend all three modes at once, and adds stereo inputs and outputs, presets, expression and MIDI control³. Premier Guitar's reviewer placed its character clearly: "The result is a pad reverb, as synthetic as but less sparkly than a shimmer"⁴.

A lo-fi pad reverb

The Dark Star line goes back to the mid-2010s. The original Dark Star pad reverb was released at the tail end of 2015⁶⁷, and Delicious Audio notes it "shines in creating long and cavernous reverbs, with an optional lo-fi character" since its launch in 2016⁷. Guitar World has described the pedal's core idea as "a reverb modulated by pitch, delay and bit-crusher"⁸.

The Stereo version is what Guitar Pedal X called "the next evolution of OBNE's Dark Star," a souping-up of the former compact mono pedal into a full stereo ambient reverb². Where the older pedal made you choose one of its three modes at a time, the Stereo blends them together, so a single trail can carry pitch shifting, delay and crushed texture simultaneously²³.

For a player, that means the Dark Star Stereo sits closer to a sound-design tool than a room or hall emulation. It is built for slow swells, sustained pads and long decays rather than subtle ambience, and Premier Guitar found that stereo is where this iteration, which follows the mono Dark Star and Dark Star V2, "really comes alive"⁴.

The controls

The Dark Star Stereo carries six knobs, each mapped to a clear job¹:

Premier Guitar's reviewer read the same panel slightly differently in use, describing controls for lag (pre-delay), multiply (feedback) and decay⁴. On the original mono Dark Star, the two CTRL knobs corresponded with whichever mode was selected⁷; on the Stereo, the equivalent functions are named directly on the knobs.

The enclosure art is by Jon Carling¹, and the pedal comes in three colors: Blue (the standard finish), Black and Pink¹.

Stereo, expression and MIDI

The Dark Star Stereo has TRS stereo in and TRS stereo out¹⁹, with analog dry through, meaning your dry signal stays analog rather than being converted and back again¹. The Spread knob works with the stereo outputs, panning the wet signal left and right in opposite directions for movement across two amps¹.

Control options run deep for a reverb pedal:

• Presets, for saving and recalling sounds¹
• Expression control over every knob¹
• MIDI control over every element, with MIDI In and MIDI Out connections¹²
• Aux control, as noted in Premier Guitar's review⁴
• Two footswitches, with the second a multi-purpose switch assignable to preset toggling⁵

That feature set puts the Dark Star Stereo in the same territory as other deep ambient pedals, and makes it a candidate for players who want a reverb that integrates with a MIDI-controlled board rather than sitting at the end of it¹⁴.

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 included¹.

The original Dark Star also ran on 9V DC center negative through a 2.1mm jack, so the polarity convention carries over between versions¹⁰.

What reviewers said

Guitar.com's review of the Dark Star Stereo was direct about its strongest suit⁵¹¹¹²:

Richard Purvis, Guitar.com⁵

The same review noted a naming quirk worth knowing: the enclosure, packaging and manual name only "Dark Star," because that was the name of the old mono version, so the pedal you receive may not carry the word "Stereo" on it at all⁵.

Guitar Pedal X, covering the launch, wrote that the Soundscape version "sounds superb in the various demos"², and in its 2024 roundup of spatial, immersive and time-based effects the site called it "a really cool sounding reverb for sure, and one which is very much on my target list for next year"¹³. Delicious Audio's buying guide flagged the Stereo version, released in 2024, as a standout among delay and reverb pedals for its ability to blend all three modes at once³.

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