I've dicked around with it for maybe an hour and a half now. Overall, I'll have to say that it's a whole hell of a lot of delay action for what I think is a reasonable price. Built solid, too.
I guess having a fuckload of controls on the El Cap has spoiled me, but the Flashback is still pretty versatile. And every mode has up to 7 seconds (!!) of delay...well, except for Slapback mode. Wouldn't be very slappy at several seconds.
I probably will never really use either Slapback or Reverse modes. And Ping Pong is pretty far fetched for me as well. But they seem to function quite nicely. Dynamic mode is kinda cool, but not something I'd use much, and it's not as responsive as the dynamic mode on the Timebender.
Here are my initial thoughts on the other modes that I can see myself using regularly:
2290 - This is easily the cleanest clean digital delay I've ever heard. I thought the DE7 was the cleanest, but somehow 2290 mode is cleaner. The repeats are clean as a whistle all the way to infinity. I really like it, as I'm much more of a digital delay kind of guy. I generally prefer digital emulating analog to actual analog.
Analog- A pretty good approximation of BBD sound. If you like it dirty and super-dark, try the Lo Fi mode, as the Analog mode has the sound of a nicely tuned up BBD delay. Repeats get darker but never mush out, and there is no BBD "honk". Some may find this setting too tame. I think I may like the DE7's analog mode better, but I'll do a head-to-head to make sure.
Tape - Again, not bad at all. That nice subtle pitch-bend shimmer in the repeats is there, but it's not over the top. Very little warble, but you can hear it a little. The repeats darken up and lose fidelty a bit, but it's on the more subtle (and in my opinion, usable) side of things. It doesn't do the random pitch shift thing that the El Cap does, but considering the cost difference and feature array, I wasn't expecting it to match up to a one-trick dedicated pony.
Lo Fi - This mode actually sounds a lot like a warm analog delay to me. The repeats have medium headroom on lower feedback settings, and they turn to almost overdrive-type hash if the repeats are cranked up. I think a lot of "warm" analog delay fans will get a lot of use out of this mode. Could be great for noise-rock applications.
Modulated - At first I thought the mod was a little over the top. It's definitely more on the flanger tip than the typical chorus or vibrato you get with analog or PT2399-based delays. Also, the repeats don't seem to be low-pass filtered at all, so they retain fidelity. It's kinda like 2290 mode but with a pronounced flanger effect on the repeats. Sounds great with clean guitar hitting and holding big chords. Those who dislike flanger may be disappointed with this one.
Tone Print - The stock Tone Print delay has an interesting sort of "rotary" sound to the repeats. It reminds me a little bit of the Rotary sound on the RRR. Kinda cool, but I'm glad I can swap it out with other stuff. I tried one of the other Tone Prints off the TC web site, and it was also okay. A few others seem interesting, so I'll probably give them all a whirl before too long.
Looper - The looping functionality is pretty limited, but who cares? Nobody is buying this thing as a dedicated looper. You can do unlimited overdubs, but the length of the first loop sets the length of the entire "song". Also, you can't start and stop the loop. Once you stop it, it's gone. So it's good for dicking around, but I doubt any but the most daring (or insane) would use it at a gig. It's more a scratch-loop-pad than a proper looper.
The dotted-8th division is pretty handy. And the multi-tap division really fills up the background. I've got mine set to buffered bypass (for the trails). I like the option, though. Stereo in and out is pretty bad-ass as well.
The downsides are that the modes are really more like presets. What you get is what you get, and there's not much you can change about each mode. You can adjust the mix, delay time, and feedback (repeats), but that's it. No adjustment of modulation speed or depth, no tone control, etc. But for the money, it's not that big of a deal. Another gripe is that the divisions switch is hard to reach because it's a lot shorter than the knobs.
I gots me a Hardwire Delay coming in soon as well, so I'll do a head-to-head between the modes that make sense. And I'll throw the old DE7 in the mix as well. And the El Cap.
