Overview The TC Electronic Flashback is a digital delay pedal with 9 distinct delay styles; a looping function; and Tone Print, an extra mode that can be loaded with downloadable artist preset. The pedal has stereo in/out, buffered or true-bypass and controls for FX level, Decay, feedback and mode plus a 3 way toggle to divide the timing.
The pedal is powered by 9V battery or standard DC pedal power. The bottom of the pedal is removable with one screw revealing the battery compartment and a pair of DIP switches. The first switch activates the buffer circuit which helps keep the signal strength consistent in a large pedal board. The second switch mutes the dry signal for use in a parallel signal chain.
Delay time can be set in two ways. First by using the delay knob, the time range is from 20 ms up to 7 seconds, except in slap mode which goes up to 300ms. Having this very long delay time available takes some getting used to, coming from analog pedals. Basically anything past 12 O’clock will be too long for anything but special effects.
The other way to set tempo is with the unique audio-tap function. Push and hold the bypass button, strum the guitar, lift your foot and the delay is in time. This is a very fast and intuitive way of setting tempo.
The toggle switch takes your delay time from 1/4 notes, to dotted 1/8th notes or 1/4″ + dotted 1/8th. When the pedal is used with dual outputs, most of the modes will have a mono output unless this third toggle position is selected. (more…)
Once in a while I make my way downtown (Vancouver) and waste an hour or two messing around with whatever guitars, amps, and pedals that catch my eye. On these outings I grab some gear, go into an iso booth and compare. For example, on my first trip I compared an Ibanez TS9 to a BBE Green Screamer and MXR GT-OD – each a Screamer style overdrive – and in 5 minutes found I liked the TS9 most. It takes a great deal of self-control to walk out of the store with just one pedal or nothing.
It occurred to me that writing down some first impression reviews of the gear I try out may have some value to someone. I’m certainly not well known for my guitar playing but you guys seem to respect my opinion on gear and sound, or else you wouldn’t read AGZ.
The Scarlett 2i2 caught my attention right away. Compact, striking appearance and simple layout. I have recommended the interface to dozens of people.
While I appreciate the extra i/o my TC Impact Twin provides, its just too big and bulky for a mobile interface. At a third of the size of the Impact, and less than half the cost, the 2i2 jumped to the top of my gear wish list, and made the purchase last week.
This will be a fairly quick review, sort of a ‘first impressions’ look at the interface as I’ve only had it for a few days, but I don’t want to put off writing something about it.
Want better drum sounds? Want more consistent drum sounds from take to take and song to song? You need this.
Tune Bot is an accurate digital drum tuning tool. This is a product that is bound to become an essential tool for a lot of studio guys. It clips onto the rim of the drum and measures the frequency as you tap around each lug making it much easier to get perfect tuning for any drum. Even with something like the Drum Dial, fine tuning has to done by ear to get even tone. That doesn’t seem to be the case with the the Tune Bot.
These were released at NAMM 2012 with Guitar Center as the exclusive US distributor. They seem to go for around $99 and can’t keep them in stock!
Today I’m sharing something I’ve been doing a lot lately and can make mixing a lot of fun.
Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy analog delay pedal
Use guitar pedals for mixing
Plugins are great but its just not the same as running sounds through real analog circuits. You can send sounds out of your audio interface, tweak the pedal settings and even ‘play’ the pedal to do realtime automation. It can be a lot of fun to work this way.
For the demonstration I’ve recorded an electric guitar directly into my DAW with Amplitube for amp and cabinet simulation. I’m going to then run the signal through an Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy analog delay pedal.
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Here is the guitar with the Amplitube 3 plugin added (stereo, amp+speaker+mic)
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Now I’m going to run the sound through the pedal. To do this in your home studio you need an audio interface
with a couple spare analog outputs, if your interface has 4 analog
outputs, that’s perfect. (more…)
This post is adapted from my review published on The Home Recording Show episode 154
Back in November, Craig from TC Helicon sent us one of their new products the VoiceLive Rack, to try out and review. I got to play with it first and here’s what I thought of it.
Overview
The VoiceLive Rack is the latest vocal processor from TC-Helicon, a company who have a long history of building excellent harmonizers and vocal effects. The VoiceLive is a complete vocal processor for live and studio use with eight effects such as delay, reverb, harmony, in addition to the global tone control and chromatic pitch correction. This is the bigger brother of the VoiceLive Touch, TC-Helicon’s mic stand-mountable vocal processor. It has many of the same features but with more in-depth control, and more i/o options.
Physically the VoiceLive Rack is a shallow 2-space rack. The top and bottom panels have a curved finger groove making it easy to move the Voicelive around when not in a rack.
On the front panel there is large, very bright backlit display, 5 rotary encoders, an 1/8″ headphone jack and power button. The majority of the front panel is covered by a large touch sensitive interface.
The rear panel includes a wide array of i/o options. From left to right, XLR mic input, 1/4″ Line input, Guitar input and guitar thru, 1/8″ stereo aux input. The output are stereo on XLR and 1/4″ TRS. A ground lift is available for the XLR outputs. Next there are S/PDIF in and out on RCA jacks, a footswitch jack, 3 MIDI ports – Thru, out, in and lastly a USB port.
Overview
