Delay unit suggestions...

Yo ho

Just wondering if anyone could suggest any lovely (cheap enough) delay units (is 'units' even the right term?)

Just looking to replace a monotron delay - its pretty much perfect for what I need, except it runs on batteries so it's not really reliable enough

Bit hesitant to get guitar oriented delay pedals...but prove me wrong? Are they just as good for synths?

would like to keep the price under 200 blips

looking at these at the moment, but not married to them, happy for suggestions:

Roland SDE-2500

http://www.adverts.ie/other-pro-audio/roland-sde-2500-delay/3128099

Alesis Microverb III

http://www.adverts.ie/other-pro-audio/alesis-reverb-delay-unit/3042025

Digitech DSP 16
http://www.adverts.ie/other-pro-audio/digitech-dsp-16-reverb-delay-effects-processor/2495672

Korg Sdd-1000
http://www.adverts.ie/recording-equipment/korg-sdd-1000/3157815

I'd mod the monotron delay to make it run on mains. Really the only thing you need to do is buy a suitable (3 volts?) adapter, a female plug, and solder this inside the battery bay. Must be someone in your circle of friends, family and acquaintances who could do it for you if you've never soldered before.

Good to hear you like the Delay btw, I've been thinking about getting one myself.

can't speak for all those you list, but really guitar pedals can be excellent provided they are high quality. Boss pedals sound pretty nice. I'd recommend hitting up a shop and playing with a few though to see what sound you like. I just bought one of these: http://www.mooeraudio.com/en/productinfo.asp?id=43 and it sounds oh so nice. :) Analog is such a difference in delays.

I get the impression guitar digital delays can work a-ok, OPN uses a Akai E2 Headrush and I believe that's $150 or so.

I've got a cheap boss multi-fx, I'd say check the delay time range before you get one. Mine's not short enough for reverb/glitchy things, and barely long enough for hot looping action. When you overdrive it with 100% feedback you get some pretty cool digital distortion though. Other than that I don't hear much difference with any neutral vst, but a lot of guitar pedals tend to LPF the delay line.

I've got an Ibanez DM-500 for sale for $45. Classic.

mooer delay and chorus and flanger look interesting and cheap,

i have a boss dd7, been playing it with an sh 101 recently just for fun

sounds really good imo. i had a midiverb or something like that but i hated the sound of it and having to deal with menus, it was just too annoying

with the boss all the knobs are in front of you so you can set a switch to hve 300ms 800ms or 2000ms of range and really short delays too the feedback and delay time knobs which is good for changing the delay settings in the middle of recording a track

it's small and it is stereo too

i had a ring modulator bell patch set up the other day on my modular and it wasnt that great, i found myself wishing for polyphony, so i tried the delay in stereo with it, and also processed the signal wiuth bandpass filters and it brought the patch alive, it was totally gorgeous thanks to that delay

but you need a good 9v battery, not a cheap one (tried a cheap one this week and it lasted 2 minutes) or a 9v power supply

cost a hundred quid, maybe a dd5 would be 50 quid, i had one of those before and it was just as good

This will set you back more, but I've heard nothing but good things about it and from it:

if you like lofi stuff you might check out a radio shack 'reverb' unit. it's actually just a delay with feedback. it's an analog, chip-based delay. they can be modified and i think there are guides you can find online to do some cool mods that aren't too hard to do. then you could end up with something like this:

[youtubehd]pc84-lcGTYk[/youtubehd]

i just got an unmodded one in the original box with the manual, and it looks like new, for 35$ from ebay.

actually i just noticed that mine is a bit smaller and looks a bit different. mine's called a 'realistic electronic reverb', with realistic being the brand name, but i'm pretty sure its the same unit as that radio shack one. they just rebranded a lot of stuff.

  On 7/12/2013 at 1:36 AM, chunky said:

mooer delay and chorus and flanger look interesting and cheap,

 

i have a boss dd7, been playing it with an sh 101 recently just for fun

sounds really good imo. i had a midiverb or something like that but i hated the sound of it and having to deal with menus, it was just too annoying

with the boss all the knobs are in front of you so you can set a switch to hve 300ms 800ms or 2000ms of range and really short delays too the feedback and delay time knobs which is good for changing the delay settings in the middle of recording a track

 

it's small and it is stereo too

i had a ring modulator bell patch set up the other day on my modular and it wasnt that great, i found myself wishing for polyphony, so i tried the delay in stereo with it, and also processed the signal wiuth bandpass filters and it brought the patch alive, it was totally gorgeous thanks to that delay

 

but you need a good 9v battery, not a cheap one (tried a cheap one this week and it lasted 2 minutes) or a 9v power supply

cost a hundred quid, maybe a dd5 would be 50 quid, i had one of those before and it was just as good

yeah the Boss digital delays are awesome. I do like my delay a little more gritty though, so I just use cheap pedals these days. I have the following:

Behringer digital delay (x2) - pretty similar to the Boss digital delays I guess, but probably lower quality. Good for Gantz Graf style glitching effects.

