183
by the letter o_Archive
tallchris wrote:I'm thinking the Belle Epoch Deluxe might be my jam. I like that you can switch to a DMM style delay on it with darker decays than the EP3 mode.Delay nut here, and I went through several big boxes (Brigadier, DIG, Nemesis) before arriving at the BED, and for me it's just perfect. Love the preamp/buffer, and the other modes are all very usable. The dark DM2-style mode is nice, and the DMM Vibrato/Chorus modes are definitely good enough for me (hardcore DMM fans get a bit sniffy about them, but hey ho). The internal trimmer for oscillation mode is actually just another feedback/repeats dial, so you could set your regular top-mounted feedback to float on the edge of oscillation and the internal one dialed back or killed altogether, to make the oscillation behavior the reverse of how it's normally set up. Neat. I use an expression pedal to set the delay time, but you can also set it to control the wet/dry mix.A good budget tape echo type delay is the NuX Tape Core Deluxe. It's aiming for Space Echo sounds, so has multi-head delay modes too. Expression pedal input can control delay time (the main foot switch also has hold to tap on it), but it does have a lag that you can't bypass. They're shooting for that tape slowing-down/speeding-up thing, and it does capture that, but it might not be what you're looking for. I have it on a mini board, and it sounds great. One thing...it has a Mac/PC-based editor which lets you tweak some hidden parameters on all the modes. Some cool extra stuff (reverb, saturation, wow/flutter, etc.), but there was some combination of parameters which tended to introduce random (and very loud) crashing noises into the delay line. I ended up doing a factory reset and not fiddling with these options, and it's been fine ever since. I've been meaning to go in and experiment a bit to try and eliminate which option was the noise bringer, but haven't got around to it yet. For the money, the NuX is amazing, and I liked the delay sound a bit better than the Digitech Obscura, which does a similar thing for similar money.Sorry for the mind splurge. I must've gone through a dozen delays over the last few years, and these are by far my favorite tape-ish ones.