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"...and throughout the dilapidated walls of the old homestead, the harrowing, haunting sound flowed. Peering around the shattered splinters of the farmer's wife's wardrobe, the echoes grew stronger, clearer, and more demanding. He could not bear to turn the creaky knob hidden within the fireplace, but the sound beckoned and the source of its mysterious character commanded a witness.
The jam of the door cracked open. Light bled into the imposing blackness behind it. His head inched further through the small door, his pupils dilating. The more this darkness consumed him, the farther the sound drew. Now, through the fireplace's hatch and surrounded by who-knows-what, there it was. The... thing... the... what is it? What is... what..."
Man, what is it? I should have drafted this out more.
There's no shame in using a placeholder. There's no shame in not having it all figured out but going ahead anyway. It's always an option to just go with it.
This is the Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb.
Shop the Fairfield Placeholder
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Introducing the Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb
Let's talk about Fairfield Circuitry, shall we? Quebec's finest in the expressive, experimental, and industrial, Fairfield have made themselves known for a back catalog of some of the boutique effect world's favorite pedals. Incredibly robust, experimental sounds and a unifying aesthetic you truly can't mistake have made Fairfield Circuitry a pillar of the boutique effect community. There's no mistaking a Fairfield circuit, especially among a board of other pedals.
Going at the process at their own pace, Fairfield Circuitry has provided a steady stream of experimental effects the chronic noisemakers and knobtwisters of the world have yet to exhaust. Today's Placeholder reverb is something of a first for Fairfield as their lineup of effects as of yesterday* had not featured a flagship reverb pedal. Fairfield, as you're certain to imagine, did not just throw together your standard reverb to fill a spot. The Placeholder fulfills its namesake in a much more clever way than that. Fairfield's Placeholder creates inspiring reverb tones in classic Fairfield fashion – with plenty of personality and a true outside-the-box approach. Let's discuss.
The day before this pedal's debut
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Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb Design and Controls
The Fairfield Placeholder, if you can believe it, comes together in a strange way probably familiar to fans of other Fairfield Circuitry devices. Never ones to choose the obvious answer, Fairfield went ahead to design their vision of a reverb pedal. What does a reverb look like to Fairfield?
Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb Design
With the Placeholder, we're getting hit with a few technicals. Can a delay be a reverb? Technically, yes, of course! What is truly the difference between a complex web of analog delays and a reverb cloud? What, indeed. The Placeholder centers itself around three parallel bucket brigade analog delays that sum into a fourth feedback path. These four feedback lines fire up a bucket brigade delay tone that quickly gets into a reverberating lane.
An all-analog signal flow with digitally-enabled delay clocks and modulations mean the Placeholder is all-analog authentic with the digital power for control precision. The top row of controls operate as you'd expect – Decay, Tone, Mix, and Volume, for delay decay, effect tone, effect wet blend, and overall effect level, respectively. It's when we start moving south that things get funky.
Two dials, Size and Ratio, work in interesting ways in reference to the Placeholder's three parallel bucket brigade delays. Size dictates an initial "room size," where a first delay trail's length is set to shape the length of the next two delays. Ratio then shapes the length of the two other delays simultaneously, with longer delay lines moving clockwise and shorter delay lines moving counterclockwise. What this all adds up to is different sound effects as the delays are shortened or lengthened. More on this soon.
Switch It UpOnboard, the Placeholder loads three three-way switches to shape its overall output. The first duo of switches harnesses an expressive simultaneous modulation that adds plenty of character and takes the Placeholder to all-new places entirely. Your numbered "M" and C/R switches take control of the Placeholder's modulation abilities for a pitch modulation that ramps up in intensity on its three-way basis with cyclical cycles, random cycles, or both. With these, a three-way "F" switch engages a high-pass filter meant to accommodate the naturally noisy nature of the bucket brigades. The ambient hiss of these delays will make itself known, it's completely normal.
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Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb Tones
With the Placeholder, we all know we're not getting just a reverb. Fairfield's ain't goin' out like that. The Placeholder is truly a masterwork in ambience, noisemaking, and wonky weirdness in analog components. Throughout the Placeholder's sonic territory, we get plenty of deviations and avenues from the traditional reverb sound. Bucket brigade delays are crafty little guys like that. Let's talk about a couple of the places they can hold.
Risk of RainThe Placeholder's primary effect is – you guessed it – a reverb. As we've alluded to, the regular character of this reverb is denser, heavier, and sure to indulge your dark side. The pedal's analog delay structure means this really isn't a reverb to color your surf licks, stadium choruses, or country chicken pickin', but that's absolutely by design. A bucket brigade reverb being warm, dark, and brooding? Say it ain't so.
Del-'80sWith the Placeholder's onboard modulation section, its dark, warbly expressive character can easily be your next best flanger. A tight delay trail with a bumped up pitch modulation will quickly swerve you into an '80s-inspired lane as you strum through cloudy yet shimmery chords
Bulletproof BubbleWhile the Placeholder can get sustaining and expansive, its bucket brigade design also leans in to round, dense audible auras of reverb à la your favorite plate reverbs. The Placeholder plays marvelously with reverb tones that sound bulletproof – strong, thick, and close to the chest – for a perfect bubble of resonating weirdness to color melodic lead lines.
Music for Cloudy DaysIf it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. If you're a fan of analog delays, then we're sure you're champing at the bit to get the Placeholder self-oscillating. Wouldn't you know it, you're in luck. The Placeholder's choir of bucket brigade delays is readymade to run rampant, self-oscillate, and create sustaining pads of noise that bleed into the interminable. If you want that reverb to play with you, to play as your backing track in a way, to help you live your Collector/Emitter truth, Fairfield has you covered.
Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder Reverb Final Thoughts
The Fairfield Circuitry Placeholder is a lot of things. It's a densely cloudy reverb, an off-kilter Swiss Army Knife modulator, a grumbling space-time tearer, an in-between machine. Was there ever a doubt that Fairfield's flagship reverb would be anything else? What would a Fairfield Circuitry reverb look like, if not an "all of the above" answer at the end of the boutique effect pedal SATs?
Fairfield Circuitry's really outdone themselves with the Placeholder in terms of delivering an effect experience that is anything but in a box. If you've been hankering for a primary reverb effect from the folks at Fairfield, we absolutely cannot imagine you'd be disappointed with the Placeholder. If reverb's the one thing you've been holding out on, lest you spoil the theming of your "All Fairfield" board, the Placeholder is sure to deliver some catharsis. For that, we congratulate you for you reaching the question of, "Where has this been all my life?" Or the exclamation of, "About damn time."
The Placeholder assumes a place in the pantheon of instant Fairfield classics. A pedal so powerful and so simple with, simultaneously, so many places to go, the Placeholder is certain to be anything but that. It's bound to stick around for a while, we can only imagine.
Okay, I got it. The house, the door, the darkness, the noise. A dream. It was a dream the whole time. Nailed it.
