“An affordable option for adding atmospheric soundscapes”: Walrus Audio Fundamental Ambient review

Walrus Audio have been responsible for some pretty tasty pedals in the ambience field with the likes of the Slöer Stereo Ambient reverb, Slö Multi-Texture Reverb and the Fable and Lore Soundscape Generators, but they are not pedals that every player would be able to afford. 

Now, though, there’s the opportunity for more of us to discover what the Walrus ambience is all about with the release of the Fundamental Ambient, a pedal in their budget-friendly Fundamental series.

The Fundamental Ambient is a compact pedal with an easy-to-operate interface consisting of three centre-detented sliders governing the reverb mix, decay and tone, plus a switch that selects one of three different ambient reverb algorithms – Deep, Lush and Haze.

While these are all in that same spacious and textured reverb ballpark that can provide a shifting pad of sound supporting your guitar, each has its own attributes that may lend themselves to different applications. 

Deep is delivered with a low octave that’ll give you real dense girth in its low end – if you want to get doomy it’s your first call. Lush, by contrast, has a lighter vibe with a more open sounding midrange and is ideal where you need a really long, lingering reverb tail – it’s like an infinite reverb if you move the decay slider to maximum.

That Decay slider actually gives plenty of variation for all three algorithms, running from a relatively short but intense fadeout through to a tail that’ll just hang in the air. 

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For both Deep and Lush, the Tone slider controls the cutoff of a low-pass filter, offering plenty of range, brightening things up from right to left. For Haze, it operates as a band-pass filter which suits the reverb’s grainy lo-fi texture delivered by the distortion and sample rate reduction inherent in the algorithm.

OK, it’s not stereo like some of its more expensive siblings, but the Fundamental Ambient gives you a nicely affordable option of adding some atmospheric soundscapes to a standard guitar signal chain, and is a practical complement to a more conventional reverb pedal.

Specs

• PRICE: $129 / £125
• TYPE: Ambient reverb pedal
• FEATURES: Buffered bypass, switchable trails mode, choice of three algorithms
• CONTROLS: Decay, Tone, Mix, Deep/Lush/Haze switch, Bypass footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Standard input, standard output
• POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not supplied) 100mA
• DIMENSIONS: 60 (w) x 116 (d) x 56 mm (h)
• CONTACT: Walrus Audio