Strymon El Capistan

Best delay ever

Best delay ever, using it for bass and synths.

Warm delay sound

Yes Strymon are expensive but the sound quality is fantastic. Secondary function of a Spring reverb is very useful. Also, sounds great as a standalone pedal.

Quite expensive for what it does

It sounds great, let's get that out of the way first. However, for the price there are better and more feature rich offerings (such as the Walrus Audio Mako D1). For the price, it's a bit disappointing.

The best tape echo emulation there is...

If you are looking for authentic tape echo emulation, look no further. I stopped using real tape echo after getting this.

Tremendous

Got this to replace my memory man. Beautiful lush delays, covers a lot of sonic territory, sound and build quality is terrific.

Recommended

Really nice tape delay, totally love the sound!

Nevertheless, it has a bit of room for improvement:

- Tapping the tempo will stop the delay sound. This is a bit annoying if I want to change or correct the tempo in the middle of a song

- As I mostly use it with synths, an option to sync via midi would also be useful

- Too bad it's not true stereo (as far as I know, if you use the stereo input option, the channels will get summed... correct me if I'm wrong)

The best tape delay emulation ever made

The best tape delay emulation ever made. I owned many genuine tape echoea. Sweet sounding but not reliable... When I bought the El Capistan I still had the Roland Echo Chorus RE-501 tape machine. The El Capistan was good enough to say bye to Roland.

A very good product with a remark

This product is for sure great in all aspects BUT...

The sound remains a bit cold overall in my opinion. Maybe it has to do with the internal eq of this pedal. I play mainly Jazz related music and the sound I am able to obtain so far is more fitting a more modern-jazz/ contemporary sound. It sounds good on my ES-335 in that context but on my hollow-body Sadowsky guitar it doesn't do favor to the guitar.

I have used several similar compatible pedals over the years and could somehow get a more warm sound out of them. I am still looking for that 'sweet spot' after 1 year and haven't found it yet.

I'd say that this is perfect for a studio musician. If you are looking to add some warmth to your personal sound, I'd compare this pedal with other products.

I rate it 5 stars because of it's 'perfection' but if I was the manufacturer, I'd look for some options to warm up the sound, to make it suitable for a wider range of guitars.

Hassle-free tape sounds

The Strymon produces convincing tape tones, but without all the hassle that comes with an actual tape machine.

I had basically narrowed my choices to this Strymon and the Catalinbread Belle Epoch Deluxe. I preferred El Capistan for two reasons. Firstly, the Strymon does NOT include an EP3-like preamp. For me this was an advantage, since it means that you can use a separate Echoplex to colour your sound even if the delay is off.

Secondly, the ability to shape the sound is amazing. The El Capistan can convincingly recreate a new, brighter tape or an old and darker tape. And with much less maintenance and more consistency than real tape. Add options to mimic an imperfect tape or dirty machine, and this pedal certainly doesn’t sound sterile or "digital". I’ve never used actual tape, but owning this, I don’t feel the need to try either.

The many knobs and settings do take some time to get used to, but Strymon provides a detailed manual with examples settings to help you get started and understand what each dial is used for and how they interact.

Best tape delay outside of the real thing!

I used to own a Roland RE-501 but sold it as I didn't want to deal with maintenance. I'd tried the BOSS RE-20 before but it wasn't convincing me, but this pedal has a real charm to it. The Wow an Flutter control is especially nice and the Spring Reverb, while hidden as a secondary function sounds good too. I love using this with my analog synths together with my BigSky.