Judge DAmNation’s Guide to World Cup Success
• Hire a coach who barely speaks the language of the team – communication is overrated, and football after all is an international language. Like Esperanto, but with kicking and gouging.
• The best players are like action figures, and should be played with before the tournament until they wear out or their legs fall off. Buy cheaper knock-off versions from a car boot sale and take these along instead.
• The most important aspect of a team is character, so be sure to include two love-rats to make the other players feel more honourable. Find that homeless guy outside Dixon’s who looks a bit like Craig David and ask him if he wants to be in goal.
• Don’t work the players too hard in the early matches – they’ll need their energy for the important games later on. Allow them to wander around, take their time and get used to standing on grass; as long as they draw it should be alright.
• If any players start doing well, or look like they might score, take them off immediately. You don’t want to damage Rooney’s confidence as he hasn’t scored a goal for a while, and his ickle knee is hurting. Substitute these players for shithouses like Heskey and Wright-Philips to make him feel better. Rooney should be left on the pitch until he turns green or starts sprouting tubers.
• Tackling is ungentlemanly, thuggish and not at all English - this is the only reason European teams are so good at football. Simply wait for the other team to accidentally pass to you, or ask them politely if it isn’t your turn to have the ball for a bit.
• Xenophobic tirades against any other country are, on the other hand, thoroughly English and should be encouraged among the fans. This includes Scotland and Wales.
• Rooney needs about an hour in a hot oven, or ten minutes on each side in the microwave. If he still feels a bit crunchy in the middle pop him in for a couple more minutes, then sprinkle with grated cheese.
• Only play with any skill at all against the one fucking team I get allotted in the World Cup sweepstake, thus robbing me of my thirty-two quid prize money.
• When you finally get knocked out on penalties to Montevideo or the Isle of Wight, consider hiring Ross Kemp as manager for the 2014 World Cup, and replacing the team with the cast of Football Factory. Then smash up the place.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Annie from Hysterical Injury talks set-up’s.
We are a duo using bass guitar, drums and voice. For the bass to make up the foundation bass lines and double up as a guitar in the loud bits, at the moment I use various guitar and bass fx pedals, 1000watt Ampeg BR4 with two 2x12 Lombardi speaker cabinets, 65 valve watts Ampeg 1969 Gemini twin guitar amp which I am soon to have a twin dual cone speaker guitar cab for it as well. I use a DI box with high and low impedance outputs to split my bass signal then feed them via the pedals to the bass amp and guitar amp. This allows me more scope and flexibility with the sound as I can play with signal sounds individually.
From the bass guitar to the bass amp I currently take a high impedance signal to an Electroharmonix Micro POG through to an Electroharmonix Bass Big Muff to a Tech 21 Sans Amp Bass Overdrive then to the Ampeg BR4 with the Lombardi stack. I use the POG usually at full turns on both the octave up and down so I get a massive range across three octaves- the one I play, the one above and one below. It gets really low and the tracking of the note with this pedal is fantastic. Someone said to me once that my bass sounded like a harpsichord – it was this pedal that did it. The Big Muff is the bass equivalent to the infamous guitar Big Muff but deals with the higher bass signal better than the one made for guitar. It has gorgeous warm fuzz and doesn’t squeeze the bass signal like I have found other pedals to do. I use the Tech 21 Sans Amp Bass Over Drive to boost the signal in the bass frequencies to make the bass end sparkle.
From the bass to the guitar amp I currently run a low signal level through a Zvex Fuzz Factory and then an MXR Delay pedal. Both these are guitar pedals. The Fuzz Factory gets the wild and sparkly fuzz/noise tones that I like. It is a very controllable / wild pedal if that makes sense, you can get some incredible hot fuzz and control it with the gate and compressor on it with amazing accuracy but I like its raw wildness. The MXR delay is a new addition, which so far I have used to brighten and give space to the Zvex sounds. That’s what I use at the moment but things change as the songs demand more and different sounds.
Annie Gardiner
Note, the EHX Carbon Copy on the diagram should be MXR Carbon Copy.
From the bass guitar to the bass amp I currently take a high impedance signal to an Electroharmonix Micro POG through to an Electroharmonix Bass Big Muff to a Tech 21 Sans Amp Bass Overdrive then to the Ampeg BR4 with the Lombardi stack. I use the POG usually at full turns on both the octave up and down so I get a massive range across three octaves- the one I play, the one above and one below. It gets really low and the tracking of the note with this pedal is fantastic. Someone said to me once that my bass sounded like a harpsichord – it was this pedal that did it. The Big Muff is the bass equivalent to the infamous guitar Big Muff but deals with the higher bass signal better than the one made for guitar. It has gorgeous warm fuzz and doesn’t squeeze the bass signal like I have found other pedals to do. I use the Tech 21 Sans Amp Bass Over Drive to boost the signal in the bass frequencies to make the bass end sparkle.
