Howdy,
Got it today. Initial impressions while they are fresh.
FYI- I am not an engineer, nor even a hobby builder. These are subjective interpretations that when the experts do chime in may find to be waaaaaaay off.
I have a MIJ Boss DD-3 andsold if along with my BF-2 (teaser: this was a good move and I didn't even realize it at the time). But I liked having a delay so I went hunting for a new one.
Now I wanted to switch to an all analog. I thought the Malekko E600B would be a good start. The vintage analog pureness of a classic BBD delay had much appeal. But I read about them, and discovered that to have a good BBD device that preserved the purity of the original signal within the delays themselves was hard, as there is signal degradation and noises generated when the signal is "passed" from one bucket to another. A really good one is pretty costly and delay on my board doesn't justify the cost, at least at this stage.
The issue to me with digital delay in I don't want my signal passing through an AD/DA converter. The signal seems to loose something to me. The only pedal that I actually like that on is mt whammy.
Enter the great compromise that I knew nothing about
: Digital delays with analog voicing. The great compromise.But not all of these are acceptable to me because of the AD/DA converter. BUT..
Some of these delays actually maintain the "dry" delay signal. as analog while adding the digitally produced delay signal ..no passing it through the AD/DA converter!
There are a few on the market that does these, and the DLS EchoTAP was my first candidate. These have a prohibitvely high price new for me, but I found a couple new in the $150.00 price range I wanted, but they where not in the condition I wanted. Enter the EQD Disaster transport.
This device has great appeal to me, as it is made in my home state of Ohio. Lots of funcitionality to this.
I love the tone, and the "modulate" feature is really neat. Created to emulate vintage tape echos, it seems to produce a very nice almost flange like effect! It will never replace my AM Chorus for it's modulation, but I just may solve my gas for a flanger.
Here are the stats write up from the EQD website:
Disaster Transport Modulated Delay Machine
The Disaster Transport is an analog voiced digital delay with 625ms delay time, all analog dry signal path, true bypass and added modulation. It was designed as an anti-modern delay for those who appreciate a nice tape echo with all it’s peculiarities. It’s unique tone control doubles as a noise filter on longer delay settings and really helps the delay shine with a dirty signal. The mix control allows you to boost the effected signal to nearly 4x the original signal level and the modulation can go from subtle pitch shifting warble to ultra fast tremolo speeds while the LED visually shows the rate.
Controls Mix- Sets the output level of the effected signal. This should be treated as a gain control/ master volume for the delay line. Unity is around noon and everything above noon will boost the delayed signal louder than the original. This is a gain control so, like any pedal with a lot of gain, a hint of noise and distortion at max setting is completely normal.
Tone- Most delay pedals are heavily filtered at the output to remove the clock noise and other unwanted hash that is common from extending the range of the delay time beyond the limit of the circuitry. This usually leaves the delay sounding dark, muddy and disappear when hitting it with dirt. The Disaster Transport has done away with a lot of the heavy filtering and replaced it with a tone control which allows the user to choose their desired sound and results in more natural tape-like repeats. The tone control is at it’s darkest fully counter clockwise and brightens as you turn it clockwise. A good rule of thumb is to leave the tone control between off (fully counter clockwise) and noon at longer delay times. This will remove all the common noise from hyper-extending the circuit.
Time- From about 30ms fully counter clockwise to about 625ms fully clockwise.
Repeats- Sets the regeneration of the delay line. From one single repeat fully counter clock- wise, subtle repeats around 9 O’clock, strong naturally decaying repeats at noon, near infinite repeats around 2 O’clock and full on self oscillation fully clockwise.
Depth- Sets the depth of the modulation to the delay line. The modulation is true pitch-shifting vibrato, higher depth settings will give sea sick pitch bending, lower settings will yield a more natural chorus/leslie/tremolo setting depending on modulation rate and delay time. To achieve a more natural modulation, the depth should be reduced as the delay time is increased.
Rate- Sets the speed of the modulation. Goes from painfully slow to way-to-fast allowing several different modulation styles to reveal themselves.
Bypass- Turns the effect on/off.
Measures
4.7" x 3.7" x 1.18"
Power
Any standard 9 volt DC power supply with a negative center 2.1mm barrel.
