Having seen a few bands like with vintage analogue pedals in their rigs I decided to take the plunge and invest in the Two Timer.
From the information I read it seemed to the best fit my purposes, being flexible with two delays, having the typical warmth, true bypass, and could make the lovely analogue version of oscillator spaceship noise.
Having the box now it does indeed have all these things along with more benefits and some downfalls I had not seen before. I bought it ‘used’ from ebay for less than the RRP of £149.
The Two Timer is slightly larger than a standard Boss box but takes the standard 9V adaptor or a battery. It has On/Off switch, Delay 1/Delay 2 selector switch, Delay Time 1, Delay Time 2, Delay Repeats and Wet Dry Mix. The enclosure is just right for fitting all these controls and two bypass switches, even with my size ten feet I can hit the switches fine.
The delay times range from minimal at 6 o’clock (as one would expect), to doubling at 9 o’clock, to delayed at 12 o'clock, to longer delays from 2 o’clock onwards.
It must be noted that after 1 o’clock an audible whistle begins, this is due BBE not calibrating the delay chip properly. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot you can do about this, as per our previous article on analogue delays this is a common problem.
Luckily with the two delay settings I have found I can have a perfect delay on one and for longer delays which I typically use for noise anyway this would not be a problem.
A noise gate would silence the whistle when you don’t play however it would still be there upon playing.
The repeat ranges give a single repeat at 6 o’clock, cranking between 7 and 2 o’clock will bring gentle canyon style fading into the distance repeats to clear small cave echo. Repeats over 3 o’clock begin to trigger the self oscillation; 3 o’clock is gradual whereas 5 o’clock is in your face 50s sci-fi analogue madness.
The wet dry mix is good enough to give you a full wet, full dry or a nice mix. Mine was mainly left at 3 o’clock for the analogue character.
Switching between Delay times results in a few milliseconds of signal pause, and the way I see it you wouldn’t likely want to swap between delays mid song.
It is a useful function for people who want slap back or repeats and don’t want to mess with the pedal board mid set, aka the typical guitarist. For me it allows me to have a nice analogue delay and something I can make some noise with J
Since there is only one repeat all delay times go through this, I found between 11 and 1 o’clock worked best but it depends what sound you want.
There seems to be a brick wall filter on the go, as explained in our analogue delay section BBD chips typically use Low Pass Filtering, e.g. very high frequencies are filtered out. This only really seemed to be a problem when using a fuzz box set to a Jesus and Mary Chain style white noise setting which gave a single repeat rather than an echo. However I cannot imagine anyone wanting to add warmth to harsh fuzz J
In my opinion and the price I paid it is a nice pedal to have around; however for RRP £149 I wouldn’t suggest it.
For example a vintage Boss DM2/3 would be the same value and have fewer downfalls or you can get a Maxon AD9 re-issue for £99.
If you want warmth and short delays go for something like these suggestions.
If however you want warmth and longer delays check out the Freakshow Effects ‘Digilog’, a hybrid of analogue and digital chips to give a compromise.
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