my first pedal ever: RV-3

Yup. A delay.

Every guitarist seems to buy some distortion pedal or an overdrive first, but I was so much into ambient stuff I had to get myself a delay first.

I'm trying to remember if it was January 2003 or January 2004 when I got it. I remember I was talking to a friend couple of moths before I decided to buy it. That friend was into pedals for some time also. We shared the drummer at the time, so I used to hang out on their rehearsals. He was the first one to mention RV-3 to me, because the pedal had the nice option of both delay and reverb at the same time, so by buying it you were getting two effects/pedals in one.

The problem was that the pedal was out of stock already back then, and it was pain in the ass to find it on some online shop. I knew only one friend at the time who had Visa Electron and could buy stuff via net, so I asked him for help. Needless to say it was painful to surf the net in order not only to find the store that had RV-3 still in stock, but also a shop that could ship it to Serbia.

Finally, we found some store in Boston. They agreed to shipped it over here. I had to pay some extra shitty Serbian corrupted custom taxes for the pedal, but it was all worth that day Mirko called to say it finally arrived.

This pedal is awesome. I used it so much back then and still use it today. There was no gig or single rehearsal where I didn't use it. Later on i got some more variable delay pedals but still kept this one for using only reverb from it. It also has the stereo output, so you could plug into two amps at the same time.

I remember a gig we had in Obrenovac in 2004 and there were two guitar amps on stage. I was the only one playing the guitar in Consecration at that time, and I was using a distortion pedal and not the amp distortion, so I could output the guitar signal into two different amps for more stereo feel. I also had CE-3 chorus lent from a friend for that gig, and the stereo liquid heaven (provided with chorus and stereo delay & reverb) that came out of the speakers was simply amazing.

Here is some sort of list of Consecration songs I used it on, just to give you an idea how important it turned out to be.

Delay & Reverb, Mode 6 (hall):
Absinthe
Emocean
Aimless
Rinasek***
Passage (Aux)
Bercek
Shelter Me
Rafinerija*

Reverb only, Mode 10 (hall):
Cliffhangers
Aligator
.avi
Somna
Idiot Glee
Djavo Nije Urban
Gilmour*
Cimet*
Vertikala*
Debeli Leptir*

Delay only, Mode 3:
Mercury Room (I think it was mode 3 since it had longer delay time)
Mothers*

...And pretty much every song I play live with E-play.

index:
*New tracks, haven't been recorded yet. We might change the Mothers' name to something else, since the lyrics would be transferred to Serbian

*** Rinasek -  I know I used Line 6 XT Pro Rack in the studio while we were recording the Aux, and I know I found some interesting reversed delay on it to use. So the reversed delay was from Line 6 for sure, but the only thing I can't recall at the moment if it was only a reverb from RV-3 then, or both reverb & delay from RV-3. I guess that the reversed delay from Line 6 into reverb & delay from RV-3 would sound a bit messy, but who knows. I always tweak the bastards a lot to see what I'd come up with. The thing I know and that I'm one hundred per cent positive about, is that the reversed delay from Line 6 was the improvised thing right there at the spot and it actually worked great. It gave the song some unique dimension that was needed, some reversed-back-and-forward flashback feel one has when overstuffed with Rinasek the medicine. Heheheh.

So... That would be a short summary of the pedal's use. I haven't seen much of them, but when I did i know people using them only had to say great stuff about the thing. I was also one of the first people in bands here that got so crazy about delays, so everybody was asking me favors about this and that. I was never so much into borrowing it, cause if something happened to it, I guess it would be tough to find another one.

I remember when I was still having second thoughts of buying it, I was googling who was using it at the time. Sigur Ros and Coldplay's guitarist were the names I found. I liked both bands a lot at that time, so the info got me more interested and eager to get it.

Have to say that someone at Boss co. did a big favor to the company by stopping the production of this one. He must have thought, why are we making these two-in-one pedals when we could take the money for both pedals sold separately? Thus welcoming a RV-5 (reverb only) and the DD-6 a bit later.