RSD-10

I use this unit in my effects rig, and though  its sound quality is really terrible, the cool effects you can make with it make it a mainstay of my rig. I do wonder if my unit is defective, a bstock or something, since I got it unopened through ebay a few months ago, and it wsa probably made in 1986. Extremely noisy. I think it has something to do with the input stage, since as a delay it really gets noisy using higher feedback settings. The delay sound is ok, not really good. The strength of this unit is in making strange sounds with the delay, and also the tracking sampler. This delay is very responsive to twekaing the delay time knob- the pitch varies very smoothly and satisfyingly. Very easy to get cascading sounds pitch shifting up and down. Hard to control, but with some practice you can make some very nice sounds with this. Nice meaning nasty. The feedback will go into self oscillation pretty easily, and best to be careful with this as it gets loud, and noisy. But around 2 oclock you can get some very lengthy repeats to tweak with the delay knob. As a sampler its strength is rthat you can take a sample and play it at different pitches by routing an audio signal into the pitch control input. Using a guitar I have to feed my signal into a eq pedal to up the gain and cut all the frequencies above 400 hz. PLus I have to use the bridge pickup on my Gibson Howard Roberts to rack accurately. But doing this I can record a sample into the unit and the sample will follow the pitch fo my guitar as I play. Very cool!! It tracks moderately well, it feels a lot better than using a midi setup. Since any sound can be sampled, I keep around a cd of samples to feed into the unit. Unforunately once you turn off the unti, or switch it into delay mode, the sample is lost. But worth it to have a pitch tracking sampler for guitar. As far as recording a sample, it is actually pretty tricky- tricky enough that I no longer try to do it live, but record a sample before each set to use for that set.

When you first turn it on, playing through sounds distorted and terrible, but after it warms up it sounds ok. I depend on, though if it went out during a gig it woulldn't matte too much, I'd just play without it. I think I will get a backup, though, since they are so cheap to come by.

This is a sampler delay half rack unit from the micro rack series. The front knobs control (delay/sampler) delay/mode, delay time fine/pitch, nothing/playback trim, feedback/overdub, and effect level. Each knob serves two functions, one for the delay, one for the sampler. As a delay it is very easy to use- delay time course and fine, fedback, and level. As a sampler it is a little more complicated, as you have to manually record the sample into memory. There are 2 ways to do this- auto, where incoming audio triggers the record process, and manual, where you trigger it with an external pedal. The rear jacks are in, out, and pitch contorl, these three with 1/4' and rca jacks (mono), trigger, for using a foot pedal, pad for using a drum pad, and bypass, all three 1/4'.

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Making experimental jazz / acid jazz / electronica, I love this unti for its cool features, and hate its sounds quality. I am planning on buying a line 6 echo pro, whose morphing capabilities should put this units delay tweaking sounds to shame. The sampling feature though means that this will always be in my rig.