Anxiously Awaiting

Welcome to part three of my echo quest. Here, I will examine the Line6 Echo Park and how it lines up with my three delay feature categories:

1. Sound Quality
2. Ease of use
3. Range of Application

As stated before, each category will be ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, and the rating will appear beside the section heading. I’ll also give a brief summary of my thoughts on the product overall at the end.

Line6 Echo Park

Line6 revolutionized the delay pedal with it’s introduction of the DL-4 delay modeler. This big green monster made it on pedalboards everywhere and has very much given Line6 products a good name in the digital modeling business. The Echo Park is the DL-4’s little brother. It’s not as versatile, but it takes up way less space and brings some great tonal options to the table.

Sound Quality: (8/10) It is very noticeable that this is a digital delay. This can be a great thing, or a complete turn off–depending on which side of the tone snob camp you live in. I straddle the line between purist and practical, so I like this delay quite a bit. It’s wonderful for setting up ambient pads for other music to sit on. Each delay type has a special added bonus when you turn up the “mix” knob on the unit. I found that the flutter added on top of the tape delay was wonderful, but not of much use in the analog or digital settings.

Ease of Use: (7/10) There are five knobs and two switches on this unit. They are all evenly spaced and very well labeled, but incredibly tiny and not easy to use well in a live setting. The strength of this unit lies in high repeats with a decently wet mix, so if you are using it as a regular delay during one part of a song and wish to dial in the “pad mode” as I call it, you will need to fiddle with the tiny repeat knob on the fly. Not very practical.

The mode knob is genius. Not only does it have the standards such as triplets, dotted eight, and quarter, but it also has a couple of more interesting stereo or flattened stereo mixes among other useful settings. I mostly camped out on the dotted eight or quarter note settings because the other settings were unappealing for my music, and if you already know how to tap triplets this becomes less useful.

Finally, the Echo Park is a very awkward pedal. It is almost like a SUV because the center of gravity is very high. In addition, the tap tempo switch seems a bit flimsy–so I was very careful with it. Not very rock star of me…

Range of Applications: (7/10) Three different delay modes gives this pedal a bit of life and some versatility. I only liked one of the settings which applies to a single application truthfully. The Echo Park is on par with the Boss DD-7 for sound quality and usability, but it one-ups the DD-7 in this category by adding the ability to set up very nice sounding ambient pads in addition to the standard features. The buffer inside the Echo Park is nearly unnoticeable, and a tad brighter than the buffer in the DD-7.

Overall: (7.33/10) Overall, the Echo Park is a wonderful delay. It sounds very rich, but noticiably digital. Tone purists please move along, but to anyone else is looking for a solid delay with a nice well rounded range of applications this may be your holy grail.

About two months ago I procured three of the stand alone delays that I have on my list: Boss DD-7, Line6 Echo Park, and the T-Rex Replica. After playing with them and letting them soak for a bit, I believe I finally have some solidified opinions on each of them. I’ll rank each on the following standards:

1. Sound Quality
2. Ease of use
3. Range of Application

Each category will be ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, and the rating will appear beside the section heading. I’ll also give a brief summary of my thoughts on the product overall at the end. I’ll split this up into three parts.

Boss DD-20

A good, solid, industry standard delay. Unfortunately you have to buy a $20 foot switch for it to have an external tap tempo, but I needed the same foot switch for my DD-20 so I already had it. The price tag isn’t terrible at $159 new.

Sound Quality: (8/10) The sound quality of this unit is very nice. I believe it is designed to target the “airy pad” guitar player who wants a lot of smoothness added to the tone. Like all Boss pedals, it has a buffer inside that colors the tone of the output signal slightly darker. This isn’t a problem for most people, but tone purists beware.

As a digital delay, the DD-7 is lacking. Due to the darkening characteristic of the on board buffer the delays are pretty and airy, but not clean and crisp like I would expect a pure digital delay to deliver. The analog emulation setting is amazing, however. It has a very nice decay that sounds super vintage and extremely warm when coupled with the tone of the buffer inside the pedal. Self-oscillation is a little subdued in the analog delay model, but still sounds good and is usable. The modulation delay setting is terrible. It isn’t easy to control modulation depth and speed easily, and it doesn’t sound vintage at all. It’s usable, however, unless you are going for a very specific tone.

I didn’t care much for the reverse setting or the looper mode, so I won’t review those at all. Once you’ve heard one reverse effect you’ve heard them all.

Ease of Use: (6/10) The DD-7 has the standard interface of Boss pedals that players have grown to love–or hate. There are four knobs to work with: one for effect level, one for number of repeats, one for delay time, and one for delay mode. The delay mode is broken up into two delay emulation modes, a reverse mode, a loop mode, and five time slice modes. The DD-7’s interface lends itself to a single mode, effect mix, and repeat level. It is very static in nature. The knobs are situated so closely together that changing things on the fly is quite irritating, and the unit’s on-board tap tempo requires some tap dancing to use effectively. Since I have the $20 external foot switch this isn’t a problem, but Boss still gets dinged for that requirement.

Subdivision–a very highly valued feature on my list–is available only if you have the unit in one of the time slice modes. Unfortunately each time slice mode is labeled as some number of milliseconds making it quite tough to guess what you get from each setting. Not very intuitive.

