I’m sorry, I didn’t want this to get buried in JT’s pedal thread. Delays.

[KingsXJJ]

@JiveTurkey has a great thread going on about incoming pedals. It’s a great read! One thing that was discussed was delays. They have now moved on to fuzzes I think which aren’t my thing but hey, cool. But the talk of delays and especially the SDE were right up my alley and I have the EVH model. @Whizzinby also showed up after being gone for a bit. Glad he’s back around for sure. And I recalled him getting a Volante some time back.

So anyway it got me thinking. So I pulled out both pedals and started messing around and doing some close listening and thought I’d share a couple of thoughts. First, both are really exceptional IMO. I tried the SDE first. I kinda stuck with the EVH presets. I was using only mono in to my TM Super. What a beautiful sounding delay! It’s just so rich and colorful. It just flat out rocks and I can totally get why the mad scientist EVH gravitated to and used the originals. It’s just an exceptional experience and close to perfection for my desires from a delay with guitar. A++++

Next up I put the Volante in with the same setup. I hadn’t used it in a while but knew I had great results before. A disclaimer: “Studio” mode is my favorite. It simulates a full blown studio reel-to-reel. The other modes, drum and tape, are great too. But I have an El Cap that great for tape and dialed in. There’s also a nice spring reverb that cab be added in as needed. It’s a complex mo-fo with four heads in stereo and tons of options on board.

At first I was a bit disappointed in the Volante. But then I realized I was being lazy and depending on freaking EVH presets on the SDE and I mean, come on, how is that fair? So I dug in a bit. I’m no studio master and I quickly got overwhelmed trying to wrangle the four heads in to shape. The eight favorites helped but I was looking for something different. So I decided to keep it simple and went with one head, number four, in studio mode at normal tape speed. Things started to shape up so then I focused on character and started tweaking things like recording level, mechanics, wear, low cut, etc. The mechanics were great for adding a touch of modulation along the lines of the SDE. The recording level was great for adding some high freq character as well. Any way I could go on but I’m going to add a pic below. I ended up with a great sounding delay that was every bit as unique as the SDE and very musical like it too. You might note that some controls are noonish. The wasn’t me skipping over them, but just where I thought they sounded best. I am curious what any Volante owners think when/if they dial this in. You will likely want to tweak time, mix and repeats to your liking as you would with any other pedal. But I’m curious what you think of the underlying delay voicing regardless of that.

Happy Saturday Y’all! Jason

 

[KingsXJJ]

Here’s one I came up with while learning Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love today. It’s closer to the SDE sound. It’s not much different from the first. Added the number two head, lowered the recording level to clean it up a bit. Added some more mechanics for extra modulation and lowered the mix and repeats a bit. Might have tweaked wear a tad. Lowered delay time slightly. Sounded great IMO.

 

[synthpenguin]

The Volante is such a cool pedal (and I love the way it looks too). I can't remember why I ended up going with an El Cap instead since it seems like the used prices were basically the same (at the time anyway), but I sort of regret it every time I see the Volante lol. Have fun with the experimenting!

 

[Aleksi]

I don't have a Volante, but I do have the eurorack module Magneto, which the Volante is based on. It's a great sounding delay with a lot of options for mangling the sound. Set all the tone changing controls to zero and tape speed to max and it's a very clean delay. Then start adding age, crinkle, rec drive etc to give it some character.

Magneto has some crazy varispeed pitch shifting and quantized motor speed settings that the Volante is missing. You also get SOS looping and a sample mode.

The problem is that it's so large! I'm building a bigger eurorack case, which will fit the Magneto in the fx section of the rack.

 

[dbagchee]

I’d like to check out the Volante at some point. I hope Strymon keeps releasing pedals in this format.

 

[KingsXJJ]

I don't have a Volante, but I do have the eurorack module Magneto, which the Volante is based on. It's a great sounding delay with a lot of options for mangling the sound. Set all the tone changing controls to zero and tape speed to max and it's a very clean delay. Then start adding age, crinkle, rec drive etc to give it some character.

Magneto has some crazy varispeed pitch shifting and quantized motor speed settings that the Volante is missing. You also get SOS looping and a sample mode.

The problem is that it's so large! I'm building a bigger eurorack case, which will fit the Magneto in the fx section of the rack.

Sounds impressive. The Volante has SOS as well.

 

[laxu]

I am curious what any Volante owners think when/if they dial this in

The Volante is still my favorite delay pedal.

My approach is to take out all the "enhancers" at first. No Reverb, Mechanics, overdrive from Rec level, Low or High cut (Wear).

Then set one of the heads and its feedback on. Figure out the reverb type, level, repeats, tape speed and timing.

The speed switch is more of a tone function where slower or faster speeds will sound different from the normal speed even if you set them to do effectively the same thing.

Now you can move on to adding more heads/feedback and their spacing with the Spacing knob. I use the golden ratio and triplet areas quite a bit. My most used setting is probably heads 2 & 3 with feedback on both.

Holding the head button will halve its volume (orange LED) which can create interesting patterns. Similarly using only feedback or the head buttons can do that.

Finally bring in all the sound shaping to your liking and save your creation as a preset.

It's a great pedal because it allows you to experiment a lot with very little effort.

 

[Orvillain]

The Volante is awesome. I really love that pedal. My favourite feature on it is the sound on sound looper.

Back in 2019 I recorded these guitars in the bedroom studio of my old flat:


I'd only just gotten the Volante and wanted to experiment with the looper. I set the sound-on-sound decay time to be quite high, so that I could really get this wall of sound thing, and I just improvised 4 or 5 takes across 5 minutes or so. Sent it around the band saying "wouldn't it be cool to do something like this?" and the drummer at the time wrote all these layered drum parts and bass parts, and a song was born.

Wouldn't mind picking another one up at some point!

 

[dbagchee]

That’s a killer track! Does the Volante SOS have any differences from the El Cap SOS?

 

[deadpool_25]

Dude, you mentioned three delay pedals in the OP. I've had all of them and they are all absolutely phenomenal. Delay is my favorite effect and I loved all those.