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DarkAxel wrote:for example it's a great way to get a nice modulated delay that can do all the shit i love and has a non-problematic tap tempo

The Pigtronix Echolution has a lot of options, the modulation is tits and it has tap tempo. You can get quite a deal on them used bringing them very close to your $200 budget.

The SubDecay Echobox is a very good sounding delay, the modulation is good too but I wouldn't say it has character. It's too decent sounding.

I think we might all think something different by "character"

maybe a better word would be "timbre"? idk, i was mainly trying to avoid boring digital delays and show interest in mainly tape-voiced delays with a certain "character" to the repeats like a certain grittiness and filtering and whatnot

Ever since i've been here, i've been gushing over the El Cap... and i can just watch the demos again and again and every time i feel like shitting my pants

Now... the Wampler is PT2399 based and basically it sound kind of cool, BUT it seems that with the maximum of about 800ms of delay, it starts to push the limits of the chip and there is some noise which sounds like nasty clipping on the repeats. I thought i would get over it... but every now and then i hear it and it's really getting on my nerve now.

the main problem though... is that ILD - I Love Delay. And it's by far one of the most frequently used effects for me. With the music I do myself, I like to get this nice delay sound to expand the atmosphere, but it's kind of no biggie, because i can experiment with different virtual delay machines etc... but with the band, i need to have a delay that can go from ambient washes to tight rhytmical delay or just a little space underneath the solo. I need a Tone knob, i need a lot of headroom and I can certainly put tap tempo to a good use since our drummer isn't the tightest with keeping the tempo and it also gives me extra seconds to tune between the songs. The older Faux Tape Echo was like that but without the tap. Disaster Transport was marvellous but had very little headroom. Carl Martin Red Repeat has a shitty bypass, EHX SMMH sounds a bit boring for straight delay. With the music we play, with the combo of jazz, funk, psychedelic and progressive rock, with doing an hour long conceptual show plus some regular songs, with having well over 2 hours of songs readily available for every show, i need a delay that can do A LOT for me. Yes, I can do a lot with a tops 600ms delay with simple mod and a tone knob - but there simply must be a better way



i know i'm a bitch to help looking for effects... and as per usual, i'm pretty lost. You are all giving me wonderful options, it's just that my criteria are kind of crazy?

I don't think your criteria are crazy at all, I'd just say don't look at the specs too much expecting to get what you want out of that.
A tone control is not needed if the delay is voiced right, in most cases when a delay has a tone control it's not that useful anyway in my experience, it's either voiced wrong (Diamond Memory Lane for instance) or you don't really hear the effect of it in the bandmix (Strymon Timeline for instance).
Modulation is great but most modulation delays are either good for making really crazy sounds or they have a really lush sound, they almost never do both or it's all just a bit bland (Strymon Timeline for instance).

Actually i found that a Tone control helps the wash/tight and clear duality... darker for washy, brighter for clear, obviously helps it blend with the playing as well... but it must be done right for that, obviously (actually the Wampler excells at that and the tone control also affects the headroom)

of course it would be much easier getting two delays, one darker, but i'd really like to get one pedal that's able of more colours

i'm not really hooked on certain pedals or features to be honest, i can make a lot stuff work... when the first Wampler got broken, I played two shows with a Digitech PDS 20/20's delay and that is a really clear digital delay back from the 80's ...wasn't perfect, but did the job (the modulation is actually amazing)... but we're always looking for that one PERFECT pedal for what we're hearing in our heads... aren't we

Probably not what you're looking for, but I just got one and it's awesome. Loads of character:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gRON1n-XtY[/youtube]

El cap it's a cool delay pedal, but has several problems that made this pedal useless as main delay:
It's digital but sounds like analog, ok it's a cool feature but if you want sometimes pristine repeats el cap is the wrong pedal.
The tone (tape age) knob is very shitty, is only a high pass filter.
Some internal knobs are shitty and useless too, like tape bias and bass response, tape Crinkle too.
Modulation is good, but only setted at max and with the internal riverb, sounds like human voice female choir.
If you turn the time knob or change the delay time in every way when you're playing you can't change the pitch of the repeats, but it's sounds like a digital error.
The sounds on sounds is crazy, seems like it has an indipendent life, sometimes you can hear a loop that you have recorded ages ago without press anything.
The looper is useless with hi gain pedals.
You can't use delay with sound on sound.
THE MOST IMPORTANT: El cap sounds ok with cleans and overdrive, but with fuzz and hi gain distortion sounds like shit, it destroys your signal.

