Best Delay Pedal – Digital and Analog Top Picks

Luckily for musicians, the best delay effects are simple. Once you wrap your head around a few features like versatility, build quality, and impulse response, you will not be going in blind. While there is much more to learn beyond this, particularly creative uses for effects, we hope that this gets you on the right path for making a selection.

Analog Vs. Digital Delay

The differences between analog and digital are hotly debated. Some musicians swear by analog pedals, and others feel that digital is the way to go. So really, just like any other piece of gear one design isn’t objectively superior to another.

Analog delays use electrical components to achieve the delayed sound. Some of the components, aside from the delay circuit, may include filters, some compression or modulation.

A digital delay utilizes analog to digital conversion. This means your signal gets converted from an electrical signal to binary code to be processed with a microprocessor and then converted back to analog going out. Many modelling delays use digital technology to emulate analog gear in a smaller form factor.

Analog effects tend to sound more organic than their digital counterparts, but digital effects have more accurate reproductions of your input. Analog’s responsiveness (not that digital isn’t responsive to your playing, it’s just less responsive than analog) is a huge selling point with distortion and fuzz pedals, but many musicians prefer digital delays because they can be tweaked with greater fidelity.

Delay Time and Feedback Explained

Delay time is measured in milliseconds, which is 1000 milliseconds for every second. The higher you turn the delay time control the longer the time that the signal from your guitar will be captured. For example, if you dial in 500 milliseconds of delay time you’ll be capturing half a second of what you play. Some delay pedals come with sync-friendly features like tap-tempo to keep your repeats in sync with the song you’re playing.

Feedback is how many times the signal is reproduced. So, if you turn the feedback knob higher you’ll get more repetitions.

Another thing to know of is that companies label their controls differently. Every delay unit has a setting for feedback and delay time, and many have settings for the volume of the repeats. If you’re ever unsure what certain controls do, odds are you can find a description on the company’s website. However, most controls are self-explanatory.

The Pros and Cons of True Bypass

True bypass is a design configuration where your output and input are hardwired. This means that your signal does NOT pass through the pedal’s circuitry beyond input and output. Because of this connection, when you disengage the effect your sound passes through it unaltered.

There is a slight volume and high-end frequency loss once your signal path (your cord and pedals) reaches a certain length due to capacitance.

With delay pedals, the main tradeoff is that when you disengage a true bypass delay pedal, the repeats get cut off. Most modern delays, particularly digital delays offer a buffered bypass where your signal passes through the circuitry and gets conditioned to push the signal further without any high-frequency loss. This also enables the use of delay trails that persist even when the unit is turned off. The trade-off for buffered bypass is how your signal will interact with the amplifier. Many people experience a change in the responsiveness of the tone with buffered bypass.

Stereo Out

Delay pedals are available in two configurations, mono out and stereo out. Mono out means that your pedal only has one output, whereas stereo means that it has two.

The main benefit of stereo output is that you can run two outputs with your effect to send it through two amplifiers. This makes it sound “wider” and fuller. The trade-off here is that using a stereo setup is more expensive. A mono output is simpler than a stereo output, and while the sound is different to a stereo rig it isn’t inferior. You can use a Y plug or an ABY Switch to split a mono output into stereo.

The Differences Between Delay, Echo, and Reverb

Delay and echo are often confused with one another. Manufacturers often interchange the two terms. From a technical standpoint, Echoes are usually shorter in intervals, while delays have longer times. Another distinction that may apply to many of the best guitar pedals is the presence of modulation. Echo pedals are often paired with some form of modulation or frequency filtering on the repeats. Good delay pedals, particularly digital delays, have more fidelity, and can be used in conjunction with wilder modulation effects like phaser and flanger.

Reverb, on the other hand, is a different implementation of delay. Reverb is characterized as a random and blended repetition of a sound that is produced quickly after the sound is made. Your brain doesn’t notice that the sound is a series of repetitions, so it makes it sound like you’re playing in a room or space.

Delay’s Place In Your Signal Chain

There’s no hard and fast rule when it comes to the best delay effect placement because some musicians like the interaction that certain configurations can give rise to.

The way musicians used to use delays and echoes before the advent of distortion pedals, effects loops and a/b switching, was to plug their guitar into the input of the effect, then patching the output to the amplifier. This use is commonly heard from the 60s and 70s. Eddie Van Halen famously used an Echoplex in front of a roaring Marshall Plexi to get his signature “Brown Sound”. Jimmy Page used it to create psychedelic effects especially while using a violin bow on guitar. Settings for these usually involve having the delay signal low in the mix since overdrive distortion accentuates all the sounds from the repeats.

With modern circuitry and distortion pedals, it has come to be more accepted to put overdrive/dynamics pedals first before modulation and delay. Amplifiers during this time also started to implement effects loops that go in between the preamp of the amplifier and the power amplifier. Rackmount effects also came to be popular during the 80s and 90s. This results in a clearer, hi-fi sounding ambience commonly heard on 80s rock music and beyond.