You’d get all these layers of really different-sounding things that were all happening at the same time. You could also change the speed and pitch of a recorded loop, then put the delay back into record, overdub something else at regular pitch, then loop that and manipulate it by changing speeds or reversing it-and continue doing that indefinitely. But there was also a control that changed the speed as if there were multiple tape heads spaced in different increments, and that would subdivide the speed into some sort of mathematical one-into-two, two-into-four, four-into-eight, and so on, which produced really dramatic effects. One control changed the playback speed gradually, raising or lowering the pitch by small amounts. I felt like I had been waiting for it my entire life.įor one thing, there were two ways to change the speed of the loop playback once you had something recorded. He bought one when they first came out, and when he showed it to me I just plugged in and instantly got sucked into it. The late Robert Quine was a good friend of mine, and we used to have these crazy jam sessions. How did you first cross paths with the 16-Second Delay?

When that died I got a Boss DM-1 Delay Machine pedal that looked a little like a flying saucer, followed by a huge rack-mounted Yamaha analog delay. I believe my first delay was a Univox tape echo, which recorded onto a cassette and was sort of a poor man’s Roland Space Echo. Did you have other delay devices before that? You are considered by many to be the master of the Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delay, which you used extensively early in your career.

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