Delay "Shelving" For Tone Enhancement

[dickbanks]

Has anyone tried John Dale's "delay shelving" technique on a Helix? He calls it a "filter mod." His technique

is for the Yamaha THR10 mini-amp, and I tried it on my THR10C (the bluesy, classic rock version of that same amp) and it is amazing on that amp. Really kills a lot of the "transistor sound," and produces more of a "tube sound." Like always, not exactly a tube sound, but really close...

I tried it today with my Strat (Fender N4 pickups) and Helix, with the WhoWatt 100 Amp/Cab and Transistor Tape Delay selected, using various very short (0.8 ms) delay, ~70% feedback, ~50 mix, and got basically the same results. Delay before amp, after amp, cascaded delays, with/without distortion, experimenting like that.

It sounds to me to be better than "EQ shelving," because it sounds like there are still some high freq harmonics coming through, along with the "thicker sound." I always hate giving up the Strat "quack" for thicker tone, and this method seems to produce both. It's like I have much heavier strings--my actual strings are 9-11.5-15-26-32-38, so really very light.

I have to be honest though, I can never trust my ears much for this sort of thing--too many years around jet engines. But it does sound good to me. Cascading delays in this way produces lots of other effects of course, like phasing, flanger, Roto-Vibe, etc, but that's what all of these are anyway, just various modulated delays. This single tape delay, however seems to produce a "string-thickening" effect...

I feel foolish posting this--I can't be the first on this forum to try this, but I could find no post that discusses this technique. So if there are relevant posts, I will humbly apologize and join that thread...

[shanecgriffo]

i remember using something like this when the line 6 xtlive came out, someone had posted it in a forum, but it was the sort of thing i used for a while but then prefered the crispness of an unaltered signal. sadly something is wrong with my internet here and the video wont currently play so i can't check whether it was the same processing idea but sounds similar.

[dickbanks]

Sounds pretty good to me, but like I said before--I'm the last player you should trust for how something "sounds." It's nice that, at least with the Helix, you don't have to give up your one delay, you can just run multiple instances of them in series (or parallel). When I tried 2 or 3 in parallel, trying to get an even heavier tone, I started getting the other effects instead, like flanger, phaser, etc. Makes sense--the delay feedback of the second delay will be out of phase from the first.

[jimbojamz]

What exactly is that -  Delay shelving?

[dickbanks]

What I know of it is in the video above.

[Thurston9]

I don't understand, unless I missed something there is no explanation in the video.

[tagmusenmagnus1]

I don't understand, unless I missed something there is no explanation in the video.

You're not alone... I dont have a clue..

[metalplated]

So digital eq is nothing more then delay networks. Reverb is a bunch of short delays as well. the human ear perceives very short delays as eq changes or frequency cancellations. Short as in the 1 to120 sample range @ say 96k sample rate. That would translate to fractions of a second, micro to mille but I don't have the equation in front of me to be exact. By using those small delay times he is creating reverb that is also shelving the high end as well. All eq's in the box work on this principal. extremely short delay's are heard as eq changes and the further out the delay time is increased we get to a point where it is perceived as early reflections. By cascading a bunch of delay's with very short delay times, as short as you can make them. This is called an FIR filter.

[Thurston9]

Maybe OP meant this video? I haven't watched it all yet but he explains it here:

 

[johnonguitar]

Basically Yamaha lollipoped up by not including a hi cut filter