Strymon Deco

Tape: The First Effect

Our journey begins with the early recording studios of the ’50s and ’60s. The introduction of reel-to-reel tape machines and the creative engineers that used them brought on some of the fattest sounds imaginable. These early machines really were the first effect pedals—they just wouldn’t have fit on your pedalboard!

From the inherent warmth and luscious tape saturation—to the forgotten art of how these machines were manipulated—they are capable of creating a huge range of beautiful, distinctive, and enveloping sounds.

Mid-Century Maverick.

Deco brings this original inspiration back, giving you these vintage tape effects from the earliest recording studios, right on your pedalboard.

Deco’s Tape Saturation smooths out your sound with familiar and delicious tape compression and saturation, while fattening it with subtle tape-driven transparent overdrive. The Doubletracker provides the power to shift your sound in many ways, easily allowing you to achieve syrupy slapback tape echoes, psychedelic tape flanging, and gorgeous tape chorusing sounds.

Two Effects in One
Tape Saturation – The “always on” effect.

Give your sound the smooth and warm qualities of analog tape, along with the enhanced touch sensitivity and playing dynamics that are intrinsic to the inner workings of tape machines. Achieve incredible transparency at low levels, with reduced high frequency spikes and a harmonically rich low end. Turn up the Saturation to increase the amount of tape drive, dynamic compression and distortion.

Deco is perfectly suited for a last-in-chain, “always on” sweetening effect. Everything sounds better on tape. Want to push the limits of tape beyond what was originally possible? Use Deco as a tape-style transparent overdrive—crank the Saturation all the way up to “peg the meters” and gently overload the machine’s input.

Doubletracker – Fatten your sound with tape.

Go back to the early days of recording studios, where a few creative audio engineers discovered a new world of augmented sound by pushing the limits of studio tape machines. By inventing automatic doubletracking, they introduced echo, flanging, and chorus to the world of recorded music.

Intensify and widen your sound with Deco’s Doubletracker controls. Turn the Lag Time to obtain classic slapback tape echo, spacious doubletrack chorusing, and mind-bending tape flanging. Add random modulation with the Wobble control and go from very subtle movement to more extreme undulations—just like having a recording engineer vary the speed of the machine.

Features:

Auto-Flange
Press and hold the Doubletracker Bypass footswitch to achieve a recording studio-inspired through-zero flange effect. This engages a “virtual audio engineer” manning the faders and tape reels to create a smooth and predictable through-zero flange experience on the fly. After releasing the footswitch, the controls are smoothly returned to their previous settings.

Wide Stereo Mode
Deco gives you the option for extremely wide stereo imaging to broaden and intensify the sound of your stereo rig. Wide Stereo Mode sends the mono input (summed if using a stereo input) to the Left channel through the ‘Reference Deck’, and to the right channel via the delayed ‘Lag Deck’ to create an adjustable stereo spread. The Blend control acts like a Pan control by adjusting the relative levels of the two tape decks.

Expression Pedal Control
Input allows for the connection of either an expression pedal, external tap, or Favorite switch. Plug in an expression pedal and control any one knob with your foot. Plug in an external tap to tap in your Lag Time. Plug in a Favorite switch to save and recall a favorite preset.

Individual Bypass
Separate bypass footswitches allow you to bypass the Tape Saturation and Doubletracker individually. Your Deco gives you two individual effects in one pedal.

TRS Stereo Input
We know that there are some out there that like to run stereo rigs. This is why we’ve added the option of running the input of your Deco in stereo. Flip a jumper inside your pedal, use a TRS splitter cable, and now you’ve got yourself a stereo input.

Studio Mode
Your Deco is just at home on top of a mixing console as it is on your pedal board. Add the dynamics and warmth of tape saturation to your recorded tracks. Expand the sound of your synths, drums, and even vocals with the Doubletracker. The optional Studio Mode feature tailors the Saturation range to be best suited for hotter input signals. Use with DAWs, mixer inserts, line level synths, or hot effects loops in guitar rigs.

Specifications:

Sound Design

• Detailed recreation of the mechanics and technology of two vintage studio reel-to-reel tape decks and their interactions
• Nuanced sonic delivery of the classic saturation effects of the tape record/playback process
• Simple and intuitive Lag Time knob allows for slapback delays, tape echoes, tape flanging, tape chorusing
• Two Tape Saturation adjustment and tone shaping knobs: Saturation, Level
• Three Doubletracker adjustment and tone shaping knobs: Lag Time, Blend, Wobble
• Three Doubletracker blend types to tailor doubletracked sound: Sum, Invert, Bounce
• Five “hidden” knobs for deep tone tweaking: High Trim, Low Trim, Auto-Flange Time, Wide Stereo Mode, +/- 3dB Boost/Cut
• Press and hold studio-inspired Auto-Flange effect

Ins, Outs, Switches

• High impedance mono input (internal jumper enables selectable TRS stereo input)
• Stereo output
• Two signal routing modes: Standard, Wide Stereo Mode
• Individual Tape Saturation Bypass and Doubletracker Bypass footswitches
• Expression pedal input allows the connection of either an expression pedal (for selectable control over any knob parameter), external tap pedal (for remote time control of Doubletracker), or Favorite switch (to save a Favorite preset)

Audio Quality

• Super low noise, high performance 24-bit 96kHz A/D and D/A converters
• 110db signal to noise
• +8dBu maximum input level easily handles instrument and line signals
• Premium analog front end and output section
• Super high performance SHARC DSP in a compact form factor
• 32-bit floating point processing

Other

• True Bypass (electromechanical relay switching)
• High quality, transparent Analog Buffered Bypass mode
• 9V center negative DC power supply included, 250mA current draw
• Strong and lightweight electroless nickel plated aluminum chassis