REV 5 A BARGAIN?
By Simon Alexander
As in my other reviews on this site, I have written a detailed review on my experience over the years with the Rev 7 from its first appearance (when I first bought mine) to its usability today and how it has stood up against modern compatible reverbs.. as with all these things, some of which can be down to personal taste and different applications to which we use reverberation in music.
As time passes, I have seen a huge reduction in price and desirability in early hardware reverb units. This is now quite apparent with the big lexicons and certainly at the lower end of the market such as the SPX range and Roland’s early SRV range. Having used pretty much most of the reverbs on the market from the early eighties to the mid 90s, I now find myself buying the odd units that I don’t have because they are simply too cheap to pass by. The Yamaha Rev 5, now falls into that category and if you can find a good working one you can pay as little as $200 or less!
For this kind of money, I would challenge anyone to find better value for money. In terms of its usefulness, It needs no introduction or qualification but there are a few things that I would like to mention to anyone that is about to do the same as I have just done.
Most people that have used or heard a Rev 7 and SPX (I hope) will already know their sonic qualities. The Rev 5 (in my opinion) offers some subtle improvements in various parameters and better overall bandwidth than its predecessor. Moving on from the techie stuff, I’m still a fan of its predecessor rather than saying the rev five is an obvious replacement. To my ears, the later rev five is certainly cleaner, and the earlier reflections are somewhat improved, but it’s a personal preference as to whether they are better or not? I certainly am happy to have both units for different options.
From a technical point of you, one thing that I have discovered, is there is a definitive fault in the two digit LED failing on quite a few units that have come up for sale! Indeed, my own unit had a failed LED display and I managed to buy a complete unit that was already being scrapped on eBay and managed to salvage the parts to get mine going! If you can find a good working one, then they are well worth the money., but check out the LED and the LCD display (although that is very simple to replace) before you buy one.