With thousands of delay pedals available, not to mention recording plugins, choosing an effect can be overwhelming. Are you looking to add a subtle slapback or an intense rhythmic pattern?

While it’s capable of everything you’d expect from a delay pedal, Seymour Duncan’s SFX-10 Deja Vu Tap Delay truly excels at the latter. Though its sound is not as immediately glowing as an Electro Harmonix Memory Man or controls as eccentric as a Line 6 Delay, the Deja Vu’s strength lies in its flexibility and precision when dialing customized sounds into a live environment.

The Deja Vu contains all the standard delay controls (wet/dry knob, feedback, delay time) with some notable extras. A dedicated tap tempo footswitch with a ratio knob (half note, quarter note etc.) makes it unbelievably easy to adapt complicated delay settings on the fly. Meanwhile, a toggle between a true bypass mode and trailing repeats lets you kill the delay effect while letting the echoes trail off. This allows for adding anything from sweet flourishes to ringing shock waves. Finally, a feedback insert jack lets you apply a separate effects chain to the wet signal, giving you endless possibilities for customization.

Even without using the insert, the Deja Vu has some nice built-in features for shaping the delay’s tone. The pedal has a D/A blend knob which moves seamlessly from a crisp snappy digital sound to warm true-analog echo. The modulation dial moves between a few preset flanging and vibrato style effects (similar to the Electro Harmonix Memory Man). They add some interesting character to the delay, however, they aren’t labelled which is a little confusing at first.

For those who need precision delay, but don’t want to depend on using midi or backing tracks, the Deja Vu is indispensable. Sonically, it holds its own against most high-end delays, with enough tweak-ability to shine in any style of music. – Ezra Tenenbaum

The Eau Claire Thunder from Dwarfcraft Devices is the big one; big tones, big features and a big, knob laden enclosure. This pedal cranks out all manner of fuzz from the blunted, smokey kind of Sabbath style fog to the much more modern aggressive waves of noise rock bliss. The five knobs on the pedals face seem infinitely interactive and changing one leads to variations in the way they combine with each other. While some people may find this strange, it should be noted that the ECT is not a good house guest. It’s cooperating just long enough to get the job done before trashing the place and leaving through the back door. Sturdy metal construction and heavy duty foot switches de rigueur are there as expected, while the finish is kind of gum paste propaganda poster which is refreshing and punk-y.

The ECT sounds, at times, like a circular saw. It won’t be polite. It may be out to steal your woman, drink your whiskey and destroy your hearing. Housed within its die-cast enclosure, it has the unrelenting force of a Wisconsin winter storm. At its core is a standard volume, tone, gain arrangement yielding a distortion that is much less tubby and bouncy than a Muff derivative. The “Timewarp” toggle switches out two different sets of clipping diodes changing the attitude of the pedal from vintage to modern, a feature that I find almost doubles the uses of this pedal. Lost in the mix? Bump the “Toneblast” footswitch – which removes the tone stack from the circuit – and get unfiltered distortion in waves. Want to blind people with oscillating shards of noise tunable to the frequency of your choice? The ECT has got you covered with an internal feedback loop on a momentary foot switch so spin the “Feedback Tune” knob and blast away.

If all of this sounds exciting that’s because it is. While most effects out there are rehashing old designs or dragging long dead circuits up from the grave, AEN and the very small crew over at Dwarfcraft are doing it their own way. Their renegade designs command attention from all walks, and have found their way into the arsenals of some of the most creative and talented musicians and sonic experimentalists including Justin Meldal Johnson, Juan Alderete and Takeshi from Boris. If you are looking for something new and exciting we recommend you check out all of the wondrously different and exciting creations from Dwarfcraft.

The Astro Tone Fuzz by Analogman is a recreation of the long extinct Sam Ash Fuzzz Boxx. This updated clone is loaded into an MXR sized enclosure and is a bucket of rip – roaring 60’s style fuzz that is bound to make you blow your top. Clever reverse engineering and modern construction based on the original 1960’s design (with NOS silicon transistors to boot) delivers a pedal that can add grit, punch and fuzz without getting lost in a live mix: putting a stop to overblown or mushy bass. The expert fit and finish comes as no shock to anyone associated with Analog Mike’s work and modern quality components leave little doubt to the units’ sturdy-ness. Top mounted jacks always get bonus points here, especially when pedalboard space is a concern.

