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I grabbed one off the 'bay just now for just under £120 including postage, which sounds almost too good to be true considering how much these things retail at from new. It seems to be in good condition though, and after the listing for an EHX Cathedral I had my eye on disappeared without warning earlier this evening I was pretty disappointed. But eh. I CAN HAS TAPE DELAY TOANZ now.

It should be arriving next week sometime, judging by the idiotic weather we're having and the fact that it's the easter weekend coming up. It'll be my birthday present to myself. I'll keep you all posted on how it sounds.

Aaaand...the RE-20 arrived today. First impressions are that its echoes are different from not just digital (natch) but also the BBD chip-style analogue units I've used in the past. The trails have a lo-fi quality that decays differently...they have the treble roll-off but also have some compression and slight loss of bottom end, a bit like the PS-2's grainy-ness but smoother and less digital-sounding. When self-oscillating it's more textured, and the knobs for treble and bass - plus the different modes to simulate three tape heads - makes it more versatile than any analogue-style delay I've ever owned. I daresay it'll be the last non-digital echo I'll ever need.

The 'twist' feature had me grinning like a loon and the tap tempo is really handy. Apparently you can control the rate of the tape speed simulation with an expression pedal (I read somewhere that connecting the out jack of some volume pedals works too), which I hope to try at some point. Does it sound like the real thing? I have no idea, but that's sort-of the point. The originals are so rare and expensive that I don't personally know anyone who owns one. Considering the potential headaches with maintenance I don't think the extra outlay outweigh any differences in sound quality. tl;dr version: this thing is really effing cool.

I also finished my DIY Muff prototype yesterday. It's based off Mike's Ram's Head layout, with a couple of component value changes due to 1. availability, 2. my attempt at getting closer to the Triangle specs and 3. I probably got a couple of the resistors mixed up. First impressions are that it's loud in terms of volume, and it has a crisp and - surprisingly for a Muff - a fairly transparent top end that lets some of my single coil pickups' 'jangle' through. At the moment there's a bit too much crispness for me, so I'll try swapping a couple of the caps in the clipping stage for a lower value to make it a bit smoother, and then turn my attention to the tone stack before rehousing it.

There's a lot of difference between this and the IC version though - the IC has an emphasis on the mids...the transistor version isn't necessarily more scooped but the IC is more grunge-y and honk-y in the midrange while the transistor is grittier and copes better with an amp that's in the beginnings of preamp breakup. I can get a decent Corgan-esque wall of fuzz with the IC, while the transistor version is more on the Dave Gilmour/Wata side. I wouldn't say one is better than the other (this is assuming the transistor Muff is put together correctly!) but each has a noticeably different sound.

I was an early adopter of the RE-20 and purchased it very soon after it came out, as I had long lusted after a Roland Space Echo of some kind thanks to Portishead's use of them on nearly everything.

It's my favorite pedal, and along with a Small Clone has been the only one to remain in constant use in the effects rotation. I've used it on everything imaginable and love it to bits. Some would argue it's an expensive one-trick pony, but when it was released in 2007 there weren't any other DSP-based tape delay emulation pedals worth a shit -- and certainly nothing with the 201's features and quirks.

Portishead and Radiohead have both been seen using the RE-20 live in place of the 201. That's a pretty solid endorsement given how integral the character of the effect is to some of both bands' material.

The RE-20 does seem to be a bit of a sleeper and doesn't typically receive a lot of shortscale love, but I absolutely love it, swear by it, and trumpet about it whenever I can. It's the only pedal I've ever considered owning in duplicate.

Some possibly-helpful things from the top of my head to note if you haven't memorized the manual yet:

[-] You can increase the maximum delay time from three to six seconds with a special power-on sequence which I've forgotten. Note that the full six seconds can't be reached from the dials -- only from tap tempo.

[-] Setting the DIRECT switch on the rear panel to "OFF" is handy when using the RE-20 patched into an AUX bus on a mixer so you don't end up doubling the uneffected sound.

[-] The BASS/TREBLE controls only affect the equalization of the repeats, not the dry signal; this concept seems to escape many people.

[-] There are several other things the expression pedal can control in addition to RATE, like ECHO LEVEL, TWIST, and my favorite, INTENSITY; this is set in a manner similar to the maximum delay time.

[-] Proper adjustment of the INPUT knob is something I consider fairly important. Occasional triggering of the LED is not a bad thing and will add a bit to the compressy-saturatey-overdrivey feel when setting the input a little hot.

[-] The manual doesn't really explain this well, but if you're running two inputs from two distinct sources, each only appears on its respective output. If you have guitar in INPUT A and synth in INPUT B, only the guitar will come from OUTPUT A and only the synth from OUTPUT B. This allows you to essentially run two separate paths through it, so you can put OUTPUT A into your guitar amp and OUTPUT B into the PA. What it won't do, however, is sum INPUT A and B to mono OUTPUT A.

Enjoy!

How do you guys thinks the RE-20 stacks up with newer competitors like the El Capistan and the Wampler Tape Echo, or Catalinbread echorec?

cobascis wrote:How do you guys thinks the RE-20 stacks up with newer competitors like the El Capistan and the Wampler Tape Echo, or Catalinbread echorec?

I've not tried any of those guys in person -- but having seen plenty of demos of each, they all seem pretty great. Unless you really dig the character of the RE-20, it seems hard to justify the $250 (new) price against the others, but I can't imagine living without it now.

Since I suppose it could be considered a tape echo simulator given the heritage of the line, I would purchase an EHX Deluxe Memory Boy if I were looking to purchase anything. The effects loop is a great feature.