EchoFlex Up until recently I've never spent much time using any kind of echo or delay effects in my music. This whole category of effects just seems to have passed me by. But no longer because I now have DC EchoFlex to play with. According to the the documentation EchoFlex is "Based on the famous Echoplex guitar pedal. This tape delay effect was used by some of the most notable guitar players of the 60's and 70's eras". I wasn't around in the 60's, only saw a few years of the 70's and didn't really get into music until the early 80's but Wikipedia assures me that some of the notable users of the Echoplex were the likes of Duane Allman, Chet Atkins, Miles Davis, Eric Johnson, Brian May, Steve Miller, Gary Moore, Jimmy Page, Joe Satriani, Andy Summers and Eddie Van Halen. Yeah, I deleted the names I didn't know from the list... Anyway, in a word EchoFlex is fun. Whether you use it centred or as a ping-pong delay it sounds good. With "Sustain" cranked up to Max you'll be listening to your notes repeating on and on for a good half a minute or so. "Variation" adds in some of the wobble that is typical of tape based delays though you can go over the top with it quite easily. Something the EchoFlex does that you'd never be able to do with an Echoplex is sync it to your host's tempo. However, flicking "Sync" to off gives you up to 1000 milliseconds of delay. Once again everything is clearly laid out, there are no surprises, just a good quality echo unit that is going to be seeing quite a bit of use from now on. From gentle washes of quiet delay to totally wild echoing... noise, EchoFlex pretty much covers it all.
Dimension 3D Finally for this month we have Dimension 3D which is based upon Roland's SDD320 'Dimension-D' effect that dates from the late 70's. If you can even find one to buy these days a good example will set you back a fair amount of cash - the cheapest examples I could find were going from around ÂŁ500 and upwards. So, for less than a tenth of that price you can pick up Don't Crack's version of this famous effect. Dimension 3D is more than a chorus effect but isn't "just" a stereo enhancer. It adds a shine and bigness to your sound that is not so easy to describe. On the interface you have three buttons and one knob. The buttons will flip you between different levels of chorusing whilst the knob will increase, or decrease, the detuning effect. The knob is helpfully labelled "Less" and "More" and, personally, I think that this is one of those effects where less truly is more. Dimension 3D can get quite wild and almost discordant sounding if you turn the knob too far to the right. But back things off a bit and it'll give a beautiful lushness to your sound, pads in particular, that really has to be heard. A final word
them. I've tried them all out but have spent more time with the six that I have looked at so far. I've got 16 to go and it's going to take a while to get a good feel for what each of them can do, so it's certain that you're going to be hearing more from me about these plug-ins. You can grab the downloadable demo from Don't Crack's Tech Support Page at http://www.dontcrack.com/plugins/bu ndle.php?ref=VIP1#downloads The demo plug-ins are limited to 30 minutes of use at a time before needing to be reloaded but none of the controls are disabled so you can give these effects a good work out before dragging out your partner's credit card. The demo download contains all of the plug-ins. Even if you only want to try out one plug-in you get the whole lot in the installer and no real reason not to install them all.
Individual plug-ins retail at $49 or you When, as a reviewer, you get handed can buy the complete bundle for $489 a package of plug-ins like the V.I.P. Bundle your first thought is "Where do - which is still less than a second-hand Echoplex! I start?" Well, I'm working through Formats available are VST, AU and the plug-ins based on how I'm using RTAS. them and how I'm getting to know February 2012
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