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Electro Harmonix 16-second Digital Delay Reissue

I am the proud new owner of an EHX 16 second Digital Delay.  This thing is big, complex, and capable of some pretty crazy sounds.

I bought the pedal for a steal from an artist at the Mini Maker Faire in Vancouver this past weekend, to help fund a trip to Europe. The original MSRP in 2004 was $995, you can find them on ebay for closer to $400. I paid a lot less.

This is a delay and looper pedal with three modes. Continuous loop, single loop, and short delay (up to 1sec). The short delay mode actually allows for 4 minutes of recording. The looping modes have a 4 beat count in before starting. Continuous loop continues to overdub after the first loop. Single loop stops recording at the end of the set loop length. Once a loop is recorded it can be reversed, pitched down or time stretched without changing pitch. It also has built in Chorus/Flanger, input, wet, dry faders, footswitch jack and MIDI clock out. This is a ton of features, but unfortunately missing some ‘modern’ features we’re now used to, such as tap tempo, stereo i/o, loop undo, and double-tap loop setting. Setting specific loop lengths and delay times is a little tricky but the “Clix” audio click helps a bit.

Another interesting note about this pedal is it’s use of ‘magna-storage’ which can store the loop long term even with power disconnected.

I really like how this delay glitches, maybe that’s an odd thing to say but it’s just so much fun to mangle audio in this way. My favorite way is to set the delay to longest, full feedback, hit something on the guitar and then mess with the Pitch/Time switch while changing the delay time. You’ll hear that a lot in the clip below, creating an infinite echo, changing the pitch, changing the tempo, dropping the pitch again, over and over. The chorus sounds really nice to me too. I don’t have room for it on my pedalboard but I expect to have a lot of fun with it in the studio.

The audio example below is guitar direct into the pedal, then into DI to Reaper. No amp or other effects.

http://audiogeekzine.com/wp-content/uploads/EH16-2_demo.mp3|titles=EH16-2 demo

Here’s a video demo from EH

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