Mooer Ocean Machine II, Devin Townsend’s delay and reverb pedal gets a major makeover

Mooer Ocean Machine II is a major makeover for Devin Townsend’s delay and reverb pedal with new features, improvements, and more.

I have a special relationship with the Mooer Ocean Machine reverb/delay pedal. The pedal, in collaboration with prog metal artist Devin Townsend, was first shown at NAMM 2017. That was also my first NAMM show, and I was able to check out it on the floor. It immediately piqued my interest so much that I pre-ordered it before I left Los Angeles.

Okay, also, because Amazon had an extremely good deal on it.  Later in the full review, the pedal was very convincing; only the bugs (MIDI sync…) that were never fixed bothered me. But it’s still a great pedal that lovely mixes creative reverbs, delays, and looping. 

7 years after the first version, Mooer has just unveiled the Ocean Machine II with many improvements.

Mooer Ocean Machine II

The new color scheme immediately catches the eye. It moves away from the beautiful blue to be super colorful. It’s not Wild West, but it follows a color coding of the features. Green is the reverb, red is for delay A, and blue is for delay B.

On the feature side, it still has a reverb, two delays, and a looper. Mooer says it offers improved DSP algorithms for superior delay and reverb quality. This is possible because the Ocean Machine II has a new, more powerful CPU.

Like the OG, the reverb offers nine types, ranging from classic to experimental: room, hall, plate, distorted reverb, flanger reverb, filter reverb, reverse, spring, and modulated reverb.

The delay unit also comes with nine distinct delay types that support up to 2 seconds of delay time. These types range from classical to experimental: digital, analog, tape, echo, liquid, rainbow, crystal, low-bit, and fuzzy delays.

Mooer Ocean Machine II also offers a programmable parallel and serial effect chain, allowing you to customize the order of the effects for almost endless creative exploration. Plus, Mooer promises synchronizable MIDI connectivity, a feature absent in the original Ocean Machine. Alternatively, you have to tap the tempo via the footswitch.

There is also a freeze feedback feature for both delay and reverb effects, allowing you to dive deep into sound design.

More Powerful Looper

A fun feature of the original was the built-in looper, but it was minimal with its 44 seconds of recording time. The new Ocean Machine II offers an upgraded looper with up to 2 minutes (120 seconds) of recording time, overdubbing capabilities, half-speed, and reverse effects.

Further, it now has flexible bypass options supporting both true bypass and DSP bypass. Additionally, you can now find an adjustable global EQ in the settings. The LCD delivers visual feedback on the parameters and features. 

Mooer Ocean Machine II provides eight preset storage banks, each supporting up to three presets, resulting in a total of 24 save slots.

A look at the back. Here, you can find full stereo inputs and outputs design, an expression pedal TRS input, MIDI IN/thru sockets, a new USB-C socket for firmware updates, and a 9V power supply input. It also supports the Mooer F4 wireless footswitch.

 

First Impression

That is a nice surprise from Mooer. I thought the Ocean Machine topic had been shelved. No, the journey continues, and this is a nice feature update. It’s not a massive leap from the previous, but if everything works as promised, I will be satisfied because the OG Ocean Machine was a fun pedal.

Mooer Ocean Machine II is shipping now for 269€ and is available in 1-2 weeks.

More information here: Mooer 

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Thomann

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