Based on the infamous Carl Martin Delayla, the 'Red Repeat' provides an affordable 600 milliseconds of delay as well as a simply controlled echo. Add just a touch of delay to thicken your sound, or push the repeat circuit past 12o'clock where the unit begins to self-oscillate, just like an old analog delay. Great vintage style and colour in a heavy diecast, 9 volt pedal with heavy duty bypass switching.
Ah the misunderstood delay/echo…..rather than go into the technical description of this effect, let’s keep it simple. The Red Repeat is designed to take your guitar signal and repeat it after a given amount of time. The simplest description comes from the Echoplexes and Space Echoes of years ago. If you envision a tape recorder with the recording head and the playback head in line with each other, and the tape (usually a loop of some sort) running….you play a note on your guitar which is recorded onto the tape by the recording head and is then played back by the playback head immediately after. The delay time is determined by how far apart the recording and playback heads are, and by simply adding more playback heads, that original note is played back as often (or repeated) as you have playback heads. Ok, that is oversimplifying the whole thing, but you get the idea.
The Red Repeat takes this old technology and brings it up to modern standards. The Echo control basically determines the amount of this effect, from barely noticeable, to sounding like two guitars playing at once (slap-back). The Tone control changes the presence (EQ) of the echoed signal, leaving your original signal EQ the way you set it up. The Time control adjusts the space between your original signal and the echoed signal from 0 to 600 milliseconds, and finally, the Repeat control determines how many echoes there are from each signal. So again for guitar-players who need it super-simple….the Echo and Time controls tell you how much echo and how much space between echoes….and the Tone and Repeat controls determine the actual presence of the echo and how many echoes there are.
The Red Repeat can be used to fatten up your sound, as an alternative to reverb, to give a very percussive flavor to your playing, all the way to the longest delays which you can play over top of, like a short loop. This type of effect has been used since the 50’s, and has helped shape the signature sounds of Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Gene Vincent, Brian Setzer, David Gilmour and countless others, and once you understand the effect, is usually pretty easy to spot in recordings. Remember, Delays can come before or after your distortion pedals, but usually after amplitude (volume) effects.
