"The limit does not exist!"
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination whose boundaries are that of imagination. Your next stop, Québec, Montréal!
Okay, maybe Rod Serling never brought his viewers to the great eastern province, but he surely would've if he had been a fiend for analog delays. We'll never know.
For a pedal that truly pushes boundaries beyond the scope of what you'd normally expect out of an analog delay, look no further than Fish Circuits and their Echo Limiteur. This uncannily futuristic and vintage delay builds out in a way that really starts to make you think that there's an alternate dimension through your wall or that "it's a cookbook." Let's talk about it.
This is the Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Hybrid Analog Delay.
Shop the Fish Circuits Echo Limiter Delay
Keep Fishin'
Introducing the Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Analog Delay
When it comes to truly unique, outside-the-box effects, Fish Circuits is definitely on the shortlist for brands to check out. Their handmade, Québec-originated designs center around charmingly vintage, authentically analog effects made to fire your synapses on classic effect archetypes. See things like their wild-and-out Lunatique fuzz or their dynamically-ducking Astronomie reverb and you'll get the idea before long. However, one model of theirs that seems to truly rise to the top in conversation is their Echo Limiteur hybrid analog delay pedal.
The Echo Limiteur is an analog delay firing on all cylinders – maxing out, stretching its credit, living its best life. Centrally, a unique hybrid analog and digital design utilizes an MN3005 analog delay chip* to summon authentically dark, warm, and degrading delay tones. Hand-in-hand with its analog authenticity, the Echo Limiteur drives its hybrid theory forward with a robust digital control infrastructure that brings its MN3005 chip character to all-new lengths. The Echo Limiteur is an analog delay pedal's analog delay pedal. If the warped, warbling, dim, and degrading repeats of an analog delay float past your head like sheep at night, the Echo Limiteur has something in store for you.
For all you chip nerds
Is There an Echo in Here?
Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Analog Delay Controls and Design
With Fish's Echo Limiteur, we have a robust analog delay pedal working with a couple different gears to switch into accessed by a pretty intuitive and interactive control scheme. Five dials, three switches, and two footswitches make for a pedal deeply playable and exploratory. How about some controls?
Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Analog Delay Controls
- Blend – First, the Echo Limiteur features a dedicated effect wet blend control. This will prove pretty impactful down the line, but for now, know that the Echo Limiteur is exceptionally adept at shaping the presence of its analog delay effect as it runs wild*.
- Echo – The delay repeat time – left for less, right for more. The pedal offers more ways to shape its repeat times, but this will be your main one.
- Swell A and Swell B – Your two analog delay levels. Independent controls for different "Swell" banks mean the Echo Limiteur can be split between a louder delay and a quieter one, and swapped back and forth with its leftmost footswitch. This kind of switching opens up the pedal for more interactive, on-the-fly playability.
- Limit – Probably the biggest bit of the whole chalupa, the Echo Limiteur's "Limit" function is something of the secret weapon behind it all. This control, moving clockwise, increases a limit on the feedback of the analog delay. At its most basic, think of this as an inverse delay feedback amount – left for more, right for less. As we get more in-depth with the Echo Limiteur, this control proves paramount as you work your way through the ways you can limit your delay feedback.
Wink, wink
With its three front switches, the Echo Limiteur truly starts opening up. Let's talk about those.
- Trig – With this switch, the pedal selects which signal triggers its Limit function. "Dry" and "Wet" as you'd expect – either your incoming dry signal will trigger the limiter or the outgoing wet will – with the switch's middle position combining the both of them. These three options change the overall output of the limiter and the playability of the pedal as a whole, so explore boldly!
- Rel – From here, we have a function to play alongside the Limit control and Swell banks. "Release" sets the speed at which the limiter stops limiting, how fast the repeats stop repeating – "Slw" for slowly, "Fst" for quickly, a midpoint for a midpoint between the two. It's here where the unique playability of the Echo Limiteur struts its stuff.
- Rng – Buddy system'd with the Echo delay time control, "Rng" works to set the delay range of the pedal – leftmost for the tightest, snappiest repeats to rightmost for the longest and most runaway. The maximum delay repeat range on the switch's "Hi" setting reaches up towards 1100 milliseconds in total for – you guessed it – a debaucherous degree of delay delinquency.
Boundless, LTD.
Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Analog Delay Tones and Playability
The Echo Limiteur is an incredibly expressive and powerful analog delay – one of the most so in the biz, if you're comfortable with superlatives. Across the Echo Limiteur, we're treated to an unprecedented level of analog delay goodness with captivating detour ramps and places to vacation at every turn. Let's talk about just a few of the lanes we can swerve into with this pedal and the hybrid analog and digital juice it totes.
Adventures in A/B-HittingStarting out slowly, the Echo Limiteur loads in the possibility for a double-headed analog delay. Place your controls at a fairly familiar analog delay wash and set different Swell levels on either dial. This contrast allows for the Echo Limiteur to work seamlessly as a "this-or-that" analog delay for that bit of "always on" magic quickly swappable to self-oscillating, carnivorous, degrading noisiness on the fly and back again.
Seasick SlapbackLike many analog delays of old, the Echo Limiteur works as an excellent, tight, and washy slapback delay. Reel in your delay times and your delay repeats and the effect rounds out your signal in a warbly, analog bubble. Of course, Fish's fixation on bending from tradition means that this is no ordinary slapback. The pedal's inherently bold, lo-fi bordering tones make this a slapback with more alien textures – like a Sun Studios session on Mars.
Exit Out the BackWhat's undeniable in the Echo Limiteur is its power. Get a little over ambitious or inattentive and it won't be long before that supped-up MN3005 makes its everyone else's problem. Believe it or not, the Echo Limiteur is certainly a pedal to get your "Karma Police" self-oscillations going. Roll back the pedal's Blend control to all but make its wild, distorted, decaying self-oscillations a charming undercurrent as you jam on far after the effect has otherwise lost the plot.
Spirit of the RadioMaybe something we haven't quite touched on yet is the Echo Limiteur's analog authenticity. This manifests through the long and winding roads of delay degradation that permeate throughout the mid-to-high settings of the pedal. Something that simply must be experienced (and perhaps is unavoidable at times) is the effect's analog delays that turn distorted, grainy, and distinctly lo-fi like a mids-starved radio signal. These are the kinds of tones that pile up before long in a mountain of lo-fi laundry – enjoy responsibly.
Fish Circuits Echo Limiteur Final Thoughts
Alright, Fish Circuits and the Echo Limiteur. Let's recap.
The Echo Limiteur is an undeniably powerful pedal. Likely a contender for the Analog Delay Heavyweight Champion of the World, the Echo Limiteur makes noise, takes up space, and absolutely has a ball with it all. Fans of analog delays have the obligation to at very least take this effect for a spin to see what can happen when Doc Brown outfits his delay pedal with a flux capacitor. Eighty-eight miles an hour, baby. Totally, the Echo Limiteur is (or should be) a pedal with a reputation to precede it. An alternative, beefed-up take on a classic analog chip with all the modern fixings needed to make its charming character leap off the proverbial page, the Echo Limiteur is a winner on every front.
Analog delay fiends of the world rise up and let the beat go on... and on... and on... and on... and on...
