Most reverb pedals are sold to you as a room. A hall, a plate, a church, a cathedral, a spring tank bolted into the bottom of a Fender combo. You pick a space, you set a decay, you get on with your life. The Caroline Guitar Company Météore Lo-Fi Reverb is sold to you as a subway station — and not a romantic, tiled, Belle Époque one either, but Line 14 of the Paris Métro, the driverless, ultramodern one with the platform-edge doors and the acres of glass and polished steel that throw sound back at you in ways no cathedral ever would.
That is not marketing whimsy bolted on after the fact. It is the actual design brief, and you can hear it. Météore does not do plush. It does hard reflective surfaces, unglamorous midrange, and a persistent sense that something inside the circuit is being pushed harder than it strictly wants to be. And then, when you hold the right-hand footswitch down, it stops being a reverb altogether and becomes a runaway train.
Caroline have been building this pedal since 2015. It has outlived entire product categories. It has been on a Rival Sons arena rig and it has been on Andy Summers’ pedalboard. It has never had a MIDI jack, a preset, a screen, a firmware update or an app. It has four knobs, one toggle, two footswitches and a temper. Here is the whole story.
The Origin: A Reverb Named After a Subway Line
Caroline’s own copy for the pedal is short enough to quote almost in full, and it is worth doing, because it explains every voicing decision in three sentences: “Inspired by the ultra-modern line 14 of the Paris Métro and its sleek platforms of glass, steel and tile that add all kinds of cool sonic artifacts to the space, the MÉTÉORE (pronounced may-tay-or) is our take on reverb. We’ve kept your original signal path analog and pure, while giving you overdrive and regeneration controls to take you from spring reverb sounds to something much bigger.”
Then the warning, which is pure Caroline: “The controls are very interactive with each other, and as per Caroline tradition, this pedal can get VERY loud. You know, something something power, responsibility, blah blah blah…”
Two things fall out of that. First, the dry path is analog and untouched — the digital reverb engine sits in a parallel wet path, not in a converter your whole signal has to pass through. Second, and far more unusually for a reverb, there is a real gain stage in front of the reverb. That is the ATTACK control, and it is the reason Météore never sounds like anything else in a shootout.
The Timeline
Météore appeared in the summer of 2015. Premier Guitar filmed Caroline demoing it alongside the Wave Cannon Mk II at Summer NAMM that July, and Effects Database logged the model on 9 July 2015. Caroline then ran the launch slowly and in public across the autumn: a teaser clip in mid-September, a band-context trailer on 9 October (“the only other effects used were our Haymaker drive on the verses, and the Wave Cannon 2 on the lead break”), then a full settings walkthrough filmed at the Jam Room Studio in Columbia on 3 November, with advance orders opening in between. Chicago Music Exchange had a demo posted by 9 November 2015; Pete Thorn had one in hand for a Vintage King demo by 10 December.
After that, the pedal simply kept going. A CME-exclusive “Throwback Can” limited edition arrived in November 2017. Black Bobbin exclusives followed in 2021 and 2022. And because the arithmetic catches up with everyone eventually, a 10th Anniversary Special in a silvery finish landed in 2025 — still listed today as a colourway option next to the standard on Caroline’s own store, at $219.
Ten years, one circuit, no version two, no MkII, no “V2 with expanded headroom.” In a pedal market that reissues its own products every eighteen months, that is a statement about the design rather than an accident of scheduling.
Who Builds It: Caroline Guitar Company
Caroline Guitar Company was founded in 2010 in Columbia, South Carolina, by Philippe Herndon, a former full-time touring and recording player who, by the company’s own account, “unsuccessfully failed to sell his soul to any corporate devils still reeling from the financial collapse.” Every manual and every page on the site signs off the same way: “Dreamed, designed, and created at our small batch distortery™ in Columbia, South Carolina.” They claim to have been the first guitar pedal company to crowdfund a pedal, and their early pre-order specials raised money for local charities.
The catalogue is small and idiosyncratic — Wave Cannon, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Hawaiian Pizza, Somersault, Icarus, Parabola, Shigeharu and Météore — and it is united less by any circuit family than by one recurring design idea. That idea is the HAVOC footswitch.
Havoc Is a Caroline Platform Feature, Not a Météore Feature
Havoc first appeared on the Kilobyte delay, demoed for Premier Guitar at NAMM 2013. Writing about its descendant the Megabyte in 2020, PG‘s Shawn Hammond remembered his reaction bluntly: the PT2399 chip had “an alluring, analog-like character,” and the momentary self-oscillation footswitch “was pretty much the shit.”
