Artisanal Effects Magic Delay (EM5 Soundtank® Delay clone)

A couple of days ago, we unleashed the power of the Dual Phase Jr Double Phaser from Artisanal Effects. Today, we’re looking at another one of their creations, but in a entirely different effects genre. The Magic Delay is a brand new, hand-built clone of a rare and somewhat obscure digital delay from the late ’90s. Just three knobs on this one, but great sounds and amazing tones just come pouring out here…

The Magic Delay is replica of the magical Ibanez® Soundtank® EM5 – this often overlooked original has become a secret weapon over the past few years for pedalboard builders and discriminating players, who love it as an “always on” delay. The originals have become hard to find, expensive, and are plastic, cheaply built and have switching reliability problems. The Magic Delay replaces the original, unreliable jfet switching with a highly reliable true bypass switch, fixing some major flaws. This is not in the signal path and has no effect on the sound.

The sounds here are creamy, filtered, warm and very analog delay tones from a unique, original Mitsubishi M65831AP digital karaoke chip, which went out of production in the 2000s. A small number of these chips remain, and when they’re gone, the Magic Delay will be no more. It’s capable of approximately 1000ms of delay at max, or an almost spring reverb-like sound at the lowest delay settings.

One of the most interesting and quintessential EM5 trademarks is the Feedback control. When turned to maximum, the repeats get very close to, but never quite self-oscillate, leading to some very uniquely cool sounds. This pedal sounds great with the knobs set anywhere – there are literally no bad settings, leaving many players to choose to have it on all the time in their rigs.

Having never even heard of the Ibanez® Soundtank® EM5 before, I was eager to try the Magic Delay out to see what it sounded like. The sound is sort of hard to describe – it’s very warm for a digital delay, and has some aspect of the repeats that I can’t quite nail it down, but I love it. Rare pedals, even if they’re clones, are always fun to explore, and this on was a real treat as well. Visit the Artisanal Effects website for ordering and more info, and if you want to hear this thing in action, be sure to watch our demo video over on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe and turn on those notifications, too, cheers!!

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