The Suhr Discovery Delay Issues a Challenge to all other Analog Delays with its incredibly smart feature set
I love nearly everything about the new Suhr Discovery Analog BBD Delay. It sounds fantastic, and does that smart Chase Bliss Audio thing of Analog Heart with a Digital Control Layer. You can scroll through 127 onboard Presets (via footswitches also) - and through smart filtering and Refine Up/Down controls you can vastly extend the delay time - without experiencing noisy artefacts.
Controls - Preset Select/Edit, Fine Tune Down/Up, Time (ms/BPM), Division : Dotted Eighth/Eighth/Triplet/Quarter/Sixteenth, Hold for BPM, Mix, Time (40ms-1100ms), Regen, Lo Cut, Hit Cut, Speed, Waveform Button : Triangle/Sine/Square, Depth, Bypass Footswitch, Tap-Tempo Footswitch / Hold for Presets.
Features
- All-new revolutionary design
- Engineered on four re-issued versions of the renowned MN3005 bucket-brigade analog-delay chips
- 127 programmable presets onboard
- Delay times of 40ms-1100ms, expandable to 17ms-2000ms & beyond with up/down & division buttons
- Subdivisions include quarter, dotted-eighth, eighth note triplet, eighth note and sixteenth note
- 7-segment display for BPM, milliseconds or preset number
- Classic analog delay warmth with the control to make it your own
- Studio quality tone & features
- Built-in smart Tap-Tempo giving you the ability to nail the tempo
- High & Lo Cut controls to shape the sound of your delay
- Modulation with speed & depth controls
- 3 modulation waveforms to choose from: Triangle, Sine and Square
- Fully programmable digital-control
- Use in ANY set-up with MIDI In & Out/Thru
- Every knob is mappable to an expression pedal
- Custom expression pedal mapping, savable to each preset
- Every parameter can be controlled by MIDI
- Can be used to send patch changes to your other MIDI devices
- Save all of your presets to a SysEx file for back-up or to share
- Switchable true-bypass or buffered-bypass
- Soft clipping limiter for infinite feedback and oscillations
- Kill dry mode for parallel effects loops
- Includes an 18V DC power supply
- Assembled in the USA
- Mono Output
- RRP £549/£549
It's a hugely impressive Analog Delay all-round, and very usable. Ease of use here is a major factor. I was really excited when I first clocked this, but my enthusiasm was somewhat marred when I realised it was Mono output only.
The second half of my pedal-chain is entirely stereo - and in order to replace my mainstay Strymon Volante I obviously need that replacement to have stereo output. So despite hitting pretty much every preference for a delay, it turns out that the Discovery is not quite suitable enough for me! I will have to wait for John Suhr to release the enhanced stereo output V2 version - whenever that might happen.
The Discovery Delay has a superb Form Factor with really intuitive controls - and pretty much everything it does is spot-on - all it needs is a stereo output to get full marks!
I know a lot of my readers were excited about this one - but like me - their enthusiasm may be marred by the mono only output - what do all of you think? Anyone getting one of these?
Demos
12 Degrees of Saturation 2023 Compact Edition
