First of all, the Cloudburst sounds beyond great. It's amazing. The ensemble modes are the next level of the annoying and played out shimmer. Every reverb has shimmer and I don't know why. But the ensemble buries shimmer, lays it to rest, and moves past the trauma that it caused us all. We look at reverbs now and think, 'Oh the god forsaken 'Shimmer'. Why did they do this?' I've turned my head in disgust and walked away from shimmer pushers. I have a nasty shimmer setting on my DD-8. I'll have to find a way to remove it. Cloudburst is goodbye to shimmer, and an open door to a new beginning. A new standard for 'Shimmer', thank God. It's kind of like having a synthesizer pedal, which I wanted. It's like blossoming flowers that you see on these nature shows, the all day time lapse summed to a few seconds. The ensemble is awesome. I like to use it very subtly for my playing, where there's a hint of something bigger going on below, like someone's imagining a synth padding in the background.
But Cloudburst can do big. The whole pedal does big in a big way. But can we try something a little smaller? Or different flavors? Nope. I don't think so. I hate to say it because now I need another reverb pedal to get those sounds, and that's frustrating after spending so much money on the CloudBurst. I could take it back, but I'm not going to. It kicks a$$ for what it wants to do. You'd be hard pressed to find a better atmospheric reverb. The parameters on the pedal to adjust the sound are just exactly enough - complete with some nice chorusing if you like that. But I'm craving spring reverb for some possible country gigs coming up. Alternatives to Cloudburst that I'm looking at for their diverse coverage of reverb are the Universal Audio's Golden and the Del-Verb. They span a broader range of reverb types, and I'm sure they can get the ambient thing going just fine. If I had to do it over, I'd get the Del-Verb because I know it will fit into a variety of things I do. I play classical guitar in church, I play country at festivals and I play rock, indie and new wave at home.
If you get this pedal, you will not return it, even if it feels like it should do more, because it sounds incredible and does that one thing very good.
Many thanks for the quick response and help. Much appreciated!