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2. Classic digital delay with PSP-42

1 Though Lexicon are often seen as the masters of reverberation, they’ve also made some brilliant delay boxes in their time. The PCM-42 is a perfect example. A mid-priced box, it has a decidedly digital character, beautifully recreated in PSP Audioware’s Lexicon PSP-42. Here, we’ve tracked and looped a guitar clip.

2 Let’s have a listen. Our recording consists of simple, palm-muted eighthnotes played on a cheap electric guitar. Let’s load an instance of PSP Audioware’s awesome Lexicon PSP-42 onto the track. The plugin’s default settings are not at all appropriate, with its two-second delay! We’ll soon see to that…

3 We’ll start by reducing the Delay time all the way down to around 428-430 milliseconds. This is done by clicking in the LED display and dragging up/down with the mouse, or using the up and down arrow keys for finer adjustments. We’ve not got a syncopated pattern, but something doesn’t seem right…

4 The trouble is, our echo is only occurring once. This would be fine for a slapback echo, but we want something more dramatic. We’ll crank the

Feedback knob up to around 11 o’clock. That’ll give our echoes a nice tail. Let’s reduce the Output Mix a little to give our guitar a bit more room.

5 That sounds much better – and not unlike the sort of thing one might have heard on an alternative rock station in the 80s. Let’s add a bit of motion. In the VCO Sweep section, nudge the Depth knob by the tiniest amount, set the

Waveform knob fully left, and set Rate to the second hash mark. Woozy!