I’ve been agonizing over delay pedals for a while, posted about it in first few days of the [email protected] community. To recap, I wanted a delay pedal with tap tempo and quick access to self-oscillation. I have a “stereo” chorus and tremolo, so once I had decided to find a new delay pedal I also decided it should support stereo.
With the Boss DM-101 and RE-202 as very strong contenders, with a few too many nitpicky limitations at their high price points, I picked up a Strymon El Capistan. It’s my first Strymon pedal. It’s replacing a Danelectro Dan-echo. The Dan-echo is good for the features it has, but it’s a very basic feature set. The Capistan adds stereo, tap tempo, multi-head tape (with controls to adjust distance between tape heads, tape age, and wow/flutter), self-oscillation, sound-on-sound mode, reverb, and support for external control via foot switch, expression pedal, or MIDI.
Not the cheapest option I considered but cheaper enough than the DM-101 and RE-202 with enough of the features I wanted.
The El Cap is one of my favorite delays. I went back and forth between it, a Way Huge Supa Puss, and the Chase Bliss Tonal Recall, and ultimately went with the TR.
Stuck with the TR until about a month ago, when I switched over to an Eventide H90 for most of my Non-Drive related effects, but I am thinking about getting another El Cap just for a small board to carry around to little jams.
Are you running a MIDI setup or anything?
I looked at the Supa Puss, but I really got into my own head about stereo since I already had two other stereo pedals. My main amp is an Orange Crush 35rt, and I have a Fender Frontman 10g that my wife bought to encourage me to get back into playing (and it worked, I bought the 35rt pretty soon after). The Frontman is just sitting there so I was going to set that up to check out the stereo, and maybe mono wet/dry. But it’s like the bottom end Frontman, so meh.
Don’t think I ever looked at the Tonal Recall. Holy Dip Switches Batman! Chase Bliss is pretty awesome though. Did you see the fake Automatone Delay render? 😄
I’m aware of the H90, but after having a Boss RC5 I know that menu-diving pedals aren’t for me. That was a primary reason I didn’t go with the much cheaper Boss DD-200.
I don’t have any MIDI controllers in my setup. I like the idea of having like a G3 along with MIDI pedals for programming for a set list, but I’m just an at-home noodler.
I hadn’t seen the CBA Delay mock-up, but I imagine it was wild. The PreAmp MKii is a killer drive pedal, but I like stacking drives, so I traded it towards an amp.
The menu-diving thing isn’t really the way I like to do things either, but I’m telling ya, if you get a chance to play around with the H90, you definitely should. It’s crazy how much you can do with it.
Oh man, I saw it over on TheGearPage, but the thread has been deleted! The post there said it was first on Reddit, but quickly deleted!
Ok I asked on TGP why it would have been deleted if it debunked the fake. Then when I went to check I thought it had been deleted, but it had simply been moved. And somebody still had the image, so here it is. Reportedly fake.