COOL features:
Self oscillation is very musical, with trails you can play with an oscillating wall of feedback
Modulation, with maxed reverb and modulation you can have a faux cool wall of mellotronesque human female choir.
The looper is funny, with tape degradation, wow n flutterm but it hase many problems: too short, pitch and speed limitation, no delay.

For the price this pedal is useless.

Dramatis Persona wrote:If you turn the time knob or change the delay time in every way when you're playing you can't change the pitch of the repeats, but it's sounds like a digital error.

Whaaaa? the pitch changes just like any other delay would when you turn that knob. I do it all the time, one of the most fun things about the El Cap for me is turning the repeats up high and playing whilst using your foot to screw with the delay time knob for wacky sounds.

Also, I think the tape age knob is really useful for self-oscillation because you can filter out the higher frequencies and make it less ear-grating but still have an intense noise wall going.

It is supposed to strictly be a tape echo emulator, too, so it would be unreasonable to expect things like pristine repeats and delay/looper combination that you wouldn't find on an actual tape echo.

backwardsvoyager wrote:Whaaaa? the pitch changes just like any other delay would when you turn that knob. I do it all the time, one of the most fun things about the El Cap for me is turning the repeats up high and playing whilst using your foot to screw with the delay time knob for wacky sounds.

What version do you have? The stereo with silent footswitch or the older?

Actually reading some more of what you said, I think the Empress Tape is worth a try. I downgraded to it from the VMSD which I found had a lot of features I didn't really need and I don't regret it. The only thing I wish the Tape had was a reverse delay which was really good on the VMSD.

But the Empress tape has a lot of delay time on tap that doesn't degrade. Build quality is good, has tap tempo, sounds good, can go from decently bright to pretty dark with the use of the filtering, modulation, and tape age. I also really love how the self oscillation sounds, pretty unique in my experience

The El Cap's problem for me is that the warble/modulation/color aren't anything like any functional tape echo I've owned over the years - it's a typical problem of most of the emulators (and I'm not opposed to modeling in the least). Similarly, a properly functioning one with a non-cooked tape isn't what I'd call dark until you severely saturate the signal, which again, haven't seen an emulator do right yet. There's a reason why I keep the big, expensive, pain in the ass box in the wall of stuffs.

The RE-20 is the closest I've handled for oscillations along with the Time Bender in terms of how it handles tape - the Time Bender in particular makes me a happy camper because it has multiple modes of what the engine does based on what type of faux tape delay it is.

Somewhere along the way though people started conflating bucket brigade delay with the tape units - the character, the oscillation characteristics, pretty much all of it are two completely different animals just in how the tape handles the repeats versus everything in lo-fi memory.

Dramatis Persona wrote:

backwardsvoyager wrote:Whaaaa? the pitch changes just like any other delay would when you turn that knob. I do it all the time, one of the most fun things about the El Cap for me is turning the repeats up high and playing whilst using your foot to screw with the delay time knob for wacky sounds.

What version do you have? The stereo with silent footswitch or the older?

The newer stereo/soft switch one.

hbombgraphics wrote:the belle epoch demos sound really good
not that we trust demos, but you know

They do sound really good. I've never played a cbread delay, but I'm very interested in the belle and the echorec.

Uhhhhhhh, The DDD/ILFDD is my favorite delay I've ever owned, having owned a handful.

DarkAxel wrote:but we're always looking for that one PERFECT pedal for what we're hearing in our heads... aren't we

There's a lot of fun in that of itself. Though given your wishlist in this case you might want to get two pedals to cover your needs. Plus you'll have TWO delay pedals which opens up the fun of stacking them, pre and post fuzz placement.

Haki wrote:

DarkAxel wrote:but we're always looking for that one PERFECT pedal for what we're hearing in our heads... aren't we

There's a lot of fun in that of itself. Though given your wishlist in this case you might want to get two pedals to cover your needs. Plus you'll have TWO delay pedals which opens up the fun of stacking them, pre and post fuzz placement.

to be honest it seems i might even HAVE TO *sigh*