Here is the point every Caroline buyer needs internalised, because it is the single most misunderstood thing about the brand: Havoc is a momentary footswitch that does a completely different job on every pedal it appears on. On the Kilobyte and Megabyte it is runaway delay oscillation. On the Wave Cannon it is oscillation of a dirtier, nastier flavour. On the Shigeharu fuzz it engages a parallel octave-up circuit. On Météore it is the reverb equivalent of holding the sustain pedal down while somebody sets fire to the piano. Never assume you know what Havoc does on a Caroline pedal you have not played.
Specifications
| Model | Caroline Guitar Company Météore Lo-Fi Reverb |
|---|---|
| Type | Digital reverb with fully analog dry path and pre-reverb gain stage |
| Introduced | Summer 2015 (Summer NAMM demo July 2015; shipping late 2015) |
| Controls | Attack, Size, Regeneration (Regen), Level |
| Toggle | Dark / Bright voicing switch |
| Footswitches | Bypass (latching); Havoc (momentary) |
| Reverb engine | Digital spring-reverb core; dry signal never digitised |
| Bypass | True bypass |
| Connections | 1/4″ mono input, 1/4″ mono output, 9V DC jack |
| Power | 9V DC, >100 mA, 2.1 mm centre-negative (BOSS PSA standard or equivalent) |
| Shipping weight | 20 oz (approx. 570 g, boxed) |
| Shipping dimensions | 6 × 4 × 3 in (approx. 152 × 102 × 76 mm, boxed) |
| Country of origin | Hand-built in Columbia, South Carolina, USA |
| Current colourways | Standard; Anniversary Silver (10th Anniversary Special, 2025) |
| Direct price | $219.00 |
| Warranty | Component failure and manufacturing defects only |
A word on the power figure. Caroline’s current manual specifies a 9V DC supply rated above 100 mA with a 2.1 mm centre-negative barrel, and adds the blunt line that “use of an incorrectly rated power supply could result in damage to the pedal and the power supply.” That published number is genuinely useful, because Caroline have historically printed no current draw at all for some of their pedals — the Shigeharu still has none anywhere in public. Take the manual at its word, give Météore an isolated output with headroom, and check the polarity: centre negative, BOSS PSA standard. That is the opposite of the centre-positive 5.5/2.5 mm supply that Eventide’s Factor-series boxes want, and getting it wrong is how a pedal becomes an ornament.
One small oddity worth flagging for anyone downloading the 2026-dated manual PDF from Caroline’s site: the file’s boilerplate safety pages carry stray text belonging to an unrelated Australian manufacturer, an artefact of a shared document template. The Caroline-specific pages — controls, sample settings, power warning, contact details — are correct and complete. It is a layout bug, not a spec discrepancy.
The Controls, and Why They Are Not the Ones You Expect
Caroline’s manual describes the whole control set in five lines. Each one hides something.
ATTACK
“ATTACK sets the amount of gain in the preamp, allowing you to boost or overdrive the reverb.”
This is the control that makes Météore Météore. It is not a mix parameter and it is not a tone control. It is a genuine gain stage sitting in front of the reverb, and turning it up does two separate things at once: it pushes the reverb engine harder, and it raises level. At low settings you get a clean, faintly grainy spring. Past about two o’clock you are overdriving the input to the reverb and the tails begin to smear and break up in a way no “shimmer” or “modulated” algorithm imitates — because it is not an algorithm doing it. Attack is also, obviously, why Caroline print a volume warning. This pedal can be considerably louder engaged than bypassed. Set it with the band, not in a bedroom at 11pm.
SIZE
“SIZE establishes the initial reverberation.”
Room size and decay in one control, as on most compact reverbs. The difference is that Size is the control the Havoc switch reads. What happens when you stomp Havoc is entirely determined by where Size is sitting, which makes this a performance parameter rather than a set-and-forget one. Move Size and you have not merely changed the room — you have changed what your right foot is going to do.
REGENERATION
“REGENERATION extends the decay and adds overtones; set both this and SIZE high and the pedal can run away and self oscillate.”
Regen is feedback, and it is the line between a reverb and a resonator. Low, it lengthens the tail. High, it introduces harmonic content that was not in the note you played. Very high with Size up, and the pedal takes off on its own with no help from Havoc at all. Caroline documented this behaviour in the manual rather than burying it, which tells you exactly how they expect the pedal to be used.
