[Tim Bowen]

Okay, the Carbon Copy has went along for the ride now at several band and duo live jobs, as well as at a couple of sessions.

On the headroom thing, the quality of tone of the repeats definitely fared better with amps of more substantial headroom than an AC15. To be fair, running an analog delay straight into a low wattage amp without hearing some clipping is not gonna happen, particularly with a delay priced at 150 bucks. Maxon AD-900 and Toneczar Echoczar of course have superior headroom, and the price of admission reflects as much.

The only session over the past couple of weeks that called for me to print any ambience with the track was for a lap steel thing, and I did try the MXR pedal. Unless I'm going for some sort of special effect, I typically want delay to be more felt than heard, regardless of the amount of wet mix. For what I was going for, the MXR imposed itself too much as an 'effect' in interacting with the initial/unaffected notes that I played, so I instead chose to cut with the AD-900.

Live, I've been subbing the Carbon Copy for my trusty old DM-2. The default applications here are slapback and doubling. While I still prefer the DM-2 for such, the MXR has definitely held its own. At last night's show, I set the MXR's delay time for maximum whenever a short delay wasn't needed. On a couple of occasions, I kicked it in on top of the Maxon (both delays set at 600ms), for when I definitely wanted the delay to be 'heard', and this was vibey and effective. And I did do the flying saucer sci-fi noises at one point with the MXR - it's not at all shy in this respect.

In a nutshell, not much new from me in relation to my earlier impressions. I still maintain that the MXR is one of the most impressive bang-for-the-buck boxes that I've encountered in quite some time. To my knowledge, 600ms of true bucket brigade chip analog delay within this size box is an unprecedented format, not to mention the price point. And it definitely sounds cool, vibey, and all that good stuff. For these reasons, I'll be hanging on to mine for while. Can a hardcore analog delay freak *do better*? Sure, but not at this price point, and not within this footprint size.