Running the Astro Tone through a small tube combo at home yields a sound that is organic yet aggressive. The notes swarm but retain a certain focus that allows your playing to remain articulate and intelligible. The tone knob operates over a fairly wide range and can add back some beef to your tone although the sound is anything but thin. Later at soundcheck I am plugged into a 70’s non master volume half stack and the results are devastating. This pedal adds a grunt to an amp that already kicks like a mule. While somewhat less fuzzy than before, the resulting sound is balanced and articulate and still sounds like my guitar through an amp. Somewhere between an overdrive and a fuzz lies the Astro Tone and it’s awesome. So many pedals sound noticeably effect-y it’s a relief to hear something so traditional sound so fresh.

Most engineers and producers, to allow themselves more options at the mixing stage, record guitars (electric ones in particular) with two or more microphones placed at a different distance from the sound source. Shoegazer bands are particularly famous for using this technique, which indeed can help give the guitar a more roomy and open sound (if the mics are spread across the stereo field), but can also be problematic, because of a little mysterious word called “phase”.

We are about to walk you through a quick and easy experiment you can try at home that will open your eyes about how important phase is!

1. Place two mics in front of your amp: one very close to the cone and another one about 2 feet away.
2. Record an electric guitar part, preferably distorted chords or power chords.
3. After you record, change the two tracks’s settings so that they have roughly the same volume and position them both in the center of the stereo field so that you get a perfectly mono sound.
4. Now insert a short delay plug-in on the track of the closest mic,
5. Play the two tracks back together in a loop with the delay set at 0 ms (no delay) and every few seconds increase it 5 milliseconds at a time.
6. If you have a “phase reverse” button in your DAW, experiment with that as well.

You will notice that every time you change the delay the guitar tone you get will be slightly different. Reversing the phase might have even more drastic results. That is what “phase” does to your recorded guitar sound – or any other sound source for that matter. And that delay trick is used by many producers to get the right tone from a combination of mic sources.

This is an excerpt from this full review.

The Way Huge Electronics Aqua-Puss mkII Analog Delay is a reissue of the original pedal from the 90s, which is very rare and has been known to command quite the premium on eBay and in used guitar shops. Way Huge Electronics is a company that was resurrected in the last few years and is now distributed by Dunlop Manufacturing with Jeorge Tripps still at the helm. The company has a full line of pedals and the original and vintage looking quirky lettering and colorful cases are still intact.

Things that I look for in an analog delay pedal: warm, slightly dark repeats with the ability to be fed back into oblivion when the feedback knob is jacked up all the way. Do you get this with the Aqua-Puss mkII? Yes. Is that all? No. With this delay it’s all about its unique character. I absolutely love the way this pedal sounds when feedback is used in abundance. In between phrases the delay will feedback like crazy but when you play again it calms down. It reminds me of amp feedback.

I never owned the original so I can’t compare the two, but from what I hear they are pretty on par (there’s a not-so-great video that compares the two here). The price is very competitive and I would say that if you are in the market for a 300ms analog delay then you should absolutely give this a whirl. I plan to take advantage of the unique repeats and wild feedback swells for my own personal productions. This pedal is a lot of fun! – Gus Green

’60’s fuzz pedals are some of the most collected and sought after guitar effects. Due to their use on seminal recordings, these pedals continue to sell for exorbitant prices and inspire numerous reissues and sound-a-likes. Keith Richards signature snarl on “Satisfaction” using a Maestro Fuzz-Tone or Jimi Hendrix’s soaring solos with the Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face are sonic touchstones which rock guitarists continue to emulate.

Lesser known, but still highly coveted, is the Shin-Ei Companion Fuzz. Sharper and harsher than its U.S and British counterparts, this Japanese fuzz pedal didn’t rise to its collectible status until the 1980’s when The Jesus and Mary Chain and other neo-psychedelic bands re-appropriated the sound.

Fridgebuzzz Electronics’ Land of the Rising Fuzzz is a compact and affordable version of the obscure effect, complete with True-Bypass switching for tone aficionados. It’s an all analog, simply designed fuzz effect for those looking to recreate the Shin-Ei’s biting tone. If you’re looking for a sizzling shoegaze sound or piercing lead tone, the Land Of The Rising Fuzzz is wonderfully effective.

There’s no EQ boost, compression or shape modulation here – just a pure and effective fuzz. With three controls, Volume, Fuzz and Tone (high frequency roll off), the LOTRF reacts organically to a variety of guitar types. That said, it puts control of the tone in the hands of the player rather the knob twister. An added bonus is the ‘mode 2′ switch, which allows for more of the clean signal to pass. This gives the pedal a warmer overdriven sound that can also function as a clean/distorted doubling effect. It’s not as distinct a sound, but a nice alternative for those looking to tame the pedal’s intensity.

For $119, the Land Of The Rising Fuzzz is very affordable for a boutique handmade effect. Having used a few vintage pedals of the same era, the LOTRF’s aggressive tone is a convincing nod to the ’60’s, at a fraction of the price. - Ezra Max