From the bass to the guitar amp I currently run a low signal level through a Zvex Fuzz Factory and then an MXR Delay pedal. Both these are guitar pedals. The Fuzz Factory gets the wild and sparkly fuzz/noise tones that I like. It is a very controllable / wild pedal if that makes sense, you can get some incredible hot fuzz and control it with the gate and compressor on it with amazing accuracy but I like its raw wildness. The MXR delay is a new addition, which so far I have used to brighten and give space to the Zvex sounds. That’s what I use at the moment but things change as the songs demand more and different sounds.
Annie Gardiner
Note, the EHX Carbon Copy on the diagram should be MXR Carbon Copy.
Craig Sharp, Ice, Sea, Dead Peoples's Guitarist on Setup :
Fender Mustang re-issue; Very treble-y, I always knock the pickup selectors (which can mute the guitar entirely - not ideal) and bits of it are prone to falling off... but I love it!
Laney Pro-Tube 100 Watt head; 80s English valve head that I bought off eBay for £200, apparently it's a copy of a Marshall JCM 800 and I've also heard it be called "a poor man's Orange" head. I think it sounds great though so whatever, it was £200!
HH V.S. Musician 100 Watt transistor head; 70s transistor head built in Cambridge with military spec electronics - same contractors as the British Army... insane, right? It's super light and easy to carry on trains and on the tube, I got it for £100 on eBay. Tim from Part Chimp uses one so you know they're loud. Also geeky soundguys give you knowing winks and nods as they see you stride in with one under your arm.
Marshall 2x12 cab; As light as my Laney valve head but with two massive handles. This is a practical purchase more than anything but it definitely packs a punch. I borrowed Falco from Future of the Left's Marshall 4x12 cab recently and didn't really notice that much difference. I broke my own rules and bought this brand new -- generally buying stuff secondhand is a great rule to stick by because you can roughly sell it for the same price you bought it for if you're good at keeping your gear in check -- but this was only £160 and I couldn't find many on eBay that would deliver.
Quick rundown on guitar pedals:
Boss TU-2 Tuner > Zvex Distortron (Insanely loud) > MXR Smart Gate (To help cut any unwanted feedback from the Distortron ruining our stop-start-stop bits) >
Boss DM-2 Analogue Delay (Discontinued from the 70s. I feel like a bit of a pussy for using delay in a band like this but whatever, I'm using it in a few new songs and it's quite handy to get some sounds echo-ing in between songs so there's no dead air and I can drink/breathe a bit before the next song kicks off.)
Jamie's set up is a bit of a mess and it sounds different everytime we practice and play... Bass distortion is fucking impossible. Although Annie from The Hysterical Injury seems to have it sorted!
Fender Mustang re-issue; Very treble-y, I always knock the pickup selectors (which can mute the guitar entirely - not ideal) and bits of it are prone to falling off... but I love it!
Laney Pro-Tube 100 Watt head; 80s English valve head that I bought off eBay for £200, apparently it's a copy of a Marshall JCM 800 and I've also heard it be called "a poor man's Orange" head. I think it sounds great though so whatever, it was £200!
HH V.S. Musician 100 Watt transistor head; 70s transistor head built in Cambridge with military spec electronics - same contractors as the British Army... insane, right? It's super light and easy to carry on trains and on the tube, I got it for £100 on eBay. Tim from Part Chimp uses one so you know they're loud. Also geeky soundguys give you knowing winks and nods as they see you stride in with one under your arm.
Marshall 2x12 cab; As light as my Laney valve head but with two massive handles. This is a practical purchase more than anything but it definitely packs a punch. I borrowed Falco from Future of the Left's Marshall 4x12 cab recently and didn't really notice that much difference. I broke my own rules and bought this brand new -- generally buying stuff secondhand is a great rule to stick by because you can roughly sell it for the same price you bought it for if you're good at keeping your gear in check -- but this was only £160 and I couldn't find many on eBay that would deliver.
