Reverb is a great effect for creating space and separation on vocals, not to mention creating some interesting aesthetic effects. The one problem with reverb is when we use too much of it whether that’s the mix amount or an excessive length, it tends to muddy up our mix. It steps on the transients of the vocals, not to mention the entire mix. This is why we need to EQ our reverb to help clean it up, so let’s talk how to EQ reverb for vocals.
How to EQ Reverb for Vocals

I briefly touched on this in my vocal reverb cheat sheet, but the best way to EQ reverb for vocals is to create high and low pass filters on the mid and upper frequencies of the vocal reverb, respectively.

You can do this within the reverb plugin itself on some reverbs like my go to FabFilter Pro-R 2.
If your reverb doesn’t have onboard filter controls, you can simply follow it up on the Aux/Return track with an EQ with these filters. That’s assuming of course that you’re using a reverb as a send like I generally recommend.
Specifically, I like to high pass at 600Hz, and low pass at 6000Hz (also known as the Abbey Road Reverb trick):

As the name suggests, the Abbey Road Reverb trick was pioneered by the engineers at Abbey Road Studios who were working on music from some of the most famous artists of the 60’s like The Beatles.
Reverb tends to get thick and especially muddy in those low frequencies and low mids, and it was discovered that high passing at 600Hz to remove those frequencies on the reverb signal of the audio altogether significantly cleaned up the sound while maintaining the positive effects of the reverb itself.
While not as pressing, low passing the reverb at 6k allows the dry instance of the vocal to come through more clearly, including those transients on certain harder syllables which allows the vocal to cut through the mix more effectively.
The low pass at 6k also helps the lead contrast with the reverb soaked instance of that lead and vice versa, creating a little more natural depth for the reverb and separation from the lead which yields a more open and fuller sounding mix.
Now that we’ve covered the basic filter points for how to EQ reverb for vocals, check out my complete vocal chain which shows how to mix vocals from start to finish, including the best settings for EQ, compression, delay, reverb, and more.