A delay pedal is one of the available pedals that can be used in spicing up your play on the guitar. A delay guitar delay pedal adds an echo effect to your play on the guitar. This guitar delay pedal should not be mistaken for a reverb pedal which is known for spicing up your pay with ambiance. A guitar delay pedal does not add ambiance to your guitar play. It merely provides a repetition to whatever note you play on your guitar. To better differentiate what a delay pedal does from what a reverb dal does, think of a reverb guitar pedal as providing the effect you would have if you screamed in the bathroom. While a delay guitar pedal will give you the effect, you would achieve by screaming into a canyon.
Types of Guitar Delay Pedal
There are lots of guitar delay pedals, and these many guitar delay pedals differ by the quality of echo they provide. When a delay is analog, its quality can be bad even though it is quite clean. But when a delay is digital, its repeat can be considered perfect to a very large extent.
The various types of guitar delay pedal include:
Time-Based Delay
Time-based delay is a special type of delay that is timed in a way that the delay from an original note matches a song’s tempo.
Ambient Delay
This functions in a way that is similar to time-based delay. It is an effect that is used a lot by “Minus The Bear” and “Radiohead.”
Always on Delay
When making use of a delay pedal in adding color to your guitar play, there are lots of ways to make use of it. One of these ways is always leaving your guitar delay pedal on delay. Just in the same way as some guitarists keep the reverb pedal on to ensure that each note played by their guitar comes with reverberation, lots of guitar players also make use of the delay effect of their guitar delay pedal each time they play. This way, no note sounds dry.
Slapback Delay
This is quite similar to always on delay. However, unlike “always on delay,” slapback delay does not offer a series of repeated setbacks. It provides a major repeat.
How to make use of a Delay Pedal
Every guitar delay pedal comes with a couple of knobs for setting it. The type of setting on every guitar pedal is responsible for the volume of the repeats that the pedal will produce when a note is sounded. The pace of the repeat is dictated by time control, while the repeat knob is in charge of the number of repeats that are gotten from a note played on the guitar. That is not all about making use of a guitar delay pedal. Delay pedals are known to feature a tone knob which gives the guitar player the freedom to alter the tone of the repeat sound.