Behringer "Echo Machine" EM600 delay - my main delay pedal. Has several different modes including tape (with controllable warble), analog (with controllable detune) and digital. Also has a few interesting features like pingpong, slapback, ducking, reverse delay (I used it 100% wet for the intro melody on this track; it's also really great for MBV-like textures), etc.

Daphon analog delay - Noname brand, cost me $8 or something from a cheap deals website, but it's gritty as fuck and kinda unpredictable to the point of sometimes not even working at all, but I fucking love it. Gets totally out of control at high feedback settings.

I recently bought this:

http://www.ehx.com/products/memory-toy

to replace my monotron delay. The Monotron is crap, because of the cheap noisy opamp it has. The memory toy is affordable and has a much better sound. It´s analog and can go up to 550ms in delay time. But what really made it a no-brainer is the fact, that it´s depth knob is designed so that the output is dry signal only when turned left, dry/wet, when turned 12 o´clock and wet only when turned fully right. With that you can use it as a send or as a an insert effect!

On top of that it has a switch for delay modulation for really spacey sounds.

  On 7/12/2013 at 1:48 AM, MisterE said:

actually i just noticed that mine is a bit smaller and looks a bit different. mine's called a 'realistic electronic reverb', with realistic being the brand name, but i'm pretty sure its the same unit as that radio shack one. they just rebranded a lot of stuff.

Yeah, Realistic is Radioshack's stereo and audio sub-brand. You could by Realistic items in Radioshack stores and catalogs. All of their decent vintage audio - turntables, receivers, etc. are "Realistic."

That's awesome by the way, I've been eyeing one for a while, they use electronic chips that simulate reverb and sound kind of like old spring reverbs, but digital and spacy.

There's two versions, the one you have (I think) is a crossfader style mixer (Realistic 32-1100B) intended for PAs and the other (Realistic 42-2108) was intended for home stereo systems.

Many thanks for all the replies...most enlightening

  On 7/12/2013 at 3:03 PM, tonfarben said:

I recently bought this:

http://www.ehx.com/products/memory-toy

 

to replace my monotron delay. The Monotron is crap, because of the cheap noisy opamp it has. The memory toy is affordable and has a much better sound. It´s analog and can go up to 550ms in delay time. But what really made it a no-brainer is the fact, that it´s depth knob is designed so that the output is dry signal only when turned left, dry/wet, when turned 12 o´clock and wet only when turned fully right. With that you can use it as a send or as a an insert effect!

On top of that it has a switch for delay modulation for really spacey sounds.

yo ho - this looks like the unit for me! i'm guessing it didn't come with a power supply? Guess if its cheap enough, buying another power supply wont hurt

what do you use it with? Its a shame there's so many demo videos on youtube with it being used with guitars/basses only (bar 1 video i found)

With analog they mean bucket brigade chips, right? Still highly quantized over time. It's a pity these companies are always so secretive about the technologies used - if they're claiming, somewhat misleadingly, that it's analog, they should at least mention the frequency.

but a bucket brigade chip is analog.

  On 7/13/2013 at 2:45 AM, MisterE said:

but a bucket brigade chip is analog.

Yes, technically Bucket-brigade_device are - the "reverb" is artificial and delay style.

But I think th555 might be talking about the Electro-Harmonix Memory Toy and it looks like it uses ICs for it's delay effect - that's digital correct? If so that is analog-style sound, not a analog device.

the radioshack/realistic 'reverb' (which yeah is really just a delay with feedback) are bucket brigade, analog delays. BUT bucket brigade chips ARE ICs. they are still analog.

Oh ok. I suppose the Monotron Delay is IC too.

I dunno, personally I consider tape delay the most analogy of delays, since it's multiple tapeheads creating the effect. Likewise, spring and plate reverb are about as analog as you get without recording in a natural reverb setting, and delay itself was originally an imitation of echo.

Monotron is just some cheap digital delay. Bucket brigade is indeed analog, and has some nice characteristics, but you could run them at, say, 10 kilohertz, and get a low samplerate. In this respect it is quite different from tape delay.

kaoss pad 3, loads of delay/filter FX with expressive tweaking

  On 7/14/2013 at 12:51 AM, soundwave said:

kaoss pad 3, loads of delay/filter FX with expressive tweaking

not a bad shout...something to keep in mind anyway for future purchases - might be nice to route all the instruments through it and have it as a master effects unit

Don't devices like that have a really recognizable sound?

  On 7/15/2013 at 8:52 PM, th555 said:

Don't devices like that have a really recognizable sound?

doesn't everything to the ears of the knowing?

  On 7/15/2013 at 8:52 PM, th555 said:

Don't devices like that have a really recognizable sound?

I'd say about 80% of the KP3 sounds are very recognisable but 20% (mainly the looping, delays and grain FX) are quite powerful and very underrated especially when you use a hardware sequencer to program it. For under £150 used they are pretty hard to beat and double as a good MIDI controller too.