MAD PROFESSOR DeepBlueDelay/FAC (Mad Professor) Delay

The Deep Blue Delay (DBD) ambient delay pedal designed by BJF is a natural-sounding digital/analog delay with an analog direct signal path.

- It has a bandwidth similar to that of a classic tape echo unit and can be used either before the amplifier input or in the amplifier's effects loop.
- Since it does not have noise reduction, echo attenuation can be kept as natural as possible.
The direct signal path is short and consists of an analog amplifier with no filtering.
- As long as the input level does not exceed the maximum allowable level, there will be no distortion or thinning of the sound.
The echo signal is filtered to ensure interference-free operation even at extreme settings.

This delay is specifically designed to work flawlessly with distorted tones. This is the most important application, addressing the drawbacks of delay effects, and the pedal can be used pre- or post-distortion. Of course, it works even better with clean sounds, which are less demanding in terms of echo bandwidth and repeat shaping. The tone has been carefully tuned with careful attention to the first critical reflection and how it decays through repeats.

The DBD features basic delay functionality in a compact chassis (69mm wide x 111mm long x 50mm high). Consisting of Delay Time, Delay Level, and Repeat controls, it was designed to function as an ambient delay reminiscent of vintage tape echo. It's easy to set, and the delay time has been deliberately designed to be unimportant. While delay times set to 120ms or more may result in a beat or multiple of a beat, this setting is not necessary to produce a good sound.

In many ways, it doesn't matter what delay medium you use - oil drums, tape, metal wire, analog BBD or digital - the final sound is always set by the limitations of the delay medium and the surrounding circuitry required to create that effect. For Mad Professor, we chose a digital design that's compact, stable, provides reasonable delay times, and where circuit limitations aren't as important. As a result, you can set the surrounding circuitry to your desired bandwidth and distortion level without having to worry too much about the deterministic limitations of the delay medium.

A similar circuit in analog form would be prohibitively expensive to manufacture, and to achieve the same performance would require three or four of the best BBD chips available only as vintage parts, and the pedal would have to be about three times the size of today's pedals.