Popular pedal purveyors Strymon have announced the release of the Volante Magnetic Echo Machine. This pedal features powerful emulations of multiple types of delay—including drum echo, tape echo, and reel-to-reel echo—along with onboard spring reverb and looping functionalities.
By combining the features of iconic delays units of the past like the Binson Echorec and Maestro Echoplex line, the Volante offers an immediate pathway to the studio textures of Pink Floyd, Radiohead, and countless other guitar tone titans. If you can think of a classic delay part generated by any artist in the '60s and '70s, the Volante promises to unlock all these tones and more using Strymon's widely celebrated delay algorithms and a suite of hands-on controls.
Apart from the core emulations of its selectable drum, tape, and studio delay settings, the Volante packs a number of other features to capture the magic of its analog antecedents. The pedal is based around a "multi-head" layout which allows you to control the level and feedback for each of four individual tape heads for an exceptionally detailed and realistic tape experience. A Record Level knob can increase the gain of the JFET preamp for a wide range of organic-sounding saturation tones, much like the fabled preamp section of the EP-3 Echoplex.
Also onboard you'll find controls for variable head spacing, panning for each tape head, three speed settings for the playback of the delay media, and a "wear" knob to control the amount of noise and saturation on the delay track. This being a Strymon pedal, you'll also find stereo ins and outs, MIDI and USB ports, and selectable Instrument and Line input settings on the back of the box.
The Volante will be shipping soon and will carry a street price of $399 USD. Take a look below for a video tour of the new pedal from designer Pete Celi and complete specs from Strymon.
Sound Design
- Multi-head magnetic media delay machine providing four playback heads with individual feedback, panning, and level controls
- Processor-intense algorithms deliver meticulously nuanced recreations of vintage magnetic echo systems (drum echo, tape echo, studio reel-to-reel echo)
- Dedicated control over echo machine tone and media: Low Cut, Mechanics, Wear
- Input Record Level for clean reproduction to warm, fat saturation
- Independent Spring Reverb
- Sound on Sound looping mode with reverse, pause, splice, and infinite repeat functions
Ins, Outs, Switches
- High impedance stereo input
- Stereo output
- Input Level switch allows for both instrument and line level signals
- On, Favorite, and Tap Tempo footswitches
- Expression pedal input allows the connection of an expression pedal, external tap pedal, 1/4" to MIDI cable, or MultiSwitch Plus.
- Full featured MIDI in/out supporting MIDI CCs, program changes, and more
- USB jack for controlling MIDI via computer
Audio Quality
- Analog dry path for a zero latency dry signal that is never converted to digital
- Premium JFET analog front end
- Ultra low noise, high performance 24-bit 96kHz A/D and D/A converters provide uncompromising audio quality
- Super high performance SHARC DSP
- 32-bit floating point processing
- 20Hz to 20kHz frequency response
- Audio Input Impedance: 1M Ohm
- Audio Output Impedance: 100 Ohm
More
- True Bypass (electromechanical relay switching) or selectable transparent Analog Buffered Bypass
- Strong and lightweight anodized olive green aluminum chassis
- 9V DC power supply included
- Power requirements: maximum 9 volts DC center-negative, with a minimum of 300mA of current
- Dimensions: 4.5" deep x 7" wide x 1.75" tall (114.3 mm x 177.3 mm x 44.5 mm)
- Designed and built in the USA