Are fancy delays worth the effort?

robinbowes

Creed_Clicks said:

Do you need tap tempo?

jakeolly said:

@Creed_Clicks  don’t ‘need’ but ……

The EBS Retracer Delay is the smallest pedal I could find that has tap tempo:



It sounds great, although I haven't spent enough time with it to get to grips with it fully.

digitalscream

robinbowes said:

Creed_Clicks said:

Do you need tap tempo?

jakeolly said:

@Creed_Clicks  don’t ‘need’ but ……

The EBS Retracer Delay is the smallest pedal I could find that has tap tempo:

I have a Keeley Eccos, which a standard pedal enclosure and has tap tempo - it's a great pedal, but I must confess...I find myself pining for a TC Flashback again. The Flashback's flexibility is just second to none for such a small unit. The Keeley sounds marginally better for analogue and wobbly repeats, but the Flashback does everything else much better.

EDIT: Also, the Flashback supports line level signals, whereas many pedals (including the Eccos) can only handle instrument-level. That's hugely important for those of us with amps like the Jet City.

And, if you don't mind a bit of faffing (you need a TRS -> TS cable, where the ring of the TRS is connected to the tip of the TS), it can do tap tempo with an external momentary footswitch.

Also, I had an EBS delay for a short while; it got sent back, because the MIDI functionality was just completely broken.

OilCityPickups

I still miss my first delay ... one of these 

A valve Copycat 

I stupidly sold it for £30 when I was 20 ... as I thought it was old fashioned and uncool. 

Unfortunately I now realise it's the echo sound I always hear in my head ... and I've never found a pedal that quite gets quite that lo-fi warmth and shimmer. 
If I had £600/700 to spare I'd buy a serviced Copycat ... as it stands I tend to think that expensive delay pedals sound worse than cheap ones. 
Oh and most folks forget to cut back a bit on the delay effects live ... as the room will add a bit of reverb which can mush stuff up. 

victorludorum

The Tape Echo on the Zoom G3 is surprisingly good.

Creed_Clicks

jakeolly said:

@Creed_Clicks  don’t ‘need’ but ……

That might determine your purchase. I'd keep it simple if you just want something basic, but tap tempo is handy.

blobb

OilCityPickups said:

I still miss my first delay ... one of these 

A valve Copycat 

I stupidly sold it for £30 when I was 20 ... as I thought it was old fashioned and uncool. 

Unfortunately I now realise it's the echo sound I always hear in my head ... and I've never found a pedal that quite gets quite that lo-fi warmth and shimmer. 
If I had £600/700 to spare I'd buy a serviced Copycat ... as it stands I tend to think that expensive delay pedals sound worse than cheap ones. 
Oh and most folks forget to cut back a bit on the delay effects live ... as the room will add a bit of reverb which can mush stuff up. 

I might be about to set the (copi)cat amongst the pigeons here but...

That's not a delay, it's an echo unit. A delay time aligns an audio signal to multiple speakers at different distances from the source. Echo is a repeat of the original signal. 

jakeolly

Yikes, ( copy) cat well and truly amongst … 
See why i asked original question?
i just want summat to sound nicer ( i e inspire me ) more  than the Flashback( and obviously my inspiration shortcomings are totally attributable to my delay pedal ) 
This thread is great. Thanks . It also explains  the Fretboard in 3 pages  
Fabulous 

MagicPigDetective

Keeley Halo I find very inspiring and musical … 

noisepolluter

Any DM-101 and RE-202 users here? 

TimmyO

Check out Keeley Halo demos. 2 presets at your feet - a further 6 also at you feet but a couple of taps away (midi presets too if you use it) 

Sharky77

Used the Strymon Brigadier for 10 years, sold it and tried a bunch of others, then bought another Brigadier. Prefer it to the new Brig as it has a footswitch dedicated for tap tempo

english_bob

blobb said:

I might be about to set the (copi)cat amongst the pigeons here but...

That's not a delay, it's an echo unit. A delay time aligns an audio signal to multiple speakers at different distances from the source. Echo is a repeat of the original signal. 

40 odd years of effects pedal naming convention says you're wrong. I get the logic, but I think you're several decades too late to stamp out the "incorrect" usage now.

But if you say "echo", everyone will know you mean "delay".

russpm

The Suhr Discovery is excellent. 

menamestom

I have a rubberneck currently, which is a nice pedal, but may change to to an El Cap V2 in the near future.

markv

Interesting that there's been very little "against" so far, as @jakeolly said he'd be interested in hearing "for and against" as well as "I like X". I think that's great as it's all subjective anyway and you can probably find someone who likes the very thing you dislike in a given pedal. Or as I saw for the first time in another thread recently, "it's not cool to yuck someone else's yum"

Still, the question was asked and so I'm going to try and put some of the reasons I personally chose to move various pedals on, none of which is intended to imply that these things are wrong, just not things I like. Limiting this to the "fancier" delays as that was what was asked about.