LEVEL
“LEVEL is the overall volume of the effect relative to your original signal.”
A wet-level control, not a wet/dry blend. The dry signal is always present, always analog, always at unity. That is a subtly different mental model from a mix knob, and the practical upshot is that Météore never thins out your core tone the way a badly-set mix control can. You are adding, never trading.
DARK / BRIGHT
“The DARK/BRIGHT toggle sets the overall voice.”
Two positions, no middle, no compromise. Bright is the glass-and-steel setting — the Line 14 setting — and it is where the lo-fi character is most exposed, reflections sitting up on top of the note rather than behind it. Dark rolls the top off the wet path and turns Météore into something you can leave on all night behind a fuzz without shredding anyone’s ears. Rule of thumb: bright single-coil into a clean amp, use Bright; Jazzmaster into a cranked Deluxe with dirt in front, use Dark, almost every time.
Havoc: What It Actually Does on This Pedal
Straight from the manual: “Holding down the HAVOC switch can create extended, seemingly infinite holds, gradual runaways or instant collapse, depending on the SIZE setting. Releasing it will return the effect to the level of the REGENERATION control.”
Three behaviours, one switch, and which one you get is chosen in advance by the Size knob. A player who has learned the pedal effectively has three different momentary effects under one foot, selectable before the song starts.
- Infinite hold. With Size around the middle of its range, Havoc freezes the current tail into a sustained pad you can play over. This is Météore-as-drone-machine, and it is why the pedal turns up on ambient and post-rock boards.
- Gradual runaway. With Size higher, the held tail refuses to sit still. It builds, feeding on itself, climbing over several seconds into a swell that is genuinely difficult to control and completely thrilling in the right song.
- Instant collapse. At the extremes, holding Havoc crushes the reverb rather than sustaining it. The space slams shut. Deployed on a downbeat this is a percussive, structural device rather than an ambient one.
The crucial detail is the release behaviour. Let go and the effect drops back to whatever Regen is set to. Havoc is therefore not a latching mode you have to remember to cancel — it is a gesture. You play it with your foot in real time, the way you would play a wah, and it rewards choreography: knowing the bar you are going to hold it through before you get there.
Caroline’s own summary of the experience, printed in the manual: “Imagine taking the ice bucket challenge, but you’re dunking yourself in dreams!”
Famous Players: What Actually Checks Out
Caroline maintain an artist page, and it is a long and impressive one — but it is a brand-level roster, listing players who have used a Caroline pedal, with no indication of which model. Treating that list as a Météore user list would be exactly the mistake this magazine refuses to make. So here is what survived independent, per-pedal verification, and what did not.
Scott Holiday — Rival Sons
Verified. Premier Guitar‘s Rig Rundown with Scott Holiday, filmed by John Bohlinger at Nashville’s Marathon Music Works on the Darkfighter tour and published 7 June 2023, lists a Caroline Guitar Company Météore Lo-Fi Reverb by name in the effects breakdown.
The context matters more than the name-check. Holiday’s system is not a pedalboard so much as an installation: a Line 6 Helix driving a Seymour Duncan PowerStage pedal amplifier into an Orange 4×12 and a Supro 2×12, with a Custom Audio Electronics RS-T MIDI foot controller patching in effects from offstage racks. The Météore lives on one of those offstage boards, in company that includes an Electro-Harmonix Micro Synth and POG, a Way Huge Atreides and Ring Worm, a Keeley Synth 1, two Vox Time Machines, a Deep Trip Hellbender, a Sweet Sound Mojo Vibe, a Strymon Mobius and a Line 6 DL4.
The editorial point: a player with essentially unlimited access to high-end digital reverb — he is already running a Helix — chose to keep a $219 hand-built box with no presets in the chain and hand it a MIDI-switched loop of its own. You do not do that for a room simulation you could recall from a patch. You do it because the pedal does something the modeller does not.
Holiday’s guitars on that Rundown, for the record, are an aviary: a 1999 Gibson Custom Firebird VII called “Bluebird,” a custom Yamaha in open C#, a Banker Custom doubleneck with a baritone A-to-A neck, a semi-hollow Kauer Super Chief 12/6 doubleneck with both necks in DADGAD, a Firebird-inspired Kauer he calls his “Excalibur,” a Banker Flying V with a Bigsby, a Gretsch Penguin in D standard, a custom Gretsch Falcon, and a 1962 Fender Jazzmaster in C# tuning that was his first major vintage purchase. Strings are custom Dunlop sets, typically .011–.050. Scott Holiday is not currently in our guitarist archive, so he gets a name-check here rather than a link.