Range of Application: (5/10) This pedal is pretty much a one trick pony. It sounds like a Boss DD-7, and you get that sound and nothing else. There’s not much in the way of customization or change of tonality based on the instrument you are using. It will always darken the tone. However, the DD-7 does what it does very well, even if it doesn’t do much.

Summary and Overall Rating: (6.33/10) The DD-7 is a great pedal, it’s just not what I’m looking for. It has a nice small footprint if you don’t count the space the external tap tempo you will need to buy takes up, it sounds wonderful on analog mode, and it’s built like a tank. Unfortunately it isn’t terribly versitile, sounds lifeless on anything other than analog mode, and is a pain to use at a live show unless you have a couple of them. In summary it’s better than my DD-20, but not good enough to make it on my board except as an emergency backup.

I’m almost finished with a custom True Bypass loop + Mute switch for the end of my pedal chain. Pictures soon to follow once it’s finished. It’s been fun building this thing; I may actually consider this as a business on the side after I run some numbers and check how feasible it is. I certainly have a really low business startup overhead of about $20.00 in tools and common parts. All I need now is a toaster oven, spray paint, and a big roll of Teflon wire ;).

I like delays. I have been enamored with them since I managed to save up for a Visual Studio H2O in 1999. The obsession was fueled further when I procured a first run Line6 DL-4 from a tax return. It was glorious emulator heaven. My poor DL-4 endured many years of heavy gigging–which can be obviously seen by the scarred chassis. The buttons stick due to a random Mountain Dew mishap that I don’t remember happening after a concert one night. I wasn’t being beligerent man! He touched my guitar! Uh… Anyway.

After I decided it was time to retire the beloved DL-4, I set out to find a replacement. After a good two days of researching I settled on the Boss DD-20 Giga-Delay. It had five presets instead of three, an external tap tempo via another $20 foot switch, a pretty LED that displayed the bpm of the delay setting + more, and all the tweaking bells and whistles I could ask for. I made my first mistake when I never actually test drove the unit before buying it, resulting in lukewarm feelings after some experience with it.

So here I sit, penning the first blog post in over a month with a dilemma. It’s time for a new delay unit.

There are several pro’s to my beloved DL-4, and it’s upstart Boss brother the DD-20, but unfortunately there are too many cons to each unit for me to keep either of them on my board. So starts my new quest: to find the ultimate delay unit that fits my high standards and unreasonable requirements:

1. Tap Tempo. What good is a delay in a live setting without tap tempo? I’m not one to fiddle with knobs until I get the right tempo for a particular song, so all the old school analog delays need not apply unless they have a way of mapping knob position to BPM/MS.
2. A very warm analog/tape sound. This plus usability–or lack thereof–is reason that the DD-20 is getting kicked off my board. I prefer something with the capability to produce a warm, analog-like echo sound for ambient pads.
3. Subdivision. This one is key. I’m already going to have to deal with a tap tempo, so the unit had better be able to subdivide. I know how to count dotted eight triplets, I’m just not good at it. Graduate school and full time work forbids practicing, so deal.
4. Intuitive. This is where the HCI nerd in me really gets irritated. I have heard so many times rubbish such as: “Put the tweedle knob on T+, and then fiddle with the fod knob until it sounds good.” I need well labeled knobs, the less the better, laid out in easy to use interfaces.
5. Durable. Obviously if the thing breaks after a couple of gigs I’ll be pissed. I don’t want to be pissed. Especially during a gig. Pissed guitarists result in broken furniture, kicked in bass drum heads, and lead singers with broken arms. You have been warned. I would postulate that the liklihood of something to break is proportional to the sum of it’s moving parts–so solid, simple construction is required.

I don’t think building a unit as described above is hard right? Let’s hope so. In my current pedalboard configuration, I have room for one large lots-o-features delay unit or two smaller one-trick-pony delay units. This results in lots of fun possibilities. I could mix and match a pair of different delays if I find two different models that I am struck by. Here’s a nice list of candidates that I have compiled so far broken down by form factor:

Large, Multi-function delays:

• Diamond Memory Lane
• Eventide TimeFactor
• TC Electronics Nova Delay
• Empress Super Delay
• Line6 DL-4 *
• Boss DD-20 *

Smaller, one-trick-pony delays

• T-Rex Replica
• Line6 Echo Park
• Boss DD-7
• Carl Martin EchoTone

* I already own these

My plan is to eat through this list very slowly and tell everyone what I think about each unit as compared to the others and hopefully settle on a final candidate. Yay. It’s my blog. I can say what I want. This should be fun.

So my friend Ben gave me all his old CD’s for my birthday (which was last monday). I was really excited about this because he had a couple of older albums that I have been missing a lot–including Stone Temple Pilot’s Core and Purple, and Alice in Chains’ Best of the Box. Alice in Chains is one of my favorite band. I love their slow grooves and harder rock riffs along with the incredibly harmonic vocals. Their lyrics tend to be a little on the stupid side, but I make an exception for this band.

Anyway, I jumped on wikipedia to read a little bit about the history of the band and found out that they have reunited minus Layne Staley–who died of substance abuse in 2002. The new vocalist is William Duvall, and they are working on a new album. This band, that is already incredible, is going to kick royal @$$ with a Duvall at the helm. Now if I can just convince them they need a Duvall guitarist we should be good…