Strymon El Capistan
For that classic delay with reel-to-reel tape quality and all the advantages of digital flexibility, Strymon's El Capistan brings you wonderful vintage vibe in an innovative, pedal format. El Capistan's dTape technology is based around the SHARC DSP, which recreates sonic characteristics like tape speed, bias, and tape bandwidth. Strymon incorporates these qualities into El Capistan via three different tape head stylings, each with three independent modes, offering you a wide range of tape textures to choose from and manipulate. These flavors of tape range from clean and hi-fi profiles to grungy and worn out sounding.
El Capistan's controls are packed with features for creating unique and incredibly warm textures. Depending on the Tape Head choice, the Time control varies the delay time either by changing the tape speed or changing header position on the tape. Repeats increase the feedback of the delay from one repeat all the way to self oscillation, and Wow & Flutter introduces the wonderful warbly and chorusy tones from older tape. These parameters alone can create amazing depth and lo-fi characteristics for musical vibe and spaced out effects.
What's great about each control is that they all have secondary functions when pressing both foot switches. Further edit the tape quality with the Bias and Crinkle parameters, controlling the headroom and irregularities, respectively, and you can contour the low end and overall signal via the boost/cut knob. A final touch of classic tape echos added is the Spring Reverb control found in the secondary functions under Time. Shaping with secondary functions push your tape sound even further with versatility over how clean or degraded you want your end sound to be.
Determine whether you want the delays to trail off or not when holding the Bypass footswitch on startup, and as well as tapping in the tempo of your delays—the Tap footswitch also maxes out Repeats to infinity when held. Additional footswitching can be routed via the expression input as well as controlling any of the parameters via an expression pedal. El Capistan's I/O not only creates a stereo image at the output stage, but also can be true stereo via a TRS input and switching an internal jumper. With all this versatility in creating unique and expansive vintage delays, Strymon's El Capistan is a brilliant addition for creating sonic depth with any pedalboard.
El Capistan Features
- dTape echo pedal
- Powerful tape echo emulation pedal lets you craft a wide range of classic delay effects
- Tape technology uses the full power of an entire SHARC DSP chip for maximum authenticity
- Choose from 3 tape machine styles: Fixed, Multi, and Single, each with 3 operation modes
- Get extra creative with the onboard sound-on-sound tape looper
- Shape your effect with 10 parameter adjustments on 5 easily accessible knobs
- Fill out your sound with lush and detailed onboard spring reverb
- Take control of any parameter via any standard expression pedal
- Connect a footswitch to instantly recall your favorite preset
- Choose between true-bypass and trails operation
- Dimensions: 4.5" deep x 4" wide x 1.75" tall
- Power Specs: 9V DC Center Negative (PSU included)