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Maker: digitech.com .
DigiTech TimeBender Review
If you spend a lot of time with your flattop plugged into either an amp or a direct box, chances are you’ve tried a delay pedal at some point. If you haven’t, you may have heard acoustic guitarists such as Monte Montgomery and Phil Keaggy who use delay pedals to create lush tapestries and loops. Some guitarists just engage them to augment a song or two. Either way, if you’re in the market for a new box with a variety of delay types, a looper, and some innovative new twists, the engineering gurus at DigiTech have just unleashed a potent stompbox with processing power usually only found in rack gear. The TimeBender is a dual-pedal unit that—with its ability to, among other things, tweak the tone of your repeats and create “intelligent” arpeggios and harmony-based delays in the correct key—may be just what your inner Keller Williams or Edge ordered.
STANDARD AND UNIQUE CONTROL FUNCTIONS
Housed in a sturdy steel box with a handy, bottom-panel decal outlining some of the trickier functions, the TimeBender puts a four-character LED display front and center to help you suss out its complement of control knobs, which consist of Delay Mode, Delay Time, Repeats, Mix, Voicing, Tone, Modulation, and Pattern. The first four knobs are pretty much what most delay-pedal fans have come to expect, but the latter four are unique and, as their labels imply, are the means of accessing many of the TimeBender’s most innovative features.
A Multiplier button and five small LEDs allow you to quickly select five different rhythms (triplet, eighth note, dotted eighth note, quarter note, or half note) based on the tempo you’ve entered by tapping the Tempo/Memory footswitch—or by holding it down and strumming your tempo on muted strings. This strum-tempo feature is particularly cool for guitarists who can nail a rhythm a lot better with their hands than their feet (we’re not all frustrated drummers). But it gets even better. You can also twist the Pattern knob to “Strum” and hold the Tempo/Memory footswitch down to create a delay pattern based on the exact strumming pattern of, say, that irresistible chorus in your crowd-pleasing rock anthem. The Pattern knob also provides a selection of ten intriguing preset delay patterns, although the little markings around the knob that attempt to explicate what the patterns sound like are nearly impossible to read.
Rounding out the control panel are a Store button, effect-status and Tempo LEDs, and a row of LEDs for tracking which of the four memory slots you’re using. The TimeBender’s six 1 /4
Given the unit’s complexity, the LED readout is one of the TimeBender’s few letdowns when you dive deep to headier features. For instance, having your delayed repeats include a scale-based triad is cool, but when you twist the Voicing control (which intelligently changes the pitch of repeats based on the key you enter by pressing the left-hand pedal and strumming a chord), you’ll likely be stumped by the “LL,” “L,” “H,” and “HH” display readings unless you’ve memorized the manual. But, understandably, DigiTech had to sacrifice something to put the TimeBender in the compact size we six-stringers crave. One other niggle is that the constantly blinking Tempo LED is so bright that it could be a distraction, an impediment to viewing control labels, and/or an unwanted lightshow on a dark stage.
AS VINTAGE OR SCI-FI AS YOU WANT TO BE
Many of the last decade’s pedals have included several flavors of pristine digital delay and even an analog-delay or tape-echo setting or two to please vintage nuts, but the TimeBender is the only stompbox I know of that offers those choices and lets you add an analog flavor to the spacey, modern sounds. The Tone knob allows you to go from clinically clean to analog-like warmth no matter what you’ve set the Delay Type, Voicing, or Pattern knobs to. While I found some of the Voicing settings too out-there or cartoonish for my tastes, in the right hands they could add a powerful element to many a song. Likewise, although the intricacies of some of the Pattern control’s ten repeat selections may be difficult to detect in some arrangements, they could provide a mesmerizing backdrop for tunes with spacious instrumentation. And, even if it’s not as complex or as tweakable as a dedicated delay unit, the Modulation knob enables you to distinguish everything from Moving Head Tape and Variable Speed Tape delay types to reverse delays and trippy, tremolo-like envelope delays with a little shimmer or
As for looping, whether you want to use the TimeBender’s pitch-shifting function to create a bass line or just record some rhythm tracks, it’s a breeze: turn the Delay Type knob to “Looper,” press and release the left pedal, play your ditty, and step on the left pedal again when you’re done. The Mix, Tone, Modulation, and Voicing knobs are still active in Looper mode, and the display even counts down the 20 available seconds so you can wrap up the riff on time. To play the loop back, simply stomp on the right-hand pedal.
UNIQUE, FEATURE-RICH INSPIRATION
The DigiTech TimeBender is a significant step forward in a world of already impressive delay pedals from manufacturers like Line 6, Boss, and others. As with many feature-rich devices, the risk is that you’ll feel like you have to take advantage of everything the TimeBender can do rather than using it to serve the song. But if you can resist the urge to go down the rabbit hole while allotting yourself time to let the TimeBender inspire new sounds and songs, it’s a killer delay pedal.
