Crazy Tube Circuits White Whale V2

Vintage Reverb in the Style of the 60s!

Inspired by the perfectly matched vintage effects of American amplifiers from the 60s, the second version of the White Whale set a new goal: to pack even more authentic spring reverb and tremolo sounds into the same pedalboard-friendly housing.

The 3-spring reverb setup inside the White Whale remains unchanged, but the power amp driving the springs has been improved to achieve more headroom and a wider frequency response. Following the signal topology of vintage gear, the dwell control was also enhanced so you can dial in the right amount of signal sent to the springs for a softer or more lively reverb sound. Genuine spring reverb effects, like those found in American tube amps of the 60s and external reverb units, were fed from a tube power stage through an output transformer to the spring assembly. Therefore, an analog circuit was finely tuned to emulate tube and output transformer saturation at higher dwell settings.

Each of these vintage devices had its own reverb characteristics, so an attempt was made to categorize them by their most typical traits and select size and decay with a toggle switch. Users can choose between the thinner and milder reverb characteristics of a short to medium 2-spring tank, the liveliness of a medium to long 2-spring tank as found in most blackface amps, and the dense reverb traits of a long 3-spring tank arrangement. The reverb tone control comes after the recovery phase at the output of the reverb tank and only affects the wet sounds, allowing for vibrant and dripping or soft and mild reverb tones. The mix control lets you add the desired amount of wet signal to the dry guitar signal. Higher reverb mix settings tend to get lost in the mix, so a volume control with up to 20 dB boost was added to ensure you’re heard loud and clear.

The tremolo section was also upgraded and now features, besides the opto and tube bias of the predecessor "sea mammal," a harmonic tremolo. This hypnotic and captivating effect originally comes from certain models of the brown and blonde era and produces frequency-based modulation by switching between high and low frequencies, as opposed to amplitude-based modulation (opto and tube bias), which switches between volume levels. Care was taken to integrate the two main variants of harmonic tremolo from the original amps, differing in bandwidth and sweep of the pulsating frequencies. The depth control sets the modulation intensity, while the speed control range was extended beyond vintage amp limits to maximize your creativity. The volume control boosts the signal if needed, even at the most intense pulsation settings.

Another improvement of the White Whale V2 is that the two effect sections are now completely independent, and you can choose the effect order so that the tremolo comes before the reverb or vice versa. This lets you create heavenly combinations, as optical and tube tremolo usually sound better placed after the reverb effect, while harmonic tremolo generally sounds better before the reverb. The two integrated footswitches let you activate or bypass each effect section, and they feature a power-up bypass/engage preset function so you can select the state your pedal switches to when you connect the power supply.

The White Whale V2 also has a remote switcher input, allowing you to control the bypass status of each effect section remotely via your external effect switcher or the matching remote dual footswitch (sold separately). The reverb mix can also be controlled via an expression pedal, and the tremolo speed can be controlled either by an expression pedal or an external tap tempo footswitch (expression pedals/tap tempo footswitches not included).

The surf-ready light green color emphasizes the dripping overall look of a true spring reverb and tremolo effect that fits perfectly on your pedalboard. If your amp setup doesn’t offer these effects natively, you’ve now found the perfect addition.