Nels Cline & EHX 16 Second Delay (Looping/Delay Question)

eric_

Member
I was watching a video of Nels Cline using this pedal for looping and was wondering how to implement this with the FX8. Here's a video for anyone who wants to check it out - .

What I'm trying to replicate is how i) the pedal is always "recording" even when off, and ii) the "Infinite" button which repeats whatever is in its buffer (if that's the right word) indefinitely - so if the delay was set to an 8 second delay those last 8 seconds would repeat over and over.

I was first thinking this could be approached with a delay block. The always "recording" aspect I'm thinking could be achieved by either controlling the delay mix level with an expression pedal and increasing the mix when I want to hear the delay back. Or alternatively maybe this could be achieved by setting it's bypass state to mute fx out (not sure about that one) and then engaging the block when I want to hear the delayed signal? However the infinite repeats aspect of it seems more difficult. The hold feature in the delay block seems to only repeat back a very short snippet of the delayed signal and this doesn't seem to be adjustable as far as I know. Setting the feedback to infinite repeats (without going into self-osciallation) gives you the full delay sample length but it's continually re-recording and playing back the input signal (rather than a single sample).

Then I thought about using the looper, setting it to record and again controlling the mix level with an expression pedal. However to my knowledge there is no way to specify how long sample to be played back should be. For example if I have been recording with the looper for 30 seconds and I hit play, I then hear back those 30 seconds. There is no way for me to specify playback of only the last x seconds.

Am I right so far? I don't have my FX8 in front of me so can't be sure I haven't overlooked something obvious. Appreciate any input and potential solutions!
 
Hold should work for this. Did you play for a while before activating hold? If using a switch for hold, are you sure it wasn't assigned to something else like mix?

Increasing feedback to ~100% can work if you lower input gain to 0 at the same time. Hold does the same thing while also setting EQ flat.

The looper could be recording always if you first set the loop length by recording, then activate stack. This would allow longer record times. Dub mix is equivalent to feedback. Deactivate stack to hold the current audio. Control looped audio level via mix if needed.
 
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