El Capistan dTape Echo Pedal Review

Unbeleivable

I always wondered why people writing reviews would review the company they ordered from. If I'm already on Sweetwater, why not let me see the product reviews without shouting out the site? Are they paid ads? I just didn't get it. I can now safely say, I understand the praises of Sweetwater. This was, bar none, the best customer experience I've had with an online retailer. Sweetwater… read more is a massive company, they could afford to sacrifice the customer experience and probably see 0 hit to their revenue...it speaks volumes about Sweetwater that they maintain this level of service. Never buying gear anywhere else again. NOW, finally onto the pedal. It's not overrated at all, which is about the highest praise you can give the El Capistan. It sounds as good as you've imagined, and it's even more user-friendly than a pedal quite this versatile should be. Sure, the price is substantially higher than any competitor, but this is without doubt the best tape delay I've ever used. Not only that, but if your amplifier does not have onboard reverb, the spring reverb built in is second to none. Really awesome that you can adjust tape age, flutter, and the tape condition - I've not seen this anywhere else, and it is what truly puts this delay on another level.

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El Capistan is el best Delay pedal!

Dear El Capistan, where were you in the 70's, when I played Shadows guitar tunes? Hank B. Marvin had to hook several effect boxes together to get the same delays as this one pedal can produce. El Capistan finally enabled me to play tunes like "Atlantis" and other Shadows tunes the way the should sound. Especially the 'gargly' delay for the intro of "Atlantis" is hard to produce.… read more El Capistan does it with ease. Look up this tune on YouTube to hear it.

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Incredible

Normally I prefer very, simple/straightforward pedals (2 or 3 knobs is usually my comfort zone) and I had been using an EQD Dispatch Master for a long time now (also a great pedal, for the record). But someone showed my a video of Robert Fripp doing his "Frippertronics" thing before it was something that could be easily done and I really liked the sound of the guitar going through… read more the tape machine. Intentional or not (I'm not very familiar with Robert Fripp) the tape he was using was in rough shape and you could hear a lot of artifacts in the sound of the guitar. Those sort of sounds coloring a guitar was something I had never heard before but i wanted to be able to recreate it. With this pedal you can emulate that sound really well (probably not exact but I'm not trying to be exact) because you can set the mix to 100% wet and you can turn the delay time to 0 ms. You can also easily cover the opposite end of the spectrum and have really hi-fi crisp and clean tape delay and everything in between. It can also be used as a pretty solid spring reverb pedal. The only minor difficulty with using it as just a reverb pedal is that the reverb control is one of the secondary functions so trying to adjust the reverb quickly is a little difficult. Which is really in general the only minor difficulty with this pedal, the secondary functions aren't quite as easy to use as the primary functions. That's kind of the difference between primary and secondary settings though and the only alternatives would be to make the pedal twice as big as it is or to just scrap the secondary functions entirely. I have really only begun to scratch the surface of what this pedal can do (I haven't tried the multi tape head settings yet) and I am already pretty blown away by how great it is. I definitely recommend it.

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Very cool tape delay

So far I am impressed and very happy with the El Capistan. This is exactly the sound I was looking for in a tape echo/delay emulator with a very natural, analog like warmth . I love the tape age and wow & flutter knobs which let you dial in note repeats that really do sound like an aging real tape echo. The effect can go from subtle barely there warble to old crinkled worn out tape… read more getting eaten by machine, to echoey outerspace sounds. Super cool! The instructions say if the tape age and wow& flutter are turned all the way down you will get perfectly clean unaffected repeats akin to a digital delay, however I have found that there is still a little warble/tape effect there, which is most noticeable on longer delay times/higher repeats. Not a big deal for me but if you need perfectly clean unaffected delay then a digital delay would be better choice.

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Beautiful

Absolutely beautiful sounding tape delay emulation. Strymon's done a wonderful job capturing the nuance of tape delay and giving the player full creative control over manipulating said nuance. And the option of a favorite switch makes this like 2 pedals in one, considering how versatile it already is, you can set two completely different sounding delays up. Terrific purchase!

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