Full Bucket Music has released the FB Brigade Delay effect for Windows which emulates the tone and features of classic analog delay hardware models.
The company’s Nabla synthesizer apparently contained the code for this delay, and the authors thought it was decent enough for a stand-alone release. Currently, it is only available for Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) as VST plugin, so us Mac OS based users will have to wait for a compatible release.
The term “Bucket Brigade” refers to the original devices commonly found in guitar effect pedals which consisted of an array of capacitors. Each capacitor represented one unit of time, and the signal would move through the unit at a chosen frequency. What this means from a musical perspective is that each delay repeat gets a little more low-passed and distorted as it moves through the circuitry… so don’t expect a clean sound from this.
There is also a setting for a parameter called “quality control” which may let you dial in how much of this colored analog tone you want to add to the signal on the output. The provided LFO modulation control can be used to add a bit of chorus, flanging or phasing to the processed signal. Another feature I really appreciate about this delay is that no audible artifacts are generated when switching between delay times. Even my favorite delay plug-in, the Waves H-Delay, creates tape-like pitch effects when you automate or change the delay time without stopping playback first.
According to Full Bucket Music, the Full Bucket Brigade Delay was coded in native C++ which translates to a very light CPU load and good reliability overall. Here’s hoping that a Mac version will become available at some point in the future.
FB Brigade Delay is available for free download via Full Bucket Music (513 KB download size, ZIP archive, 32-bit & 64-bit VST plugin format for Windows).
Last Updated on January 24, 2017 by Tomislav Zlatic.
