Analogue Delay. Mmmmmm. It might sometimes seem that we’re a bunch of retro obsessed, beardy, wooly jumper wearing Analogue Anoraks constantly bleating on about how good stuff was in the “old days” and in fact, you’d mostly be right. But there are some effects and things about Analogue gear that are just very hard to emulate in the Digital domain and Analogue Delay is one of them.
If you want to hear it at it’s best listen to pretty much any Dub Reggae (especially Augustus Pablo and Lee “Scratch” Perry) or the mind bending Techno classic, Kaoss, by Rythym is Rythym (the bit in the middle where the whole track sounds like it’s falling apart only to come together magically a few bars later).
There’s not that many Analogue Delays still on the market – the last one of note was the MoogerFooger MF-104 and that was discontinued early 2011 due to a severe shortage of the necessary components but Akai have done one of their occasional steps-to-the side/curve ball things that they do every now and then and launched a new range of Analogue Workshop Effects Pedals that include……..tah, dah!!!!
I’ve seen mock ups at a couple of trade shows and the build quality is really good – the range is marketed at guitarists but these pedals can be used with pretty much any Instrument or a Send/Return on a mixer too.
The video shows the pedal to good effect but it’s really when you whack up the Repeat and then sweep up and down the Time knob that things start to go off kilter (in the best possible way) – it’s coming in at pocket money prices too – price is going to be around £69 in the UK!