The ASTRONOMIE is a digital spring reverb with 3 decay settings, 3 tone presets, and an adjustable feedback. That's pretty common. What's not as common is the pedal’s ability to dynamically lower the effect’s volume with each note picked. Imagine having a reverb that swells in automatically as you let your chords ring, or playing a tight rhythmic riff which is not muddied while being able to have a long reverb trail once you stop playing. We’re not smart enough to think of every possible way to use this effect, but it’s easy to see how vast the possibilities are once the ASTRONOMIE falls into the hands of a creative mind. “Trigger” adjusts sensitivity, arguably the most important control on this pedal. It allows not only to adjust how easily the effect’s volume will dip, but also how deep. Turning it completely counterclockwise will basically deactivate that part of the circuit. And as it is turned clockwise, the reverb’s volume will gradually duck more with each pick stroke until just about anything will trigger a volume dip at the clockwisest setting (I think we just invented a word!). Different guitars and pickups will hit the pedal differently. And a compressed, distorted, or overdriven signal will not be as dynamic, of course, so any change upstream could mean a need to readjust Trigger. Trigger also works hand in hand with the Recovery control, and the key to understanding these two is to know that they affect one another. For example, a faster Recovery means that you will need a more aggressive Trigger to achieve the same depth in volume dip, and vice versa. Turning one of these knobs often means readjusting the other. “Recovery” adjusts how fast the reverb fades back in. This can go from 1-2 seconds when counterclockwise to pretty much instantaneous when it is fully clockwise, and everything in between. As mentioned earlier, it is deeply affected by the Trigger control. You could view the Trigger control as what you will feel in your hands and the Recovery control as what you will feel in your ears. Also, just for fun, when at its clockwisest position (we used that word again), it’ll sound glitchy. Whether that’s what you want or not, player’s discretion is advised. “Feedback” dials in how much of the reverb should feed into itself. The signal being fed back is filtered, meaning that it doesn’t have as much low end anymore which keeps everything tighter and manageable. However with Feedback at max and decay set to Long, the results might become disorderly, so to speak. Again, you’ve been warned. Left Toggle. We thought we were so clever not labeling our toggles, well look at us now. Anyway, the Left Toggle allows to set a minimum reverb amount. That minimum is set by us, thank you very much, and is what felt right to us. The top position is the full volume dip, and the bottom position is the Fish Circuits approved minimum. Right toggle. The right toggle (with the circles) controls the tone of the reverb. The bottom position is full range, middle is a bit tighter and leaves more room for the clean signal, and the top position has even less low end which can feel ethereal, airy, celestial, or any other synonym in that lexicon. “Mix” controls how much reverb and/or clean sound is present. Counterclockwise means less reverb, clockwise means more. At zero, there is no reverb at all in case you want to use this pedal as a buffer, which is not recommended but possible. On the opposite end there will be no clean signal at all, which can be fun, but expect a slight delay. Short, Medium, Long. Short decay, Medium decay, and Long decay. This controls the length of the reverb effect before it naturally fades out. It is affected by how much Feedback is present and by the right toggle’s tone setting, but each position on this rotary switch has a different character such that everything else will probably need to be tweaked when going from one setting to another.
