Strymon Deco

It's often said that gear will never make you sound better than you are. It's all in the fingers. And this is true, the one and only exception I've ever come across being the Strymon Deco.

I mainly use the left side, adding saturation to edgy cleans, and it really does make me sound better than I am. The harmonic richness the pedal adds is subtle, but amazing. Switch it off, and you notice it's gone. Then your foot goes back down and switches it back on again, perhaps to never switch it off.

The way I'd put it is that a nicely dialed-in guitar without it probably gives me a thrill 90% of the time, but then I hear the odd chord or note where the tone sounds too bright, or too dull. Switch on the Strymon and the 90% that was already good sounds better and most of the 10% I didn't like is gone.

There's lots to play with on the right hand side as well, but to be honest, edge of breakup cleans are mostly what I want, so I sometimes use the right hand side as a chorus, which is nice in that it's a good chorus that saves me an extra pedal.

The chief con is the price. I would say it's worth it in terms of the value it adds, but it is expensive.

I waited a while to write this review to gain some experience and use out of the Deco. At this point, after 9 months of regular use, I'm still very happy with the pedal.

It sounds GREAT - the delay is warm and really captures the sound of a great, short tape delay. The modulation features really bring the delays alive. I use it live to double my acoustic guitars to thicken them up a little, and the using the favorite switch feature (you can build your own switch much cheaper than what the Strymon one costs), I switch it to a slapback echo for use with my electric.

The tape saturation feature is also great - at mild settings it adds a subtle texture to the tone that makes verything sound better - I even use it on my acoustics. Cranked up you get a fuzz sound which is odd but useful on occasion.

The chorus and flange sounds from the unit are also great! I love the auto-flange feature that you can kick in by holding down the bypass button and use it live ocassionally.

Highly recommended.

I bought this pedal primarily for it's tape doubling capabilities in a home studio environment. When run in a stereo setup this pedal delivers fantastic sound quality and can do a ton of different tape effects - from a slight fattening up of the tone, to tape chorusing, slap-back delays and even a limited tape delay.

The quality of this doubling is much better than other similar products I've tried, although perhaps a bit more subtle as well. Perhaps that's the actual reason for it's success though.

The other side of the pedal, the tape saturation emulation, also works really well. I don't think it can really be used as an actual overdrive, but post-amp it adds a very nice grit and smoothness to the tone.

I would have preferred if it came with support for stereo input through two TS connections, but with the right adapters and an internal dip switch you can make it accept a stereo input signal through a single TRS cable.

Some will find this a bit expensive for its subtle effect, but if you understand what you're buying and are willing to pay the price I don't think you'll find it any better!

This is a very singular pedal, with a likely small target audience. It's not supposed to be a tape delay/echo,chorus/flange/etc, even though it does those things. It's supposed to literally be the tape deck itself, allowing the user to employ the aforementioned studio techniques to get all those classic sounds. I use it as a combined drive/echo pedal, giving me two effects in one box. I bought it specifically for use with a group that's heavily influenced by very old music, so didn't want effects that sounded any later than the 70s and this did the job perfectly. The tape saturation sounds fantastic, I use it just to push my clean guitar over the edge on certain songs. The echo is also great, though some might prefer to use it for a slapback or chorus/flanger. If you have the money and are into old school tones, this is a must-try pedal.

This pedal is much more useful than you might expect:

The saturation / compression side allows for everything from a slight harmonic boost to a full overdrive. As an added bonus, it can act as a clean boost using the output level control. I leave it on and dial the saturation between slight and high depending on the tone I want.

The tape delay side gives lovely single delay effects, but can also produce flange and chorus as well as a very fast slapback delay, all by changing the offset between the two virtual tape decks. A wobble control introduces a bit of random noise, so you can use this to just subtly thicken your sound, or as a full on delay pedal (only a single delay, but often that's enough).

Build quality is what you'd expect at this price, it's worth noting that you'll need a decent high current power supply if you're adding this to a board, I was trying to run this and an Eventide H9 off a Voodoo labs ISO5 and it can't do both - if you don't give enough juice you get an unpleasant hum from the Deco.

This is the only pedal I'll take to jam sessions, it can make pretty much any amp come alive (and I've played on some real shockers), and the option to put a time related effect on, quickly and easily, is fantastic. So, simple on first appearance, but capable of a lot of very powerful sound enhancement.

Bought the Deco innitialy to sensibly create a stereo image, switching to doubliing effect on the favorite in my guitarrig, as an always on effect,
I discovered the real power of the deco since I put it in an aux of the FoH mixingdesk (my "daytime" job), Try using a slightl woblng chorus-setting to your rev send ( pre-fader). mixing the deco-signal to taste.
I tend to keep the deco returnn at low levels, in favor of being able to ad delay through another unit. Does work also with longer time-settings, though the deco hets more audible. REMINDER: Switch the deco to studio-levels if using it in this way (page 9 / manual)

This pedal probably isn't everyone's idea of a worthwhile investment. It is expensive and you will find other, similar effects elsewhere; although maybe not in one, high quality machine like this. Personally, for recording, I can see myself using this most of the time. It's great for splitting a mono guitar signal into stereo and the sounds it can produce, from subtle, velvety saturation to fairly extreme and unique flange and chorus sounds (and a lot in between) also with some short one or two repeat echo, are luxurious in texture. A high quality pedal with a plenty of versatility.