Tuesday 12 April 2011

Analogue Delay


Another slightly off-topic post this evening. I have recieved in the post today a Behringer VM1 Vintage Time Machine. Essentially its an analogue delay unit similar to the Electroharmonix Memory Man.

I was put off buying Behringer gear a few years ago after a rather nasty encounter with one of their mixing desks. After stumbling across the VM1 online a few weeks ago I was willing to give them another try, partly due to the price of the unit, and partly due to what it will offer. I doubt I could build a clone for much less money.

The package comes complete with a DC power supply and full instruction manual. The unit itself is larger than I first assumed and appears to be very well built with all components seemingly high quality. LEDs are included for power and overload - a useful addition.

I plugged the unit directly into my mixing desk on an AUX and immediately got to work testing this delight. I'm really pleased with how it sounds. Totally different from my trusty Ibanez DD1000, the VM1 has a very warm tone which degrades beautifully when the delay kicks in. Increasing the feedback and varying the delay time creates some rather tasty self ocillations. First impressions are generally good, i've noticed it can sound a little muddy, but i'm yet to play around with sweeping my EQ and feeding back sound on sound delay. I'm really looking forward to putting this to task in future dubs.

If you are after a cheap introduction to analogue delay I recommend this unit highly. It may lack the finesse of a vintage machine, but it clearly has found a nice home in my attic studio.

I'll upload some sound clips asap to give you the feel of the unit. More posts to come in the next few weeks as i've started building and documenting a vero board dub siren.