Red Panda are one of the fierce but cuddly stars of the boutique guitar pedal world. Based in the artistic mecca of Detroit, Michigan, they made some of the coolest effects pedals around – ‘for the experimentally minded’.

If you follow us on Instagram, or have checked out the previous demo vids, you’ll have seen a fair bit of today’s featured beauty: the Red Panda Lab Raster Delay. I’m firmly of the opinion that you have to say the full name just like that to get the full effect: Red Panda Lab Raster Delay. It rolls right off the tongue nicely.

The Red Panda Lab Raster Delay isn’t just a tricked out delay pedal; it’s also got pitch shifting capability built into its feedback loop, to give it that extra special something.

The Looks

The Raster’s design is in keeping with the general look and feel of all of Red Panda’s products: simple, clean, and incredibly ‘tight’. They have a solid, professional aura about them, and give the impression that they can be relied on. These pedals mean business; they know what they’re doing. Trust them, but don’t be fooled by their polished nature – whatever they do.

The Sounds

There’s a good reason that the Raster keeps making appearances in our other videos. Despite performing what are ostensibly two pretty straightforward operations, the output is extremely robust. By that, I mean that the pedal can handle a whole host of strange input signals beautifully, producing some enchantingly curious results, but in an extremely controlled, usable manner. One great (if not slightly weird) combinations is running a TI-83+ calculator running HoustonTracker in there:

As it turns out, the detune delay mode in particular sounds awesome when applied to an analogue synth; almost as if another voice has been added. For an example of that, plus a whole lot of other things (including some drone madness), check out the demo video below:

The Features

20-750ms delay time.

Three different delay modes.

Three different feedback settings.

CV/Expression pedal input.

Standard 9v DC center-negative power supply.

More details – along with some ‘preset’ suggestions – are available in the manual (PDF).

I Want One!

This is probably one of the pedals that has surprised me most, out of of all the ones I’ve tried; initially expecting it to be fairly basic, but quickly realising that it is incredibly versatile. The Raster Delay is awesome for spicing up electronic music, especially when you just need that little bit of edge to make a track come together.

You can find more about Red Panda on their website, but their Facebook is pretty good, and they have a pretty great Instagram account as well.

Grab one from our friends over at FuzzMonster.dk, and see what it’s like for yourself.