A complete guide to delay pedals, from subtle tape echo to huge stereo ambience
From great-sounding utility delays to endlessly adjustable workstations and character pedals, the world of delays is expansive and exciting – let’s dive in.
Boss DM-101 Delay Machine. Image: Boss
Delay, delay, delay. This fundamental effect can be textural, emphatic, atmospheric, trippy, ornamental, rhythmic and much else. It all depends on how you play with it – and which delay pedal you use.
- READ MORE: The best pedals for ambient music, from space-warping reverbs to experimental micro-loopers
At its most basic, a delay effect repeats your guitar’s signal, so after you hit the strings, you’ll hear the sound again after a certain delay. You can usually adjust the delay length (the time between repeated sounds), repeats (how long they go on for), and level/mix (how prominent the delay effect is in your overall sound). These settings will take you all the way from rockabilly- or blues-style slapback delay to the massive or chiming sounds of Pink Floyd, U2 and Explosions In The Sky – and to lots of great-sounding places in between.
The best delay pedals vary in how they deliver these capabilities – and also in the additional sounds and controls they offer. For some guitarists, a straightforward ‘utility’ delay will provide plenty of possibilities, while musicians who love this effect will find further possibilities with a delay workstation, or perhaps with a more leftfield delay featuring effects like reversing, space echo or tape emulation. If you need your delay to easily hit a certain tempo in a live setting, you’ll need a digital delay pedal with a tap tempo functionality or input.
In this guide, we’ve rounded up our favourite delays to suit all flavours of guitarist, including fuss-free pedalboard staples from the likes of Boss and MXR, plus some more intricate and obscure examples made by Meris, Strymon and others.
At a glance:
- Our Pick: Boss DM-101
- Best utility delay: Earthquaker Silos
- Best digital delay: Line 6 DL4 MkII
- Best 80s-style delay: Boss SDE-3
- Best workstation delay: Meris LVX
- Best tape emulation: Boss RE-2 & RE-202
- Best MIDI-capable delay: Strymon El-Capistan V2
- Best compact ambient delay: MXR Joshua
- Best tape emulation for stereo: Strymon Volante
- Best compact analogue delay: Electro-Harmonix Nano Deluxe Memory Man
- Best reverse delay: Danelectro Back-Talk
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Our Pick: Boss DM-101
You might associate Boss with digital effects pedals and processors – but with the DM-101 Delay Machine, the effects behemoth has achieved analogue perfection. This pedal brings all the delay gratification most guitarists will ever need, with twelve modulatable delay modes (six of them stereo-compatible), some very good presets, tap tempo and a MIDI input. Such comprehensive functionality is remarkable in an analogue delay.
What’s even more impressive is how this unit sounds. Our reviewer particularly enjoyed the Ambience, Reflect and Pan modes, which respectively sound solo-thickening, rockabilly-ready and expansively spacey. Don’t be put off by the pedal’s plethora of controls – it’s great fun adjusting them to create all sorts of analogue delay sounds.
Need more? Read our Boss DM-101 review.
Best utility delay: Earthquaker Silos
The Silos from Earthquaker Devices does for delay what the same brand’s Ledges pedal did for reverb. It’s simple, to the point, and gives you three good delay sounds – analogue, digital and tape – at an accessible price. There are controls for your delay time (up to one second), repeats, mix/level and preset assignment and navigation, as well as the feature most prized by guitarists who like to play in time: a tap tempo footswitch.
While each of the Silos’ three modes has plenty to offer, the digital mode is perhaps the standout. It has great clarity and subtle filtering when you crank up the repeats, so you can jam along with yourself in a sort of mini-loop.
Need more? Read our Earthquaker Silos review.
Best digital delay: Line 6 DL4 MkII
Building on the era-defining sounds of the widely-stomped original, the DL4 MkII is Line 6’s updated digital delay mega-pedal. This new model is leaner, possibly even greener – and crucially, it marries tried-and-tested sounds with some much-needed modern utility.
As well as giving you almost all of the familiar delay sounds from the classic DL4, the MKII adds fifteen new ones – including an excellent, octave-hopping glitch mode – plus fifteen reverb algorithms for good measure. Its looping ability has been enhanced, now maxing out at a loop time of four minutes, and there’ve been further useful additions including an XLR input and MIDI connectivity. You’ve changed, DL4, but not too much!
Need more? Read our Line 6 DL4 MkII review.
Best 80s-style delay: Boss SDE-3
The SDE-3 is Boss’s compact, contemporary vessel for its legendary 80s rack delays – enabling you to sound like the Edge or Eddie Van Halen, without taking up too much space on the arena (or pub) stage.
Somehow, this pedal is highly practical and user-friendly, despite being gloriously over-the-top in sound and scope. It’s remarkably true to the character of baroque rackmount effects like the Boss SDE-3000, with highly musical delay, and modulation that adds incredible richness and sheen.
Make time to master the offset control, which can add a secondary delay to mould delicate melodies into blooming, mesmeric, textural washes of sound.
Need more? Read our Boss SDE-3 review.
