Delay Pedals Explained

if you're looking to buy a new delay pedal for you or your mom the choices are overwhelming so today I'm gonna break down the different types where they came from and show you what they sound like that way you can sleep at night you can rest your blood pressure will go down and you'll just be a happier person [Music] we have covered some different delay style episodes in the past mainly historical one is called origins of delay and another one is ultimate tape echo history you can go check those out and you should but let's start here and basically get into the six very important main types of delay that you're gonna need to weed through to figure out what you want for your sound so first up is the tape delay this comes basically from the 1950s through the 60s and 70s where you use an actual magnetic tape it crosses a record head jumps onto a playhead and you can move that time around mechanically and there's a lot of great effects pedals that replicate this now this sound is my absolute favorite delay sound it's very flat it is dull and a nice way that fits in musically with bigger ambient sounds in my opinion and a lot of people prefer it and it's probably most used for slapback rockabilly country things like that but it's wild how it spans a lot of genre because it's really versatile and in pedal form you can get some really long times with it that the tape units didn't necessarily have this is called the Echoplex this is made by Dunlop it's a great unit we have the milkman which has a slap back tape style echo kili just released the echoes but today I'm gonna play probably one of the best tape delay pedals ever made it is the el capistan by Strymon really awesome and I'm gonna use it long really long time kind of ambient and one of the things about a tape delay is it has mechanical parts so as the tape moves through the wheels and all these things they age and it actually causes what's called flutter you could also call that modulation and this has the control to simulate that and so that's going to be the effect of every repeat kind of moves and has a chorus II vibrato sound it's really nice and check it out [Music] one of the next evolutions of delay past tape was the analog bucket-brigade delay now the very first units were things like this the electro harmonix memory man solid-state echo and this uses what's called a retic on chipset in it and then you move on to a Panasonic bucket-brigade chip which is widely known and still very very popular there's a lot of vintage forms of the memory man there's newer ones but companies like boss in the early 80s put out the DM - now you can actually see two different DM twos this one is from 81 and 83 and they have different bucket-brigade chipset so you'd never know unless you open them up and there are slight little differences in those sounds but it's not a big deal they all sound basically the same and they sound really good and the distinguishing factors of a bucket brigade style delay for you to know is that every repeat gets worse but in a really nice way so imagine you yell into a canyon you hear your voice repeating and it becomes more lo-fi every time you hear your voice repeats so that's what a bucket brigade does now the vintage ones they're pretty short delay times you get around 400 milliseconds if you're lucky people like me and there's diamond lots of other companies expanded on bucket brigade put multiple tips you can get a second of time in our cub delay but I'm gonna play probably the most popular best-selling modern bucket brigade delay ever the MX our carbon copy so let's check it out notice the repeats they they kind of did great as you go along really beautiful and you would call this a warm sounding delay [Music] in the late 1970's and early 80's digital delays came to be a product that everyone wanted mainly through Rack effects so these 19-inch rack units you see a guitarist pull in their Marshall stack their big cabinets full of effects and the popular units were things like the rollin ste delays now in those early eighties as well around 80 to 83 boss releases the first ever compact digital delay in the DD 2 and it's fantastic and then we see a lot of other companies carry on the digital thing Ibanez has the DD l this is one of my favorites and more modern times Strymon has the dig it's fantastic and it's pink it's pink it's always gonna be good if it's pink and then I'm gonna play the new DD 3t so it has tap tempo the DD 3 is really classic from the 80s as well but this is a newer version and the thing about digital that's important is it's basically taking your signal turning it into ones and zeros and just computing it right back out it's a computer it's DSP digital signal processing and that's really fantastic because it'll give you exactly what you put in for the repeats so with analog it degrades every repeat with digital you can have 10 repeats exactly the volume exact clarity that you put in and that's awesome I think it bands like u2 so you know good rhythmic things time-based delays really clear and crisp let's check it out [Music] you [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] another very important that delay effect that you've definitely heard and maybe you're trying to figure out what it is is the effect called shimmer or octave delay so in those rackmount years that madness of the 80s guys like Brian Eno and other famous producers would combine delay units with pitch shifting and