Unique tape-style delay

The Danelectro Reel Echo is a digital delay that simulates a tape delay and offers quite a few options to shape the sound. There's a toggle switch to simulate a solid state or a tube preamp and another one to simulate tape warble, and there's a "lo-fi" control to dial in the desired amount of signal decay, from none at all to a very unstable sound that disintegrates almost immediately. With the lo-fi control at minimum and the repeats knob at maximum, the delays will repeat infinitely (without self-oscillation), so the pedal can be used as a micro-looper with loop lengths between 0 and 1.5 seconds, which allows interesting possibilities in conjunction with the sound-on-sound button.

What are the drawbacks? First of all, I'm not a big fan of the footswitches, which haven't aged well. Sometimes they won't register when I step on them and occasionally one of them gets stuck (stepping on them again usually works though). It can also a bit of a disappointment for some that the pedal behaves more like a digital delay than a tape delay when you change the delay time: it will not create the sound of a tape speeding up and slowing down, but it will simply chop up the signal into smaller bits or add breaks to the signal. This can result in interesting effects and be very useful for experiments, but it's not exactly what a tape delay would do, and it also means that you can't create any "space ship" sound effects. Finally, the pedal is big and takes up a fair amount of real estate on your board.

Nevertheless, I like it a lot. It sounds good and sports a unique design with a very intuitive interface, and if you are aware of what it can do and what it can't do, it can be put to uses that other delays cannot offer.

From Gear Setup

One unique delay pedal.

If you want a delay out of the ordinary, this is the right pedal for you. The thing I like the most is the slide control of the ms of delay. It can give very awkward sounding delays or some really warm delays. I don't use de Sound On Sound feature that much, I don't like it. I would have loved a tap tempo instead. That's the only down side I see on this pedal. Maybe the size. It's really big. If you have a small pedalboard, prepare for losing A LOT of space on this guy. Great pedal anyway, lots of possibilities.

Classic Rockabilly Slapback and more

I run 2 Fender Blues Deluxe Reissue amps with this Danelectro Reel Echo, splitting the main signal to the left and the delay signal to the right. It gives me a huge splapback sound that comes as close to Gliff Gallup (Gene Vincent) as it gets.

A real fun pedal

The functionality of this pedal is amazing any type experimental music.