Modular Monthly

Befaco Crush Delay gives everything from clean echoes to all-out garbage!

Here at FM we love modulating delays. Everything from soft and slow LFOs moving delay times for a chorus-like effect, deeper vibrato-like pitch warbles to all-out robot brawling feedback noise. Luckily, the Befaco Crush Delay offers clean delays through to abusing circuit-bent noise all coming from the widely used PT2399 chip. You’ll find ‘PT’-based delays all over the place; it was originally created as a cheap, simple way to add delay/ echo to karaoke machines, but the guitar pedal community started to use the chip as it can emulate BBD sounds and is also very tolerant of modifications. Anyone who’s used a PT delay knows that the delay times are usually fairly short, with noise and all-out break up at long times.

Befaco must like noise: each version of their Crush Delay totally embraces the sounds of circuits dying that long delay times give. That said, the Crush Delay now has up to 400ms of clean delay time (it’ll do two seconds of distorted delay too) and revamped VCAs to feed the dry/ wet blend and the input level to the delay chip. They’ve still hammered the noise and chaos though with the longer delay times, and added a limiter in the feedback path to keep levels ‘safe’ while pushing it. The unit’s ‘Crush’ element comes from the central switches which provide circuit-bent-inspired effects to the circuit core, adding distortion and mangled effects. These also have gate inputs so you can rhythmically add any of the three Crush effects from external mod sources plus CV ins for the other parameters too.