The answers
You are definitely not alone, Mike. The important thing to remember is that delay is simply the sound of your guitar, repeated. Whatever is used to make the repeats themselves – and how they’re affected thereafter in terms of pitch, saturation, EQ and so on – is what makes the sound. To wit…
1. There are three main delay sounds for you to choose from, each with plenty to think about. Take your pick… Tape Delay This comes from a mechanical tape machine – Echoplex (pictured above), Roland RE-201, Meazzi, etc – that records and plays back your sound. Hank Marvin is perhaps the most famous exponent, in the UK anyway. When the tape is new and the machine well serviced, the repeats are bright and clear, degrading somewhat with the repeats. As the tape gets older/worn, you introduce pitch modulation and some other physical factors that create that unmistakable sound. Depending on how much signal is fed to the tape, you can also introduce some ‘crunch’ to the sound, not to mention mixing multiple echo times with a multi-head machine.
Similar in principle is the Binson Echorec – associated with David Gilmour – but replacing the tape with a magnetic drum. Mechanical delays are expensive and a pain to maintain, so many modern digital pedals have a tape and/or magnetic head simulation. analogue Delay These are sounds that are most commonly associated with BBD (bucket-brigade device) chips in the likes of the Boss DM-2, Ibanez AD9, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man and, latterly, the MXR Carbon Copy.
They were first created to simulate tape sounds, but older ones are often limited by shorter maximum delay times, typically not much more than 300ms. They tend to sound darker and more crunchy than a tape delay, but modern ones have more onboard control, particularly for modulation, which is so integral to the sounds of The Edge, Andy Summers and, well… pretty much everybody in the 70s and early 80s. Digital delay This type of delay (such as the TC Electronic Flashback X4, pictured above right) does away with the physical limitations of tape and BBD chips and recreates everything in the digital realm. That means super-clean repeats if you want them… and then pretty much anything thereafter, including recreations of all of the above, plus a lot more besides in terms of added modulations, EQ, reverbs, pitch shifting… potentially all from a minute box. Boss’s venerable DD-series compacts changed everything for guitar players, and a plethora of modern brands are going in every direction with it now. Most delay you hear these days will be digital.
2. 0-30ms: Doubling delay. Almost imperceptible as a specific delay. Brilliant for punching out of a mix. 30-120ms (ish): Slapback. Think early country and rock ’n’ roll. 200-600ms: ‘Normal’ rock delay times. Gilmour is in here, Robben Ford, Andy Summers, Brian May… Just listen to the music and replicate the delay times. 1000ms+: Long delays. More difficult to use, but potentially massive. If you want the Brian May thing, add a second delay at twice the time of your 200ms-600ms delay (450ms and 900ms, for example). Messing with repeat patterns is where it gets interesting. So far we’ve been talking about a standard quarter-note delay. Four beats to the bar, each of them delayed by the times mentioned above. However, adding rhythmic patterns to delays – for example, dottedeighths (think The Edge) or triplets (often added to a primary delay) – is how you start creating some classic tones.
There are so many pedals on the market. To experiment with all of the above, we’d recommend one of the modern, multifunction digital delays such as the TC Electronic Flashback, maybe even the Triple variant if you want to stack them up.