Get Crushing!

You can use the Befaco Crush Delay simply with audio in and out, but having modulation leads to more interesting effect sounds. Get your audio sources, gates and CV modulation at the ready…

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To get started, take a riff or drum beat into the input and patch the output to your mixer/ speakers. Slowly turning up the time, you’ll hear the PT noise and break up creep in. Try pushing the feedback with longer times for echoing noise trails.

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Most delays adjust the pitch of the sound when we modulate delay time. So let’s take advantage of it. Take a triangle LFO and attenuate the signal before going into the time input, then adjust the attenuation to add a pitch drift to the sound.

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We can set up the delay to function like a CVmodulatable ‘send effect’ by using the input VCA. Split your dry sound into a mixer and into the delay and with it set fully wet, automate the input level to send sound into the delay.

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Let’s experiment with the circuit-bent-like effects of the crush switches. Patch in a drum beat and use additional gate patterns to modulate the switches on and off. This will give you rhythmic bending and distorting of the delay in time with the beat.

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Try using a filter in the send and return path to create warm or fizzy feedback trails for your delays. Trying modulating the filter’s cutoff with a slow LFO and adding some resonance for slow drifting analogue-style tonal changes across the repeats.

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Patch in a simple audio pattern and add stepped random voltages to the time input, random gates to the crush switches and LFOs to the input VCA and dry/wet blend. You’ll get a broken, glitchy, mangled delay effect that blends from dry to wet.