Delay Debate

[Nychthemeron]

Delay is awesome for subtle undertones or rhythmic noodling. I personally love doubling or tripling delays just to get different patterns going on with a few notes. Also some delays have their own unique sound, so that's another reason to use them if you got them.

Again, I'm in the boat of NEVER TURNING OFF DELAYS. I just love the Superdelay and the PDS1002 too much.

[Bellyheart]

Love it for adding textures and freakouts and ambiance.

[Gearmond]

I'm in a love/hate with delay
I think its just as easy to sound cliche and effecty with delay as it is chorus

yeah, thats the thing, really. the things you can do with delay... most people do it. a lot.

[Cody_Pole]

I love love love delay!

I'm in a love/hate with delay
I think its just as easy to sound cliche and effecty with delay as it is chorus

yeah, thats the thing, really. the things you can do with delay... most people do it. a lot.

It sounds "Effecty" cuz it is an effect I think the difference in sounding good or bad while using it
is how its applied to what your doing plus all this chorus hate I keep hearing about makes me want
to use it even more!

[phantasmagorovich]

Delays are aweseome!

I use a Mushroom Echo into a Tapeworm and I am very happy with that for ambiental stuff. Currently we're putting together a band that I want to be more rock and in your face than ambiental so I ressurected my Digidelay. That one's lovely too and I like to tap tempo my delay in a band.
However with most Fuzz and Delay combinations the guitar starts to sound like a synth and I don't like that. So I'd say:

Delay on clean or with distortion - yeh
Delay with fuzz - meh

[transients]

Delay with fuzz - meh

... haven't you ever listened to Boris or MBV?

I think delay is one of the most versatile effects. From slap-back echoes to oscillating clouds of sound, reverb, modulation, glitching, pitch shifts, reversed playing, soundscapes, etc etc... it's hard for me to not find a use for delay.

[retinal orbita]

When I hear teh word delay I think David Gilmour and being at the airport.

For a minute I read this as "I think of David Gilmour stuck at an airport".....

I have an old big box DMM that I love and really don't need anything else..... it replaced a carbon copy, which I flipped, then I impulse bought a 616, flipped it..... I kind of regret selling both but I never used them anymore........

[Davegraz]

i have 3 delays in my set up - need to take a good pedal board picture tonight...

Lately i've liked the carbon copy for thickening everything up - not exactly long enough delay for slapback... just 'thicker'

i also use a DM2 which is just unreal - not for the delay so much but for the magic moment before oscillation where it's just this massive wall of sound.

i also use a klemt echolette se251 which is a tape echo that is totally wild and has real short delay times. thinking about selling that piece to help jumpstart the savings for an echoplex

[culturejam]

I like delay better with clean guitar and some external modulation (phaser / flanger / chorus) and reverb. I think you can play almost anything with this setup and it will sound *ethereal*.

With dirt, it's trickier not to sound like a bad 80s glam-rock band. It can be done properly, but it takes more work than with clean.

[dubkitty]

i love delay, but i'm not a "leave the delay on all the time" kind of guy. i mostly use long delays for atmospherics and rhythmic repeats. right now i have a Boss RV-3 that lives on the pedalboard full-time and which gets used for that Edgey/Frippy kind of thing, and also for reverb when i'm using the 10W practice amp. with the RV-3 available, there's always the hazard when i'm practising that a 2-second loop session will break out without warning and off i'll go for ten to thirty minutes in Evening Star-land.

i also have a Biyang analog delay which is actually a better-than-bog-standard analog delay for the money, surprisingly quiet with a nice fat warm sound. to me it sounds much better than e.g. the E-H analog delays. the enclosure is stupid huge, though...if i find myself with nothing to do some evening maybe i'll see if it can be rehoused. this, and the 1100ms max delay, keep it off the board, but it still gets used here and there.

the old Yamaha rack gear i sometimes use also has delay settings, but i don't use them much because it's a pain in the ass to set them in microsecond values that you have to scroll to in that fucking 16-bit interface window. i really want a quality rackmount stereo digital delay that can be programmed for time just by a twiddly knob (enough of the arrow keys already! ) and a selectable percent value for dotted-eighths or whatever.

[Scruffie]

i also have a Biyang analog delay which is actually a better-than-bog-standard analog delay for the money, surprisingly quiet with a nice fat warm sound. to me it sounds much better than e.g. the E-H analog delays. the enclosure is stupid huge, though...if i find myself with nothing to do some evening maybe i'll see if it can be rehoused. this, and the 1100ms max delay, keep it off the board, but it still gets used here and there.

Except it's not Analog... I know they claim it is, but it's just analog voiced, not that that's a problem, but just something that needs distinguishing.

Personally when I played one I felt it lacked something though

[BlindtoFaith]

Soo is the re-20 actually pretty close to a space echo or is there a better alternative?

It is a cool pedal for soundscapes and shit. But it will leave you wanting. I would not buy it

[nad]

Delay is my only other MUST HAVE effect besides fuzz. I put delay on frickin' everything, even my toast.

[foomanfat]

I think its just as easy to sound cliche and effecty with delay as it is chorus

I like to be a super cliche, as I use chorus and delay together for the majority of my clean sounds.

[Scruffie]

I think its just as easy to sound cliche and effecty with delay as it is chorus

I like to be a super cliche and use chorus and delay for the majority of my clean sounds.

Being Anti-Cliche' is Cliche'

Too much stigma, do what sounds fucking good! If an 80s Metal Band Did it? So what, you've heard of them, they were probably good!