Andy Summers — The Police
Verified, on two independent sources. Premier Guitar‘s gear list for Andy Summers, published 30 May 2017 alongside their interview feature with him, includes the Caroline Guitar Company Météore Lo-Fi Reverb outright. Caroline’s own artist page carries Summers with a photograph, which corroborates it from the manufacturer’s side.
This is the connection that ought to make you sit up, because Summers is the reason half the pedals in this ranking exist. The man who built an entire guitar vocabulary out of chorus and delay on Reggatta de Blanc and Ghost in the Machine did not, in 2017, reach for the most expensive reverb on the market. The rest of that PG list is instructive company: a Boss CE-300 Super Chorus, a Catalinbread Belle Epoch tape echo, a DigiTech Whammy, an EarthQuaker Arpanoid, an Electro-Harmonix Superego, an Eventide Eclipse and an H9, a Mad Professor Golden Cello, a Red Panda Particle and a Red Panda Raster, a Roland JC-120 and a VG-99, a TC Electronic Dark Matter and two Ditto loopers, and a ZVEX Instant Lo-Fi Junky.
Read that list again and the logic of the Météore’s inclusion is obvious. It is a rig built almost entirely out of texture generators — granular, pitch-shifted, arpeggiated, deliberately degraded — feeding the cleanest amp ever built. In that context a pristine studio reverb would be the odd one out. A lo-fi one with an overdrive stage in front of it is the only thing that fits.
What We Could Not Verify
Caroline’s artist page also lists, among many others, Nels Cline of Wilco, Misha Mansoor of Periphery, Yvette Young of Covet, Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse, Laura Jane Grace, Andy Bell of Ride, Taylor York of Paramore, Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, Patterson Hood, Brendan Benson, Butch Walker, Dave Depper of Death Cab for Cutie, David Ryan Harris, John Butler, producer Joe Barresi and the late Chris Cornell. Every one of those is a brand-level entry with no model attached. Some of them are documented users of other Caroline pedals entirely — Jason Isbell’s much-quoted Caroline moment, from his 2015 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown, concerns a Wave Cannon used on the solo of “Flying Over Water,” not a Météore.
Our standing evidence bar for a “famous players” heading is a dated, photographed board in a published rundown, a manufacturer page naming the specific model, or a direct interview quote. Roster pages, social-media board shots and aggregator entries do not clear it. Two verified users is a shorter list than we could have printed. It is also a true one.
Tone Recipes
1. Amp-Replacement Spring
Attack 9 o’clock · Size 10 o’clock · Regen 8 o’clock · Level 11 o’clock · Toggle: Bright
The “I left my amp at home” setting. Short, splashy, believable spring. Keep Attack low so the reverb stays clean, keep Regen almost off so nothing lingers, and use Level to taste. This is the setting that convinces sceptics the pedal can behave.
2. Platform Announcement
Attack 12 o’clock · Size 2 o’clock · Regen 11 o’clock · Level 1 o’clock · Toggle: Bright
The dreamy, slightly wrong SNCF-tannoy sound. Attack at noon starts adding grain to the tails; Size at two gives you a room with no obvious walls. Play arpeggios, let them overlap, and listen to how the reflections stay bright and slightly metallic instead of blooming into mush.
3. Thunderclaps
Attack 3 o’clock · Size 1 o’clock · Regen 12 o’clock · Level 2 o’clock · Toggle: Dark
Attack high enough to genuinely overdrive the reverb, Dark to keep the resulting mess from becoming shrill. Hard picking produces a distorted wash behind the note; soft picking almost cleans up. This is the most dynamically responsive setting on the pedal and the one that most rewards playing with your fingers.
4. Post-Rock Soundtrack (Havoc Pad)
Attack 11 o’clock · Size 12 o’clock · Regen 1 o’clock · Level 2 o’clock · Toggle: Dark
Size at noon is the sweet spot for infinite-hold behaviour. Play a chord, stomp and hold Havoc, and play a simple melody over the frozen pad. Release on the bar line. Caroline’s own suggested approach — “simple parts” — is the correct one; the pedal does the drama, so you should not.
5. The Runaway
Attack 1 o’clock · Size 3 o’clock · Regen 2 o’clock · Level 12 o’clock · Toggle: Bright
Warning: this is loud and it does not stop politely. With Size high, Havoc no longer freezes — it climbs. Hold it for four bars and you have a rising sheet of noise you can cut off dead by lifting your foot. Keep Level lower than feels right, because the swell adds a great deal of apparent volume as it develops.