Quick rundown on guitar pedals:
Boss TU-2 Tuner > Zvex Distortron (Insanely loud) > MXR Smart Gate (To help cut any unwanted feedback from the Distortron ruining our stop-start-stop bits) >
Boss DM-2 Analogue Delay (Discontinued from the 70s. I feel like a bit of a pussy for using delay in a band like this but whatever, I'm using it in a few new songs and it's quite handy to get some sounds echo-ing in between songs so there's no dead air and I can drink/breathe a bit before the next song kicks off.)
Jamie's set up is a bit of a mess and it sounds different everytime we practice and play... Bass distortion is fucking impossible. Although Annie from The Hysterical Injury seems to have it sorted!
Friday, 4 June 2010
BBE Two Timer Analogue Delay Pedal.
An analogue delay, based upon Boss’ classic DM2 box, with switchable delay times at an affordable price. Is this too good to be true?
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.
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.
Schaller Tremolo TR-68
Having recently bought on of these little analogue beasts I thought I’d better do a review.
There doesn’t seem to be too much information on the web about them despite plenty of excellent comments in pedal forums from owners there didn’t seem to be any detail.
According to the Schaller web site these have been in production since 1957 and still basically use the same design, which explains the premise for the delicious tremolo sounds.
There seems to have been a few alterations to the device over the past 50 years, the main point was some models have an LED on/off indicator.
Schaller are still making these little monsters now with the metal stomp switch, whereas the originals have a plastic switch.
I have assumed the model I tested was a late 1970s early 1980s device, since it made in West Germany.
There are four controls; on/off stomp switch, speed toggle switch, amplitude and frequency knobs. The on/off is self explanatory, however the other three are not so since they all affect the oscillator signal and all related.
The Speed sets the speed of the Freq and Amp to either Fast or Slow.
The Frequency is how fast the signal is modulated or tremolo-ed and Amplitude is how great the level of the frequency is. As you can see all three controls effect how much tremolo sound you will get.
The pedal is true bypass so your tone is clear when it is off, it must be noted that when you’re not using the pedal unplug you ¼ jacks else when you return the battery will be drained flat.
The oscillator is a sine wave based one so this is a very organic sounding tremolo. This is in contrast most modern tremolos, which favour triangle or square wave oscillators; that give a trebly or bass driven end result.
You can only hear oscillator bleed (the sound of the osc when you are not playing) when the speed is fastest, freq and amp are set to highest.
This sound is not unpleasant, and could probably be used to great effect with a synth pedal placed after it or to stop this bleed a noise gate would solve the problem.
On the sounds produced to quote Schaller; “the variation range of the Schaller pedal spans from barely audible to extreme.” Well, ‘extreme’ is probably a German mistranslation but it does definitely give good tremolo sounds at high settings.
The pedal seems to be as loud as the signal you put through, it would therefore be worth adjusting your levels to be inline with the TR68 or maybe have a booster/gain pedal after the TR68 if you have nothing gain related when using it.
There are a few aspects I thought that would niggle or benefit some buyers…
The device is 9 volt battery only, accessible via screwed bottom.
The case is a very hard plastic (so lightweight, won’t rust and unlikely to be broken by a stomp but I wouldn’t trust a drop from a great height).
The enclosure is about an inch longer and half an inch flatter than you standard Boss offering, it also won’t sound like your standard Boss.
No Wet/Dry level, so if you play fast during a slow tremolo setting you cannot hear the guitar as it fades out, e.g. the tremolo is set to 100% wet all the time.
Older models have a plastic stomp switch, however this seems stable.
Lack of On/Off LED indicator on some older models.
Despite all this it’s a great sounding little box, which will sound different from the usual ilk. The niggles may as I suggested actually be benefits for some people and could all probably be corrected by someone with half a head for electronics, especially if this simple looking circuit hasn’t changed since the 1950s.
It’s worth noting that Schaller also made the TR68 as an outsourced pedal for Hofner and Kent, both these models had metal enclosures.
There doesn’t seem to be too much information on the web about them despite plenty of excellent comments in pedal forums from owners there didn’t seem to be any detail.
According to the Schaller web site these have been in production since 1957 and still basically use the same design, which explains the premise for the delicious tremolo sounds.
There seems to have been a few alterations to the device over the past 50 years, the main point was some models have an LED on/off indicator.
Schaller are still making these little monsters now with the metal stomp switch, whereas the originals have a plastic switch.
I have assumed the model I tested was a late 1970s early 1980s device, since it made in West Germany.
There are four controls; on/off stomp switch, speed toggle switch, amplitude and frequency knobs. The on/off is self explanatory, however the other three are not so since they all affect the oscillator signal and all related.
The Speed sets the speed of the Freq and Amp to either Fast or Slow.
