Q: “I have two reverb processors of different brands in my studio that recently went dead. When I turn them on the display on one of them lights up, but it is blank, and the other one only partially lights up. Two breaking at once seems like too big a coincidence. What happened?”
A: One could speculate for hours about all of the possible things that may have caused this. A lightning strike, or other electrostatic discharge could cause it. Power surges (also frequently caused by lightning) could be the culprit, or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Sometimes gear fails for no apparent reason. But it’s possible the units aren’t really “broken” in the strict sense of the word. They may just need a hard reset. You should find out how to do this for each unit and give it a try. We’ve seen hard resets revive more apparently “dead” gear than any other single technique. In fact, the hard reset is a common path we send people down when their equipment starts behaving erratically. Over time it just seems like the various memory registers of some equipment become corrupt and before you know it weird things are happening. A hard reset solves the problem 90% of the time.