give the repeats of the delays or echoes octave ups intervals all kinds of wild stuff and its really really great but nowadays we have a lot of pedals especially multi delays that have this setting in it so I'm gonna play the electro harmonix Canyon I'm gonna put it on the octave setting and you're just gonna hear the repeat B pitch shifted up this is really really fantastic if you're the only guitar player and you're wanting to create bigger textures and pads and ambience I really love it or it just makes your lead lines sound cool like maybe you have a whammy pedal with the toe down it really cuts through so I'm gonna play some kind of nightmare children's rhyme with it none because that's what this pedal deserves [Music] you [Music] the next very important form of delay is called reverse delay now the origins of this come from the 1950s and 60s when people took their actual tape delay recording units or tape delay units and they played back whatever was recorded in Reverse it's very psychedelic it's in albums like the Beatles White Album Sgt pepper's my favorite example is probably the solo on Jimi Hendrix Red House it's awesome and I first heard this effect in a petal in the boss dd5 and then the back talk by Dan electro I had this on my board for years and years and then as you know from the who is Dan electro episode they reissued this so I'm gonna play it now to get in the mood for this riff I'm gonna go drink some acid takes what do you do need to drink acid you don't you don't do it I'm gonna not do acid for this riff [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] next up is the catch-all category of multi delay effects so these are units to have pretty much any sound I played here they're usually always digital and they replicate these classic sounds or modern sounds with DSP code and a lot of functionality now sometimes these can be overwhelming I use one of these on my smaller board but I really do prefer single pedals I'm going to show you my favorite multis because they got all the sounds and they have some crazy stuff now the most legendary to me is the line six DL for this thing turned 20 years old last October it has so many killer sounds and it replicates all the stuff going on it has a looper in it as well and another thing to know about delay is essentially it's a short term looper or you could say that something like a ditto looper is actually just a delay that goes as long as you walk turns off you get the idea it's a computer that records music now this is a great unit and I gotta talk about the new the boss DD 200 the old Giga delay is great these just have so many fantastic sounds and this is a really small usable footprint legendary flashback by TC you just turn this control and you get all kinds of cool sounds but I'm gonna demonstrate the source audio nemesis delay and I'm only gonna play the stuff that's kind of odd I'm not gonna play the settings for analog tape digital you get it I'm gonna play things that we didn't already show so to turn the controls let's experience a little bit of chaos and beauty at the same time and this might be the kind of thing that some of you need to learn what you actually like in your rig here we go [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] today's record time is brought to you by 1988 Rattle and Hum by you too it is a live record and it displays the edges mastery of the effective delay I think a band like YouTube would have a hard time existing without this effect and that's why I want to showcase it a really fun and awesome example of how the delay makes a guitar part come to life and sound massive is on a track that's only on this record it is called silver and gold and it's awesome bono says play the blues and the edge plays something very different than the blues but it's possibly my favorite edge solo on any record so check it out let me know in the comments below what you think about this and particularly that guitar solo and then just list your favorite delay songs out there guitar parts where the delay stands out where it's important and where the guitar would not fit the song or even feel like it mattered unless the effect is on there go for it thanks for watching this episode I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that it helped clarify some confusion you might have about what type of delay you might want my biggest advice and take away is like I said at the end you might want to grab one of these multi effective delays that way you can try different styles and different textures with your rig with your band and the music that you're creating so like this episode if you liked it subscribe to the channel and click the bell notification to get notifications of all the future episodes there's a patreon you can join and be a patron of the show and support some of the history that we're archiving all that informations over there and exclusive videos giveaways and all kinds of other content and the JHS show calm you can go buy shirts posters and other fun things until next time have a wonderful day

Channel: JHS Pedals

Views: 238,918

Rating: 4.9535007 out of 5

Keywords: JHS, JHS Pedals, The JHS Show, Guitar Pedals, Guitar Effects, Guitar Gear, Guitar Pedal Demo, Music History, delay, delay effects, delay pedals, delay guitar pedals, boss pedals, tc electronic pedals, electro-harmonix pedals, boss delay

Id: mscNnqNXizQ

Length: 14min 41sec (881 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020