Best workstation delay: Meris LVX
A really good ‘workstation’ delay will give you unbeatable control over the effect, acting more like your personal delay laboratory than a regular pedal. The Meris LVX is a superb example of the type, built around a modular workflow – you can thoroughly edit the delay, preamp, dynamics, filter and modulation – and approachable controls centered around a sleek colour screen.
Its immense adjustability makes the LVX ideal for creating your own ambient delay sounds. The possibilities feel endless, and you’ll hit upon some especially interesting effects by experimenting with combinations of delay, filter and modulation. There’s also an amazing selection of 81 presets, so you can easily start exploring the scope of the LVX’s capabilities as soon as you’ve plugged into it.
Need more? Read our Meris LVX review.
Best tape emulation: Boss RE-2 & RE-202
These two closely related pedals, the RE-2 and the RE-202, are Boss’s latest masterly homages to the classic Roland Space Echo. Whichever model you choose, you’re getting some of the best-loved space echo sounds on this particular planet.
The compact RE-2 brilliantly simulates the wonky sounds of a real space echo unit, with controls for your echo, reverb, tone – and even wow and flutter (the sort of frequency fluctuations you’d often encounter with an analogue tape unit).
We were even more impressed with the larger and more fully-featured RE-202, which can store up to four presets and features a fun ‘Warp’ mode, which instigates infinitely repeating self-oscillation.
Need more? Read our Boss RE-2 & RE-202 review.
Best MIDI-capable delay: Strymon El-Capistan V2
There’s a lot to love about the Strymon El Capistan V2, but its most uniquely brilliant facet is its MIDI capabilities. With a MIDI controller connected, you can easily use MIDI Control Change commands, navigate through presets and sync to a MIDI clock – so your delay will be perfectly in time with other connected effects and instruments.
In terms of sound, this pedal is an up-to-the-minute upgrade on Strymon’s excellent tape echo sim, the original El Capistan. You get some fantastically characterful sounds to explore, with controls to mix in wow and flutter, tape age and spring-style reverb.
Need more? Read our Strymon El-Capistan V2 review.
Best compact ambient delay: MXR Joshua
Compact. Capable. What else would you expect from an MXR pedal? The Joshua – surely named for U2’s delay-drenched album, Under The Joshua Tree – is a pedalboard-friendly cuboid that somehow musters the sort of connoisseurial delay sounds you’d generally expect from a multi-headed, digital mega-rig.
Unlike the rackmount delays that inspired it, the Joshua is simple to use, with six control knobs and two push buttons. The standouts are the division control, which you can use to change the rhythm of the repeats, and the voice control, which blends in some glorious-sounding octaves.
Its rhythmic and melodic capabilities make the MXR Joshua one of those pedals that almost feels like an instrument in its own right – a tool for expressing and developing your musicality.
Need more? Read our MXR Joshua review.
Best tape emulation for stereo: Strymon Volante
The Strymon Volante is one for the echo aficionados, featuring digital drum style echo, tape echo and studio-style reel-to-reel tape delay sounds. It offers a more granular, editable take on tape emulation than competitors such as the Boss RE-2 and RE-202, with a smorgasbord of controls including ‘wear’, spacing, low cut and spring-style reverb. Factoring in its stereo inputs and outputs, USB and MIDI connections too, this pedal is a complex beast – perhaps off-puttingly so, for some users.
Of course, the upside to the Volante’s complexity is that its capabilities are broad, encompassing an incredible span of retro tape echo sounds. Our reviewer was particularly impressed with the drum echo mode, which brings a Gilmour-esque feel with real depth and ambience.
Need more? Read our Strymon Volante review.
Best compact analogue delay: Electro-Harmonix Nano Deluxe Memory Man
The Electro-Harmonix Nano range of petite pedals is packed with little gems – and this Deluxe Memory Man delay might be the most sparkling rock of all.
It certainly makes rock sparkle, featuring all the hallowed sounds of the Deluxe Memory Man big box in a pedal that’s about a quarter of the size. If you’ve used a DMM before, you can probably hear what we’re talking about in your mind’s ear: piquant, sparkling, tone-enhancing delay, with bright, crisp repeats.
Although this Nano pedal is essentially a DMM that’s been through the washing machine at an excessive temperature, it does have a few handy enhancements up its sleeve, including a true/buffered bypass switch, and an increased max. delay time of 550 milliseconds – just over half a second. Our only quibble is that the pedal’s small size and busy layout make it quite fiddly to control.
Need more? Read our Electro-Harmonix Nano Deluxe Memory Man review.
Best reverse delay: Danelectro Back-Talk
We’ll end (or should that be start?) with a fun, vibey pedal that’ll add some colour to your chain. Made by Danelectro, those regents of retro, the Back Talk is a vintage-style reverse delay that soon became a cult classic, after its original release in 1999.
The gritty, relicked mid-century enclosure design of the remodelled and re-released Back Talk wouldn’t look out of place in a Fallout game – but the really cool (and gritty) thing about this pedal is its irascible, iconic, psychedelic sound. If you’re in the market for a dedicated reverse delay, this 10/10 example would be our recommendation.
Need more? Read our Danelectro Back-Talk review.
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