6. Always-On Glue
Attack 10 o’clock · Size 11 o’clock · Regen 9 o’clock · Level 9 o’clock · Toggle: Dark
The setting nobody makes videos about and everybody ends up using. Barely audible on its own, obvious the moment you switch it off. Dark voicing keeps it out of the way of vocals and cymbals; low Regen keeps it out of the way of the drummer.
Knob positions are given in clock terms. Caroline’s own manual prints its sample settings as overheard band-room dialogue instead of numbers — “I left my amp with spring reverb at home, and now I have to use this crazy thing. Help.” / “Those SNCF announcements are quite dreamy, but now you’re going to miss your train.” / “This is your clean signal, accompanied by thunderclaps.” / “Post-rock film soundtrack time. Gonna play simple parts and press that Havoc button down.” The recipes below are our translations of those four moods into actual positions, plus a couple of our own.
How It Compares
Against the algorithm boxes
The Strymon BigSky, Source Audio Ventris, Empress Reverb and Boss RV-500 all offer a dozen or more reverb types, presets, MIDI and stereo. Météore offers one reverb, no presets and mono in, mono out. What it offers instead is an overdrive stage in front of the reverb and a momentary destruction switch — neither of which those units replicate convincingly, because on a preset machine a “drive” parameter is a modelled colouration rather than an actual gain stage being pushed. Buy the multi-reverb if you need eleven rooms. Buy the Météore if you need one room that can be broken.
Against the compact ambient reverbs
The Strymon blueSky V2 and Cloudburst, the Walrus Audio Fathom and SLÖ, the Meris Mercury7 and the MXR M300 are all beautifully behaved. Their failure mode, if you can call it that, is that they are polite by design. Météore is the opposite: it is a texture pedal that happens to reverberate. If your reference points are the Old Blood Noise Endeavors Dark Star or the Hologram Infinite Jets rather than a plate algorithm, you are in the right neighbourhood.
Against the affordable workhorses
The Boss RV-6, EHX Oceans 11, TC Electronic Hall of Fame 2 and JHS 3 Series Reverb all cost less and all give you a more conventional set of spaces. Nobody should pretend Météore is better value as a general-purpose reverb — it plainly is not. It is a different purchase entirely, closer in spirit to buying a fuzz than to buying a reverb.
Against the other “reverb plus something” boxes
EarthQuaker Avalanche Run, Keeley Caverns V2, Source Audio Collider and Strymon Flint combine reverb with delay or tremolo. Météore combines reverb with gain, which is rarer and, arguably, more useful, because gain is the one thing you cannot add after the reverb without also distorting your dry signal.
Where it sits in a chain
Conventionally last, after modulation and delay. But because the Attack stage is genuinely a preamp, there is an argument for putting Météore in front of a dirty amp and letting the amp distort the reverb further — a trick that works spectacularly with the Dark voicing and terribly with Bright. Players running granular or glitch textures — a Red Panda Context 2, a Tensor, a Strymon El Capistan — generally prefer Météore after them, so the reverb glues the artefacts together rather than being chopped up by them.
Météore competes in the most crowded category in pedal manufacturing, so the useful question is not “is it good” but “what does it do that the obvious alternatives do not.”
Buying Guide
Which version? There is only one circuit. The standard finish and the 2025 Anniversary Silver are cosmetic variants at the same $219 price, and the older CME “Throwback Can” and Black Bobbin exclusives are likewise cosmetic. Nobody needs to hunt a particular year. Buy the one you like looking at.
New or used? New, direct from Caroline or a dealer, is straightforward and the pedal is currently in production and in stock. Used, expect to save meaningfully less than you would on a mass-produced pedal — small-builder boxes with a decade-long single-version history hold value well, and there is no “old version” discount to hunt for.
Who should not buy this. If you need stereo, presets, MIDI, spillover or a shimmer algorithm, this is not the pedal and no amount of enthusiasm changes that. If your reverb requirement is “a bit of room on a clean tone, recallable, never in the way,” a Holy Grail Neo or an RV-6 will make you happier for less money.
Who should. Anyone who wants reverb as a played instrument rather than an ambience setting. Post-rock, shoegaze, ambient, noise, film-score work, and — as Scott Holiday demonstrates — anybody with a modeller who has noticed that the modeller cannot do this particular thing.
