In a sea of delay pedals that promise warmth and analog character, few deliver like the SIB Echodrive. This early-2000s sleeper hit from SIB Electronics doesn't just emulate the vibe of vintage gear—it lived it.
Packing a real 12AX7 tube in its preamp stage and combining it with analog BBD delay lines, the Echodrive produces lush, blooming repeats with the kind of harmonic richness and soft clipping that gearheads now pay thousands to attain.
But is it worth it?
Can one really justify spending over $1,000—or even over $2,000, which the rarer Disaster Drive variant has fetched—on a delay pedal that originally sold for a few hundred bucks?
For certain type of player or studio head, the answer is a resounding yes: boutique build, small-batch obscurity, tube-driven saturation, and a sound that doesn’t really exist anywhere else—what more could you ask for?
In this video, we got Joe Shadid in the studio to take a closer look and listen, explore what makes the SIB Echodrive such a cult favorite, and break down how a relatively unknown brand built one of the most coveted analog delays on the market.