The Watering Hole

Arrived today, I made an offer on ebay and got it for $190 shipped.  The best delay/looper I've ever owned.  It's not an analog delay and the analog delay emulations are not as dirty and hairy as the EH Memory Boy Deluxe, or the (analog) Memory Man.  But in all other ways it's a vastly superior pedal.  The included delays are gorgeous, with nice character, none of the sterility I associate with digital, and really nice modeling.  My favorites are dark and modulated, but the Space Echo model is a real winner, as are the tape echo, the tube echo, the lofi, and all the modulated delays.  The reverse delay plays back at you in a nice way.  A couple of the toneprints I've tried are awesome too, and it's got 4 slots for them.  The TonePrint feature is killer... nothing better than downloading and auditioning a new delay model on the fly with my iPhone, and there's something really retro-futuristic about holding the phone up to the guitar pickup and playing a bunch of beeps and screeches into the pedal.

There are several features on this pedal that make it totally killer.  One is the tap tempo has a dedicated footswitch... this was a real downside on the original X4, which required you to hold the footswitch and strum the tempo--and also muted the friggin sound while you did it.  Much cooler to just tap.  There are three presets you can set which is killer--no more hunting for your favorite knob settings, all you have to do is tap the tempo on your favorite patch. But the best thing ever is the looper... it's got a dedicated volume knob, and something I didn't know, is you can still use the delays with the looper (smaller model didn'd do that).  So you can set the overall level that the loops play at in and still have your out front lead volume.  And you can switch delays, change delay level and feedback, record a pass, switch again, record another pass... totally cool and useful.  No tap tempo in the looper mode (the tap tempo mode becomes an undo/redo switch, which is again a fantastic feature for when you totally blow it... just undo a record pass).  Like the smaller X4, the looping is phenomenally easy.  My first loop was perfectly in time.  The layering is nice, the undo/redo feature is nice, and there's a "play once" feature if you want the loop to stop at the end. You can play or stop the loop, then kick it back in.  

Link is the second loop I did... I decided I had to record one after my first one worked out.  Caveats, I am at home, this is my practice amp, and I recorded it with my iPhone.  Excuse the sloppy playing too... but this gives an idea of how seamlessly and in-time it loops, and how the different delays can work together--I switch through a couple different models here too. Sorry it's unedited, and it's an m4a, like I said, recorded on iPhone...

http://www.chargermusic.com/audio/dl/fb_x4.m4a

The only con of this pedal is the size.  It's friggin huge!  But solid as heck. Also has a buffered output mode that you can switch on an internal DIP--this lets the delay repeats trail after you switch off the effect.  Another internal DIP sets it to 100% wet, if you want to use it as a send effect or blend it with a parallel loop.  Oh and almost forgot, in true bypass mode, your unaffected guitar tone goes through completely pure--not through digital converters, but on an alternate unaffected, unconverted path. So only the delayed repeats and the looper go through the digital section.

cool clip! there something about looping... brings out some great things. kinda like going into controlled self-oscillation with yourself. :)

what's the deal with the toneprint feature? is it like the delay equivalent of IRs? can I make toneprints? how are they loaded into the unit? (you mentioned playing them through the guitar? is that the only way?)

That's a great pedal.  I like my Flashback so much I have considered upgrading for the presets and additional features.  

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you didn't mention my favorite delay model, the 2290.  That thing is pristine.  Some like it dirty.   :)

Super cool.

ironsheep — Mar 12, 2013cool clip! there something about looping... brings out some great things. kinda like going into controlled self-oscillation with yourself. :)

what's the deal with the toneprint feature? is it like the delay equivalent of IRs? can I make toneprints? how are they loaded into the unit? (you mentioned playing them through the guitar? is that the only way?)

The toneprint thing is cool.  There are a whole bunch of "models" out there on TC's site for whatever your pedal is... reverb, delay, etc.  So for example, more modulation on the delay, more distortion, darker repeats, I think the toneprint also defines the range of the pots... essentially it's a new delay model, so for this pedal, 4 delays that you can control.  Yes, you can load them in via an executable file for Windows or Mac... the pedals all have USB connections. But the app is way easier... for one thing, the files are super small on the phone, it takes a couple seconds from picking one to it installing.  The executables (at least for Windows) seem very large, probably because there's a whole executable included with the settings file... 2+MB per download.  Kind of annoying to clutter up the system with them when I might not even like the file... way faster in my process to just beam it in via phone (Android, iOS device) and then if I don't like it grab another one and try again.

