Quebec's Fairfield Circuitry is known for artfully squeezing every last drop of dirty, creative potential from an analog circuit, and the company's Meet Maude analog delay is a perfect example of the peculiar niche the company has carved out for itself. Maude's design is much more refined and devious than a simple BBD delay with less filtering. It incorporates switchable random modulation and compression circuits to emulate a tape echo run amok, and it has a tone knob for making the repeats brash and distinct, dark and a little moldy, or somewhere in between. It even has a CV control jack that can be set up for expression pedal control of time or feedback, or as an external effect loop, depending on the settings of its internal switches. These features lend Maude incredible potential for making all sorts of grimy delay tones, otherworldly squeals, low-frequency burps, washed-out moon landing oscillations, and whatever else the aural sculptor manning her controls might dream up. Fairfield's Meet Maude also does a nice, standard analog delay tone, but that almost seems to be a waste of its many talents.

read more…