The Frequency is how fast the signal is modulated or tremolo-ed and Amplitude is how great the level of the frequency is. As you can see all three controls effect how much tremolo sound you will get.
The pedal is true bypass so your tone is clear when it is off, it must be noted that when you’re not using the pedal unplug you ¼ jacks else when you return the battery will be drained flat.
The oscillator is a sine wave based one so this is a very organic sounding tremolo. This is in contrast most modern tremolos, which favour triangle or square wave oscillators; that give a trebly or bass driven end result.
You can only hear oscillator bleed (the sound of the osc when you are not playing) when the speed is fastest, freq and amp are set to highest.
This sound is not unpleasant, and could probably be used to great effect with a synth pedal placed after it or to stop this bleed a noise gate would solve the problem.
On the sounds produced to quote Schaller; “the variation range of the Schaller pedal spans from barely audible to extreme.” Well, ‘extreme’ is probably a German mistranslation but it does definitely give good tremolo sounds at high settings.
The pedal seems to be as loud as the signal you put through, it would therefore be worth adjusting your levels to be inline with the TR68 or maybe have a booster/gain pedal after the TR68 if you have nothing gain related when using it.
There are a few aspects I thought that would niggle or benefit some buyers…
The device is 9 volt battery only, accessible via screwed bottom.
The case is a very hard plastic (so lightweight, won’t rust and unlikely to be broken by a stomp but I wouldn’t trust a drop from a great height).
The enclosure is about an inch longer and half an inch flatter than you standard Boss offering, it also won’t sound like your standard Boss.
No Wet/Dry level, so if you play fast during a slow tremolo setting you cannot hear the guitar as it fades out, e.g. the tremolo is set to 100% wet all the time.
Older models have a plastic stomp switch, however this seems stable.
Lack of On/Off LED indicator on some older models.
Despite all this it’s a great sounding little box, which will sound different from the usual ilk. The niggles may as I suggested actually be benefits for some people and could all probably be corrected by someone with half a head for electronics, especially if this simple looking circuit hasn’t changed since the 1950s.
It’s worth noting that Schaller also made the TR68 as an outsourced pedal for Hofner and Kent, both these models had metal enclosures.
Analogue Delay, in many forms!
To continue the debate with the tone freaks we’re going to look at analogue delay for all its glories and its failings.
Analogue delay is always admired for its warmth, depth and general tone. As with everything sound is subjective, it can provide all three of these. A clean sound can be given some good slice of colour with an analogue delay depending on what else is in the signal you put through the delay.
Analogue delays typically provide a range from doubling (makes two signals within milliseconds of each other to sound like two guitars playing the same part) to short echo repeat (an instrument in a bathroom) to weird spaceship noises (self oscillating repeats).
The reason the length and colour lie in the technology that is used, which is either tape (solid state or valve) or BBD chips.
In the tape method a set length of tape has the original sound recorded, spins round and is played back through multiple playback heads set at different volumes, this method is limited by the tape length. Since tape is a mechanical system it has many flaws. The tape itself wears out due to stretching and cannot be infinitely recorded onto. The motor spools need greasing, recording and playback heads need physically cleaning to keep it a clean moving and playing device.
Artists such as the Shadows and King Tubby are famed for tape delay and most people would agree for the sounds you can produce it’s worth it.
A note on Valves verses Solid State.Valves are a predecessor to modern day transistors. They are vacuumed glass tubes that provide warmth not found in modern day electronics. The flaws with valves is they get very hot and need to warm up before operating correctly, can draw a high current, are made of glass (therefore easily broken if dropped), they have low tolerance than transistors so more easily broken and old new stock originals would be hard to come by however several manufacturers make new copies. Basically valves are now for their warmth and colour, whereas Solid State Transistor technology will last longer is less likely to break but will be 'colder'.
Watkins Copicat, Echoplex and Roland’s Space Echo are prime examples of out of production tape echos.
Fulltone now produce a tape echo box, which is agreed to be one of the best new production tape echos however you will pay out the ear for it, for those with smaller wallets and not bothered with tape cutting an Akai E2 will provide you with a digital emulation of tape sounds.
In the BBD (bucket brigade device) Chips it is limited by the amount of signal the chip can store, typically 330 milliseconds.
With BBD’s there is also upper frequency cut off which causes a phenomena know as aliasing whether the processing upper frequencies get confused and mix giving strange sounds, so manufactures use a low band bypass to make sure aliasing doesn’t occur and ruin your well crafted sound. However unlike tape there are no moving parts apart from the obvious (level knobs and footswitch) so less to maintain and go wrong.