So here's the downside, and many people have complained about this.  The toneprints are all done by "famous" artists, some of whom do one toneprint and then are done (read: contractual obligation appearance for free pedal).  There's no guarantee that an "artist" is going to make something cool.  I've tried about 15 toneprints and liked maybe half of them.  There are an awful lot of variations on the exact same theme... "a clean delay for me to solo with" etc.  There aren't that many weird, trippy delays.  However, there are a few.  But the biggest peeve of toneprints is that TC controls the software, and home musicians can't make them for themselves.  Only famous people can make them.  What I wouldn't give to be able to build my own friggin delays!  And they won't let us.  Of course, this is kind of like crying because they only gave us a couple hundred free options--never mind that most companies give you nothing like this at all.  It's a legitimate argument but more than overshadowed by the fact that you basically get to change the sounds on your pedal indefinitely.  And I have to believe it's only a matter of time... in a year or two, if the competition heats up, they'll release an editor.

Just so you know, I got an email the other day that the program is out for us to make our own toneprints.  I'll see if I can find that for you.

Holy shit! You're right!  Apparently it's going to be released "soon".  I guess that ends that gripe...

http://www.tcelectronic.com/toneprint-editor/

yeehaa.   I love the Flashback, but the features of the X4 are a compelling upgrade.. hmmm  

Oh, and the other downside... no self-oscillation.  I guess it doesn't sound as good with digital delay as it does with analog, but I am a huge fan of self-oscillation, I get whole soundscapes out of the EH MBD just with self-oscillation.  Maybe the toneprint editor will allow it!

{edit} just realized that the cheapo GFS digital delay we have (which sounds great, btw) and its parent devices, the Biyang pedals, do both self-oscillation AND ramp pitch up and down as you sweep the delay time knobs... so clearly it can be done in digital and sound pretty convincing...

DreamTheaterRules — Mar 12, 2013yeehaa.   I love the Flashback, but the features of the X4 are a compelling upgrade.. hmmm  

I thought the audio tapping feature was going to be a lot cooler than it ended up being.  I jam a lot, and we change tempo or tempo creep constantly... the fact that I have to hold the pedal down and wait 5 seconds while my audio mutes was a real buzzkill.  It's still the cheapest "tap tempo" delay I've bought, and I got it used for $90, the feature set at that price was awesome.  But the tap tempo turned out to be not very useful to me...

Having that tap tempo button, that alone is a huge upgrade.

Okay, the X4 is cooler than I thought.  I spent about two hours just trying stuff out over the last two nights, and found out a few things. First, it's very, for lack of a better word, musical. I compared it to a bunch of other delay pedals and for pure musicality, the only thing that beat it for pure killer sounds and washes was the Deluxe Memory Boy.  But with the looper on the X4, and the ability to get clean delays and not just lo-fi analog tones, it's just about as indispensable.  I discovered that it does have self-oscillation... and it is actually very cool.  Where an analog delay can get insane quickly as the bucket brigade chips lose their shit, the X4 has different levels of oscillation depending on the patch.  For some (tube, tape, analog variants) at full feedback, it self-oscillates, but it doesn't build into a huge wall of noise, it just starts to take on this life of its own, melding into a sort of harmonious wash that never gets out of control.  The space echo sim does do the real self-oscillation thing like an analog pedal--it gets into oscillation at around 3 o-clock, and gets into analog-style mad sheets of chaos above that.  Those were the 4 or 5 models that I found did it best.  The coolest part, get it into self-oscillation, make a nice bed of sound, and then switch over to the looper, grab a chunk of it... that way leads to nirvana.

I got the beta editor for toneprints but only spent about ten minutes with it so far... looks promising, lets you do some cool things like add three parameters to a knob, and control the low and high limits and the response curve for those knobs. Also lets you audition as you work. Can't save toneprints to files on the system, only directly into the toneprint slots.  But I'm more than happy, as now I've resolved every issue I had with it.  I still would be stoked if there were a couple more subdivisions on the tapping... it's got quarter, dotted eighth, and a third that does two taps at an 8th and a quarter... but the DMB has quarter, eight, dotted 8th, quarter triplet, 8th triplet, and 16th notes... And of course the DMB has much higher oscillation, and slows or speeds repeats as you change delay time... but they are not mutually exclusive...