Well, this is a big one. The current reigning champion of the Delay world in stompbox manufacturing, the TimeLine Delay from Strymon. I gotta tell you, I was a bit skeptical about this pedal, and had gotten a little sick of seeing it everywhere, to be honest. Roughly 3 minutes after I plugged my guitar into it, I understood what all the hubbub was about. This moderately-sized gray enclosure seriously holds the keys to all your delay wants, needs, delights, fetishes, etc., and even throws in a couple of surprises, just to keep you on your toes.
Right off the bat, you look at the Delay Type selections, and see that there are 12 of them. TWELVE. Now, while other big delay pedals may have close to that amount, even if they had all 12, they couldn’t begin to touch what you can do with these modes, especially when you factor in the 7 control knobs, 3 switches, a looper, 200 presets and a whole lot more. Nothing on the market now comes close to this delay monster, and I’m not sure anyone should try. This thing can seriously dial in ANY delay sound you’re looking for, plus some tremolo, echo, tape warble, reverse sounds and an awesome stereo panning effect that works great between 2 (or in my case, 4) amps.
The Preset section is just daunting, to be perfectly frank. 200 presets are a lot to go through, but the factory sounds are marvelous, plus you can create and save whatever sounds you like, then just easily scroll through them to get to the one you need. The Reverse section is just brilliant, one of my favorite aspects of this pedal. They really hit on capturing that old school tape sound, conjuring up the ghosts of the intro to ‘Fire On High‘ and other classic ’70’s hits (damn you, hidden Satanic messages!). I love the Stereo panning effects, too – both sides are full and rich, neither losing an ounce of clarity or fullness in the bouncing back and forth. Ice, Duck and Swell modes are just plain fun to play with, creating new, magical sounds sure to whisk you away to another world. There’s even a Tremolo mode…really? And, it sounds great. All this on top of the dBucket, dTape, Digital, Dual, Filter and Lo-Fi modes…there’s so much you can do with this pedal, it would have to be a short (or maybe long) novel to describe it all.
The main point here is that you can get almost any delay sound you’re after with the TimeLine, but you can also discover more sonic textures than you could have ever imagined, and that’s where the real treats lie in this pedal. Lots of companies can make a pedal that resembles a pedal of yesteryear, but the true innovation is creating new sonic paths, continually moving forward, and keeping the effects industry on the tips of their toes, waiting for what’s next…
Specs:
Hand crafted, studio-class delay algorithms deliver meticulous, detailed and nuanced delay experiences
Twelve delay machines to choose from: Digital, Dual, Pattern, Reverse, Ice, Duck, Swell, Trem, Filter, Lo-fi, dTape™, dBucket™.
Seven front-panel tone shaping knobs: Time, Repeats, Mix, Filter, Grit, Mod Speed, Mod Depth
Additional menu-driven parameters deliver extremely flexible tone shaping options and complete tweakability
200 easily accessible and nameable presets, save and recall at the press of a switch
Stereo input and output
Expression pedal input with selectable control over knob or combination of knobs, saveable per preset (also configurable as external tap input)
MIDI input and output
Switchable I/O configuration: Stereo Out or Mono with Delay Feedback Loop Insert
Ultra low noise, high performance 24-bit 96kHz A/D and D/A converters
115dB typical signal to noise
Analog dry path for a zero latency dry signal that is never converted to digital
Premium analog front end and output section
Super high performance DSP in a compact form factor
32-bit floating point processing
Submitted by Mike B, Website