According to an article on the Analogman website the BBD chips a manufacturer chooses for a pedal and the end configuration are also important.
Many companies use a cheaper 3208 chip which supplies 330ms of delay however its upper limit for sound use is really 160ms, since above 160ms a high pitch noise becomes apparent. This can be limited by adjusting internal variable resistors to attempt to get the highest delay without a high pitch sound, however due to the speed of production lines verse end line testing this rarely gets done hence the rise of boutique delays, which are tailor made, lovingly tested but you pay for this too.
Analogman suggested the 3205 BBD chip can reduce whistling, which is no longer in production, but does feature in the Maxon AD9, Boss DM2/DM3 and Analogman version of the Daphon Delay. All command a high value, however the AD9 has come back into production and could be bought for about £100 new.
On a continued note the Philips corporation who produced the majority of the BBD chips for sound use stopped manufacture some years ago, in 2007 ‘Visual Sound’ has commissioned the re-manufacture of Philips patented 3102s and 3207s, which explains why more analogue delays are suddenly available at cheaper rates again.
Fini.
Analogue delay is always admired for its warmth, depth and general tone. As with everything sound is subjective, it can provide all three of these. A clean sound can be given some good slice of colour with an analogue delay depending on what else is in the signal you put through the delay.
Analogue delays typically provide a range from doubling (makes two signals within milliseconds of each other to sound like two guitars playing the same part) to short echo repeat (an instrument in a bathroom) to weird spaceship noises (self oscillating repeats).
The reason the length and colour lie in the technology that is used, which is either tape (solid state or valve) or BBD chips.
In the tape method a set length of tape has the original sound recorded, spins round and is played back through multiple playback heads set at different volumes, this method is limited by the tape length. Since tape is a mechanical system it has many flaws. The tape itself wears out due to stretching and cannot be infinitely recorded onto. The motor spools need greasing, recording and playback heads need physically cleaning to keep it a clean moving and playing device.
Artists such as the Shadows and King Tubby are famed for tape delay and most people would agree for the sounds you can produce it’s worth it.
A note on Valves verses Solid State.Valves are a predecessor to modern day transistors. They are vacuumed glass tubes that provide warmth not found in modern day electronics. The flaws with valves is they get very hot and need to warm up before operating correctly, can draw a high current, are made of glass (therefore easily broken if dropped), they have low tolerance than transistors so more easily broken and old new stock originals would be hard to come by however several manufacturers make new copies. Basically valves are now for their warmth and colour, whereas Solid State Transistor technology will last longer is less likely to break but will be 'colder'.
Watkins Copicat, Echoplex and Roland’s Space Echo are prime examples of out of production tape echos.
Fulltone now produce a tape echo box, which is agreed to be one of the best new production tape echos however you will pay out the ear for it, for those with smaller wallets and not bothered with tape cutting an Akai E2 will provide you with a digital emulation of tape sounds.
In the BBD (bucket brigade device) Chips it is limited by the amount of signal the chip can store, typically 330 milliseconds.
With BBD’s there is also upper frequency cut off which causes a phenomena know as aliasing whether the processing upper frequencies get confused and mix giving strange sounds, so manufactures use a low band bypass to make sure aliasing doesn’t occur and ruin your well crafted sound. However unlike tape there are no moving parts apart from the obvious (level knobs and footswitch) so less to maintain and go wrong.
According to an article on the Analogman website the BBD chips a manufacturer chooses for a pedal and the end configuration are also important.
Many companies use a cheaper 3208 chip which supplies 330ms of delay however its upper limit for sound use is really 160ms, since above 160ms a high pitch noise becomes apparent. This can be limited by adjusting internal variable resistors to attempt to get the highest delay without a high pitch sound, however due to the speed of production lines verse end line testing this rarely gets done hence the rise of boutique delays, which are tailor made, lovingly tested but you pay for this too.
Analogman suggested the 3205 BBD chip can reduce whistling, which is no longer in production, but does feature in the Maxon AD9, Boss DM2/DM3 and Analogman version of the Daphon Delay. All command a high value, however the AD9 has come back into production and could be bought for about £100 new.
On a continued note the Philips corporation who produced the majority of the BBD chips for sound use stopped manufacture some years ago, in 2007 ‘Visual Sound’ has commissioned the re-manufacture of Philips patented 3102s and 3207s, which explains why more analogue delays are suddenly available at cheaper rates again.
Fini.
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