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Ignore the incorrect grammar in the subject, it just adds to the charm of the question at hand. Which is as follows: Dudes rocking delay times of longer than say 600ms - um, how are you using it?

I've got a couple of delays that go well beyond 600 ms but after a while I just find myself winding them back down to around 400-600 ms. It's like, longer than 600ms feels a bit disjointed, and really long, like over 1 second, I always end up playing that like a looper, which is fun at home, but I'm not going to do this in a live situation because drummers. And well, that's why I have a looper.

The other question is tangential to this: stacking delays. Stacking everything is obviously good, but given my aforementioned proclivity to medium delay times I feel I'm not getting the most out of my stack.

Super long delays + 100% wet in front of a goofy high gain/harsh distortion pedal is victory,

Stacking delay tips:

set two delays up to vaugly related sub divisions of time (like, a quarter note and a dotted quarter note) for some polyrhythmic awesomeness.

Set two delays up to almost the same delay time, with a healthy dose of regen, and you can get this cool blooming scatter sound as the repeates decay.

Try using more than two delays

I like to make a "deja vu" effect with delay over a second long, super degraded or modulated or whatever, with very short feedback (one repeat usually).

Double the Echoplex, double the fun.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btRv4MnPOBE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ8CQCowhKU[/youtube]

Pretty much it's a case of finding good subdivisions/relation, and being able to adjust them on the fly (or play in spite of them, which is an art form in and of itself).

Anything less than 350-400ms with any amount of gain and it just seems to vanish and not be a discrete repeat.

But in the end for stacking them, it's a case of letting them play out - you're only somewhat in charge, and letting that ride and take over.

Slapback at whatever tempo you like into a dotted multiple of 2 or 3 reminds me of the 2head Space Echo vibe.
Doing it with 2 DMMs; the first in low-mod chorus mode and the 2nd in med-mod vibrato mode is magical.

200ms, 250ms, 300ms, 330ms for a great first-delay time setting. All of these are also great for single delay settings.
400ms, 500ms, 600ms, 800ms 900ms for the second. Approximations will do....but the latter 3 are probably my favorites for long single delay.

The magic is in the oddball relation, look up a Space Echo service manual for the ratio on the heads.

I'm partial to the 301's ratios and max settings (130/260/720) - in a perfect world, use a delay unit that lets you set feedback for each head and mix for each head as well.

This is one of the reasons I still use my venerable Quadraverb+, it does ludicrous control if you are so inclined that are the only way to accurately produce most of these subtleties - and those are the keys to the sounds of the unit, not faux tape warble that would cause the guide to chew a reel an hour of operation.

kbithecrowing wrote:Stacking delay tips:

set two delays up to vaugly related sub divisions of time (like, a quarter note and a dotted quarter note) for some polyrhythmic awesomeness.

rfurtkamp wrote:Pretty much it's a case of finding good subdivisions/relation, and being able to adjust them on the fly (or play in spite of them, which is an art form in and of itself).

But in the end for stacking them, it's a case of letting them play out - you're only somewhat in charge, and letting that ride and take over.

This is my approach. I have three delays, plus other funny reverb/regen modulations stuff on my board. I sometimes try and match closer to half, then half again, other times, I will just go short, medium-ish, longish and let that relationship be a little funkier. In general I just use two. Been having a ton of fun with a disaster transport SR lately, all on it's own.

With multiple delays it's really easy to make a huge swash of ambience. Like that guy in the video demonstrated, getting the timing "exactly" right isn't crucial if that's the sound you're looking for. I too prefer setting them up so the shorter delays are earlier in the chain.

If you want multiple delays that interact in specific ways, like with dotted eighth repeats, you have to be very careful with the timing. I usually start with the pedals that don't have tap tempo and set their time. Then I tap in the tempo on the later day in some multiple of the first's signal. Then to get the effect I want I set the note division. Thirds gets cool galloping effects, while the others will do fun ping pong style effects. Things'll be more or less washed out depending on how you set the mix and repeat levels.

Thanks for all the thoughts dudes. Gonna rip apart the board and get some of this stacked action on the go.