We compare the Volante with a Catalinbread Belle Epoch and quickly conclude that if slapback was priority one, the Volante wouldn’t shift it off our pedalboard – the Volante is a unit pitched primarily at those who like their delay trails considerably longer than the Brylcreem brigade. No doubt it will all become more predictable after a while, but the learning process will be a load of fun.Īlthough the Volante makes a decent job of slapback echo, we can’t quite get the dirty thickness of tone you hear from real Echoplexes or Copicats. The only real difficulty is that it’s all too easy to get sidetracked, because the Volante keeps taking you off in unexpected and inspiring directions. One minute we’re channelling Hank Marvin in his pomp, then it’s late-era Slowdive before we drift into ambient soundscapes. With four virtual heads and individually adjustable feedback sends, the Volante manages to conjure a seemingly inexhaustible variety of retro-flavoured echo effects. Layering distorted echoes under a clean tone creates an intriguing ambience, and things get even better when reverb is added to the mix. Turning up the record level eases the echo into a smooth and warm style of clipping and you can restore the wet/dry balance by reducing the echo level. One of the Volante’s most appealing characteristics is the way it overdrives. It certainly helps that the pitch modulation is asymmetrical, and sounds all the more natural for it. Mechanics sets the amount of pitch modulation and both controls have a satisfyingly wide and usable operating range. Turn the wear control up and the speed at which the treble content of the repeats degrades increases. The effect of the wear and mechanics controls quickly becomes apparent. Tape mode is somewhere in the middle, sounding a tad less roomy and modulated than drum mode, but less clean than the studio setting. It’s an effect with real depth and ambience that puts us straight into a Gilmour frame of mind. The drum mode sits at the opposite extreme, with repeat distortion increasing as treble degrades and a swirling pitch-shift that feels not unlike a slow Leslie speaker. The differences are fairly subtle, but the studio mode is noticeably cleaner, with minimal degradation in the repeats and very little pitch wobble. In order to assess the three operating modes, we select the third head only, activate feedback, set the repeats to about halfway and then minimise wear and mechanics. Each head output can also be panned individually when using the Volante in stereo.
The output signal from each head can be sent back to the record head, with four switches activating/deactivating the feedback.
#VOLANTE PEDAL FULL#
They can also operate at full or half volume – indicated by green and amber LEDs respectively. There are four virtual-playback heads that can be activated/deactivated individually. All the effects parameters are adjustable from the top panel and footswitches provide tap tempo, sound-on-sound, reverse, pause, splice, and infinite-repeat functions. The new-for-2019 Volante is similarly large, but it offers drum-style echo, along with tape echo and studio-style reel-to-reel tape delay. The TimeLine provides even more sophisticated retro and hi-fi echo effects, with added modulation and filtering in a larger stompbox format. The Brigadier simulates analogue ‘bucket brigade’ delays, while the El Capistan combines tape-echo effects with reverb. There are several well-established delay pedals in Strymon’s product line.
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