• TC Flashback X4: is this "fancy"? Anyway, lots of choice of sounds which were good but in hindsight not spectacular; took up too much space on my board. And I ended up using it as a looper, which can be done in a much smaller pedal.
• MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe: despite loving the original MXR CC, I could not get on with the Deluxe - very narrow range of usable settings and those not as good as the CC, plus the expression pedal control, which is what I really wanted, cannot be used to control the regen (feedback) which is what I was after.
• Source Audio Nemesis: none of the sounds worked for me as well as the Carbon Copy or the DIG
• BOSS DM-2W: fantastic analogue delay but the lack of modulation on the repeats meant it didn't quite match the sound I wanted
• Strymon El Capistan: an absolute classic for a reason, but I decided that tape delay isn't for me - it's not defined enough and adding wow & flutter is not the same as adding modulation
• Eventide Rose: extraordinary sounding presets but hard to get a good basic sound. I accept that perhaps this isn't the point of the pedal though! Super fun to experiment with.
• Stone Deaf Syncopy: again, couldn't quite get a sound I was happy with, which was frustrating as the feature set is almost an exact match for what I wanted
• Xvive Echoman: too noisy for me

There you go, almost certainly not as extensive a list as some people's but now I have settled on the three pedals I'm happy with (plus an HX Stomp) I'm not looking to try any more. For now ... !

Happy to see people disagree with any of the above and hope this helps!

Keefy

What is ‘fancy’? The Flashback’s functionality is very fancy indeed - choice of algorithms, huge long delay time, modulation, filtering, programmability. You can even map the delay time knob to your own taste.

dangriffiths

Really enjoying both EAE Sending V2 and Chase Bliss Tonal Recall RKM

Kent747

I’ve gone through a fair number of delays in my time. Too many. 

There is something to be said for some of the pricier delays but ultimately I’ve landed on - get what you find the easiest to use and what sounds best for you. I have a Memory Lane Jr and frankly - I can’t think of a better delay for me. Maybe not everyone, but for me - it sits in the way I play. It adds the colour I want, and it’s damn versatile. So much so that I just purchased one of the new Diamond Memory Lanes from Andertons. It isn’t the same as the old but it’s 90% there. Now… for fun, here’s the delays I’ve owned. 

TC Electronics Nova

Cusack Tap A Delay

Vox Delay Lab

Korg SDD3000 

Strymon Timeline (twice)

Strymon DiG (twice)

Strymon El Capistan (twice)

Strymon Brigadier (twice, and still loathe it)

JHS Panther

JHS Panther Cub

Deluxe Memory Man

Deluxe Memory Man 550T

Deluxe Memory Man with Hazrai

Deluxe Memory Boy

Carbon Copy

Memory Lane (big box)

Memory Lane Junior (twice, and won’t leave it again)

Boss DD3

Boss DD5

Boss DD7

Boss DD20

Boss DD500

Boss DM-2w

Visual Sound H2O

Eventide Timefactor

Walrus Audio ARP-87

Wayhuge SupaPuss

Pigtronix Echolution2

Ibanez DE7

Catalinbread Belle Epoch

Catalinbread Echorec

Line6 DL4

TC Electronics X4 

DOD Rubberneck

Mr Black Mini Echo

Eventide H90 (if we count it as a delay)

russpm

For me being able to set the actual delay time in m/s is an absolute must, along with having presets. So that rules out loads of pedals. I use the Korg SDD 3000 which is just magnificent but rather bulky. 

allen

This is a slightly terrifying question because I own a lot of fancy delays (not quite as many as Kent747) and at a certain level they are all quite similar. 

The OP was talking about playing with a certain kind of style/sound that they are trying to emulate - and that is what I've found is the benefit of going beyond a basic delay with time/mix/feedback. You can tweak until you find the sound in your head. It does help if you have a general idea of the sound first - for example do you want the delay to be modulated or not, or do you prefer lo-fi to hi-fi.

Based on your thoughts on sound plus your thoughts on functionality (do you need a ms or bpm display? do you need tap tempo, do you need self-oscillation, do you need presets, etc.?) you would then be able to narrow down the choices quite a lot.

By the way, there are quite a few amazing delays in the helix world (I've got an HX effects) and you can pick those up for the price of a decent delay pedal and get a lot of other stuff thrown in.

So that's the logical angle on choosing a delay.

The other angle is the discovery of inspiring sounds. Sometimes I like to play and just turn knobs and see what happens. Occasionally I hear something that makes me think of a style of music and then I spend 10 minutes drifting off to that. This is the more artistic/musical angle - you never know what might inspire you to enjoy the music.

If you buy second hand you shouldn't lose too much if you decide to sell further down the line (at least that's how I justify my huge investment!)