Living With It
Power it properly. Isolated 9V DC output, 2.1 mm centre-negative, comfortably above the 100 mA the manual asks for. Caroline’s warranty explicitly does not cover damage from the wrong adapter.
Battery operation. The manual’s advice to “unplug cable from input when not in use to save battery life” implies a battery option, but the practical answer for a pedal specified above 100 mA is: do not. Use mains.
Set Attack last. Because it is a gain stage, Attack interacts with everything else and with your level relative to bypass. Dial the reverb you want with Attack low, then bring it up and re-balance Level. Doing it the other way round produces an hour of confusion.
Rehearse Havoc. It is a momentary switch on a pedal with no presets, which means every Havoc moment in a set is a physical performance decision. Know where Size is before the song, not during it.
Modifications. A third-party pre-delay mod for the Météore has circulated since at least 2020 (Mimmotronics demonstrated one in August of that year). It is a real and reasonably popular modification, and it also voids Caroline’s warranty, which covers “component failures or manufacturing defects” and explicitly excludes “modifications or unofficial repair work.” Buy modded pedals with your eyes open and price them accordingly.
Buying used. A general small-builder rule that applies here: a pedal that arrives sounding wrong has often just been left somewhere strange by its previous owner. Before diagnosing a fault, reset every control to noon, check the Dark/Bright toggle, and confirm the power supply before you conclude anything is broken.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Météore analog or digital?
Both, deliberately. The reverb engine is digital — a digital spring-reverb core — but your dry signal never touches a converter. It stays analog end to end, in parallel with the wet path. That is why the pedal adds character without changing the fundamental sound of your guitar into the amp.
What does the Havoc footswitch do?
It is momentary, and it does one of three things depending on where the Size knob is set: an extended, near-infinite hold; a gradual runaway that builds on itself; or an instant collapse of the reverb. Release the switch and the effect returns to the level set by the Regeneration control.
Can the Météore self-oscillate without touching Havoc?
Yes. Caroline document it in the manual: set Regeneration and Size both high and the pedal will run away on its own. Havoc simply makes it a controllable, foot-triggered event instead of a permanent state.
How much current does it draw, and what power supply do I need?
Caroline’s manual specifies 9V DC above 100 mA with a 2.1 mm centre-negative barrel, BOSS PSA standard or equivalent. Use an isolated output on a proper pedal power supply, with headroom above that figure. The wrong adapter will damage the pedal and is not covered by warranty.
Why is the pedal louder when it is on?
Because the Attack control is a real preamp gain stage in front of the reverb, not a mix or tone parameter. High Attack settings raise output as well as driving the reverb. Balance with the Level control, and set Attack before you set your final Level.
What is the difference between the standard and the 10th Anniversary Special?
Finish only. The Anniversary Silver colourway was released in 2025 to mark ten years of the model and sits alongside the standard on Caroline’s store at the same $219 price. The circuit is unchanged, as it has been since 2015.
Which famous guitarists actually use one?
Two names survive per-model verification: Scott Holiday of Rival Sons, whose 2023 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown lists a Météore on his offstage effects racks, and Andy Summers, whose 2017 Premier Guitar gear list includes it and who also appears on Caroline’s own artist page. Caroline’s roster names many other players, but without model attribution — those are brand-level entries and should not be read as Météore users.
Where should it go in the signal chain?
Last is conventional and works. But the Attack stage means it can also be placed in front of a dirty amp so the amp distorts the reverb, which is a genuinely distinctive sound with the Dark voicing engaged. After granular and glitch effects, it acts as glue; before them, it becomes source material for them to chop up.
Is it worth $219 when a Boss RV-6 costs less than half that?
Not as a general-purpose reverb — the RV-6 is better value for that job and nobody serious pretends otherwise. Météore is worth it if you want an overdriven, hand-built, lo-fi reverb with a performance switch on it, which is a different product category wearing the same word on the box.
The Verdict on a Ten-Year-Old Circuit
Nothing about the Météore makes sense on a spec sheet. Mono. No presets. No MIDI. One reverb type, in a market where the competition ships thirty. A decade without a version two. On paper it should have been swept away by the algorithm boxes years ago.
It was not, and the reason is the same reason Andy Summers put one next to a VG-99 and Scott Holiday gave one its own MIDI-switched loop next to a Helix: those machines can produce a subway station if you ask them nicely, but they cannot be pushed until the subway station falls apart. Météore was designed around that failure, and it named itself after a specific platform on a specific Métro line to make the point. Glass, steel, tile, noise, and space — in that order.