Yeah I remember checking the hi cut function and making sure it wasn’t affecting the signal, that was my first thought too.
According to an old gearslutz thread, a rep at Strymon said that due to the nature of the processing being done by the pedal’s architecture, there may be a delay of roughly 2 samples between the left and right channels when processing stereo signals (this is irrespective of the expected phase effects of the pedal itself). The person who posted about that on GS said that they compensated for this on one channel of the bus with a micro-delay plugin in their DAW and it brought back the clarity and high end of the signal by a major factor.
I emailed Strymon today to find out if maybe there was a possibility for a firmware update that would compensate for this delay internally, but I was told that the Deco wasn’t designed with updateable firmware like some of their other pedals. My comments were passed on to the engineering team, so who knows, maybe I can pray for a hardware revision.
I want an affordable stereo hardware tape simulator with a wow/flutter-like function (in the Deco’s case, “wobble”) and it’s basically the only thing on earth that fulfills that desire. It would be fantastic on the mix bus of a hardware setup, if not for this 2-sample offset.
Curious what you plan to use it for? In all honesty, I couldn’t never use the Deco as I wanted it. I never found the wobble to be random enough. It was far more of a saturated chorus to me. I’m liking the Shallow Water as an effect send, so although it’s not stereo, it sounds interesting on a FX return.
Ideally I’d use it on the mix bus of my hardware setup to give a nice gritty/tapey/warbly quality to everything, but it’s interesting what you mention about the Wobble function not being random enough. Given the actual concept of the Deco, that’s not surprising now that I think about it. I guess the perfect piece would be an El Cap with the ability to turn off the delay and keep the tape modeling/bias/wow/flutter aspects. Maybe if I were to set it to kill dry?
I have actually thought of using something like a Shallow Water or Snazzy Wow & Flutter but x2 on the stereo bus. A bit over-elaborate and costly for that usage though. I wish there was just some kind of hardware version of Softube Tape.
There are some really cool tools that do saturation well these days bx_saturator and SPL Twin Tube being notable, but like you said you also want that nonlinearity that tape has. In that case, why not just use tape?
Sorry for the shameless plug, but that’s the route I went with that release.
That’s really interesting, thanks for that.
I really liked the Deco, but there was something slightly unsatisfying about using it on the output of my mixer that I could never quite put my finger on.
Thanks for the explanation.
It did sound great on a mono synth though, but like you I ended up selling it (to a guitarist).
I’ve only ever used it on guitar. For a while I used its tape saturation always-on last in the chain before hitting the amp. Over time my taste (and choice of amps) evolved and I’m a bit more selective when I use it now (tend to favor the epochboost preamp), but I still love it for cleaner tones that just need a little saturation and slight boost. I only use the double-tracker for through-zero flanging. I love the sound of that flanger though. Its more subtle and much warmer than other flangers I own (pyramids and camoflange).
I wouldn’t say I’m dead set against just using real tape, but I’m a bit of a control freak so being able to dial in all of the nuances as I like them is pretty crucial. Avoiding the mechanical upkeep is nice too of course.
This does look intriguing, seems like a pretty impressive little box. Costly indeed though, especially after conversion and import taxes (buying niche gear in Canada sucks).
Nice work. I thought about adding a switch too.
I can’t understand why there’s not a switch or a shift function to change to stereo on a Strymon pedal.
My mate was was pissing himself laughing at me having to borrow a screwdriver to change modes on my expensive new pedal.
“That’s convenient!” in his words.
I would like to use the EXP input with an A4 CV LFO. I understood that I would have to set it so that it goes between 0 and 5V, if I’m correct… Anyone tried it already? I’m not totally certain this would work correctly, I’d like some feedback before doing something the pedal wouldn’t handle…
I own a Deco and can state that this pedal format, even in v1, is stereo in.
You need to use a stereo jack in the input, but Thomann sells some dual mono jack to stereo jack cable.
For the v1 there is a little jumper to move, iirc.
For v2 there is a switch to set the pedal stereo in ~> stereo out.
I keep eyeing this up, to tide me over 'til my Generation Loss 2 arrives. I don’t need any of them; I just accidentally got into pedals on top of synths. Dammit.
