Vibrating with love and light
On January 15th 2013, a beloved video was uploaded to YouTube. The video, "Trey Anastasio's Phish Guitar Rig – Part 2." Within said video, "TREY: Pedals & Electronics Part 2". A page as of writing viewed more than 300,000 times, with an additional 500,000 counting Part 1, is the most prolific official document of Anastasio's live guitar rig.
Leagues of devoted fans descend upon the comment section attesting to the "comfort watch" quality of the video, watching Anastasio gleam with love for his music-making motherboard. A common theme in the comment section surrounds the commenters' claims to the number of times they've returned to the video – some even on regular schedules.
Among this rig rundown, Anastasio makes reference to a piece of gear that's been with him and his band since the very beginning: the Ibanez DM2000 rackmount digital delay. The unit, occupying a shelf in a shuffle of other early digital rackmount effects, has since come to be known among Phish fans as the "Funk Siren" for its use in unique modulated swelling and ducking delay effects in the band's live sets. Ibanez's early crack at a digital delay effect rackmount cultivated a legendary status among Anastasio and his ravenous fanbase, but had yet to earn a modern successor – until today. Sound the alarms, the Phishheads are in chat.
This is the Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay.
The Siren's Call
Introducing the Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay
Alright, kiddos. We're no strangers to pedal brands giving their spin on a classic effect model with a handful of famous players to shout out. We must admit though, this is a bit of a different beast. Normally, you get the usual rundown of "The ABC Pedal, used by such famous guitarists as X, Y, and Z!"* This isn't precisely the case, here.
With X being clearly the most famous user of the effect
The RK2000 Funk Siren Delay is indeed the first modern pedal interpretation of the Ibanez DM2000 rackmount digital delay. It is a very powerful, very expressive, very interactive delay pedal that anyone is sure to have a blast with. It is also as much of a Phish pedal as you'll probably ever get. It's called the "Funk Siren," after all! With that, we do have to throw it over to one of rock's longest-running, most prolific, Madison Square Garden repeat-visiting, and famously Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-snubbed bands. Praise be.
Straight from Keeley, the RK2000 Funk Siren Delay was designed in collaboration with Trey Anastasio's guitar tech, Justin Stabler, with input from a number of trusted fan sources. The result is a highly compact, playable, intuitive, expressive, and interactive iteration of the DM2000 delay with all the Keeley digital bells and whistles to totally and completely bring the sound to modern players.
Let's get into it.
Bouncing Around the Room
Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay Design and Controls
The RK2000 Funk Siren Delay throws it back to a time in digital effects where a bookshelf-wide slab, a couple thousand bucks, and 12-bit signal processing were the best you were gonna get. But of course, it's the mid-1980s, so that's not bad, but it's a long ways away from the compact, powerful digital effects that you find at your feet, these days. Hindsight is 20/20, we suppose.
This Keeley creation is centered around a conversation between the DM2000's early digital signal processing tone and the off-the-wall playability created by its runaway repeats and unique Hold looping function. Let's talk a few controls, first.
Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay Controls
- Input – The level of your delay, no surprises here. The RK2000 actually has quite a few tricks up its sleeve to set a perfect effect balance, one of which being...
- Blend – A wet effect blend. Playing along with the Input effect level, the RK2000 also features a wet effect signal blend for even closer dialing in of your Funk Siren delays. Warmly welcomed, if you ask us.
- Feedback – Your delay repeat number. Clockwise for more repeats in the trail, counterclockwise for fewer. The RK2000 quickly leans into much longer repeat trails off the bat, so fair warning, but also, buckle up.
- Time – Your delay repeat interval time. Clockwise for longer space between repeats, inverse for inverse. Here, we start to get more into the uniqueness of the RK2000's experience with about a second of maximum delay interval time, but rest assured, the true fun has yet to begin.
As we delve deeper into the RK2000, we start to get more into the DM2000's specific tonal experience that makes Phish fans swoon so. Let's talk about that.
- Depth/Rate – Onboard, one of the things that makes the DM2000 so iconic for Phishheads is its modulation effect section. The RK2000 carries over its predecessor's enormously powerful modulation control with modulation Depth and Rate dials that quickly lean into twisty pitch vibratos.
- Filter – Finally, our array of front-facing knobs is topped off by a two-way filter knob that either introduces a high-pass or low-pass filter. Moving toward the low-pass side, the repeats of the pedal get darker, murkier, more muddied like a classic analog delay. In the opposite direction, repeats get brighter and crisper for more pronounced, digital-style repeats.
The RK2000 finally features two push-button toggles on its front plate. First, the leftmost button swaps the delay's time control to a subdivision control that introduces different rhythmic patterns for your trails to follow. Second, the rightmost button turns the pedal's modulation effect on and off for cleaner, less wonky delay repeats. Easy.
Backwards Down the Number Line
Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay Tones and Playability
With all these controls at the helm – and a few others we'll cover in a minute – the RK2000 Funk Siren sets off. Let's talk about the main attraction of this whole deal, shall we?
The RK2000 Funk Siren Delay features, centrally, a pretty foundational element of playability from the Ibanez DM2000: Its phrase sample looping. Set off playing with your long, warped delay trails and hit that rightmost footswitch. This footswitch engages the pedal's Hold function, where the RK2000 snags a snippet of your delay trail and makes it a loop. The loop will play indefinitely and stop any new signal coming in from delaying. With your loop looping, you're free to jam with yourself, solo to your heart's content and come up with all-new musical phrases on-the-fly. Of course, that's not where the fun stops.
Part of what makes the RK2000 so deep and inspiring in its playability is the ability to change the character of your looping phrase in real time. That's right – fire up a phrase in your Hold loop and turn your sights to the RK2000's Time knob and change the speed of that phrase faster or slower at will. This will likely be many people's first thing to try when they get their TRS expression pedal hooked up to the RK2000 for hands-free delay loop ramping, but more on that later. The ability to latch and jam over your own delay phrase loop to come to all-new musical conclusions is really something to write home about. To make it all happen in such a streamlined way is nothing to sneeze at, either.
Doing the "Funk Siren Thing"If you're of a Phanatic, you can breathe easy as, yes, the RK2000 Funk Siren does the Funk Siren thing. Pushing the RK2000's modulation section toward more drastic pitch swings and putting a little English on your guitar's volume control results in the "Funk Siren" thing – made all the more authentic when you catch your descending repeats in your delay phrase loop.
Beyond the Phish stuff, it's also absolutely worth noting that the RK2000 has plenty for guitar players outside the Phish sphere to enjoy involving its unique modulating delay tone, its runaway feedback trails, and its unique looping playability. The RK2000 delivers on massively expressive digital delay tone that works in plenty of creamy filtered 12-bit digital delays, off-the-wall pitch vibratos, and expansive sonic possibilities.
Vast delay trail horizons quickly offer opportunities for ambient-leaning delay landscapes that experimental, soundscaping guitarists are sure to find a home in before long. Alternatively, the RK2000's authentic vintage delay 12-bit signal processing and rhythmic delay trail range easily drops players into U2-style, multi-tap adjacent delays for those kind of galloping single-note phrases that become a symphony all their own. In short, the RK2000 is on no shortage of other exciting delay effect things to do.
You Enjoy Myself
Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay Further Functions
Keeley Electronics reminds us with the RK2000 about how they are solidly among the best in the game when it comes to digital control, playability, and expansion. Like so many of their other more recent pedals, Keeley's RK2000 is loaded with powerful, seamless digital control connections for making the pedal a central part of your rig – and do it without headaches. Let's talk about a few of those functions.
- Expression Control – One of the things that many digital delay fiends are sure to run to immediately with the RK2000 is its multi-function TRS expression connections. Two 1/4" connections allow for controls to be broken out to TRS expression pedal, expression switch, and MIDI control devices. Either an external expression footswitch for extra tap control or an expression pedal for hands-off, speed-based ramping over most of the RK200's primary effect parameters can be used. Those with a favorite expression controller will have a field day, no doubt.
- MIDI Control – Alongside the pedal's expression control functions, the RK2000 introduces onboard MIDI control functions via one of the 1/4" expression connections. If your rig is more desktop-based or is looking more like an alien motherboard these days, Keeley has you covered there, too.
- Preset Banks – Matching the vastness of its digital powers, the RK2000 features five onboard player-programmable preset slots for saving your favorite effect parameter configurations. Get one hundred more preset slots via the pedal's MIDI connection control, too!
- Stereo Routing – Part of what makes the RK2000 stage-ready is its full stereo routing. Two 1/4" input and output connections mean the pedal is easy to send out to two amps – especially useful for the pedal's onboard ping-pong stereo sounds.
Keeley Electronics RK2000 Funk Siren Delay Final Thoughts
For fans of digital delays, single-pedal ambient musicmaking, or the Phish Iceberg, the RK2000 will surely not let you down. A compact, streamlined, and intuitive interpretation of one early, famous digital device, Keeley's knack for fitting it all under two footswitches and keeping it legible from a playability standpoint translates clearly. The RK2000's expansive, inspiring tone and musicality is unencumbered and streamlined for an excellent design interpretation that allows it to shine brightly. How sweet it is.
