The Obscura Altered Delay from Digitech is without a doubt one of the nicest-looking, solid-feeling, vibe-inducing effect that I've seen, possibly ever. Digitech has done a good job of capturing the buitque look and feel with their recent releases. The Obscura Delay is diffently a standout unit, and players are drawn to the looks as well as the promis of some exciting and expressive new features.
Digitech has this to say about there lastest offering:
The Obscura Altered Delay from DigiTech allows you to turn your delays upside down and inside out. The Obscura’s four delay types can be darkened, degraded and distorted on the fly with the stacked Tone and Degrade controls. Combine these controls with the Obscura’s Repeat/Hold feature and lose yourself in long, trippy, gurgling repeats or backwards-manipulated sonic mayhem.
In addition to its Tone and Degrade controls, the Obscura features independent Level, Delay Mode and stacked Time and Repeats controls. Complimenting those versatile controls, the Obscura offers four excellent-sounding Analog, Tape, Lo-Fi, and Reverse types, Tap Tempo mode with Beat Divisions, Stereo Inputs/Outputs, a Delay Tails On/Off Switch and True Bypass circuitry.
With its compact size and vacuum-style footswitch, the Obscura furthers DigiTech’s evolution in pedal design. We’ve put years of experience into every detail of its mechanical and sonic blueprint.
The Obscura uses a 9V DC power supply to easily integrate into your existing pedalboard.
Like the pedal its self, that's the pretty picture. But we're here to discuss the ugly truth. Let's talk about what this pedal really does and get to the bottom of this pretty, little, dressed-up box.
It's A Delay
It is easy to forget that this pedal is a pretty basic effect. One that most guitarist, like myself, have on their board already. It does everything that a standard Boss DD-"whatever" does. It has "LEVEL", "RATE" and "REPEATS", but that is literally half of what this pedal does. It have 4 modes just like Digitech says. What makes this pedal "different" is the Tone/Degrade knob. So Tone isn't all that new, but the Degrade feature is... neat. We all know what happens when we set a DigiDelay to "TAPE". The repeats get darker as they continue. Basically this pedal takes that idea and runs with it. When I sat down to play with this pedal, I was expecting weird sounds, trippy effects, and chaotic noise. What I got was a delay with flexible tone degradation on the repeats. There are some cool warpy noises that you can create if you adjust the "TIME" knob while the repeats are going, but that's a feature of most delays...
It Shoots Its Self In The Foot
Why do guitarist love analog and tape delays? Because those effects become subtle and fill in the background to give a soft pallet of noise to make are sound fuller. This pedal is a great example of that effect. It does that perfectly. You are almost defied to find a setting that does not create a noisey "scene" to endlessly riff over. BUT the subtle differences between settings (that aren't standard delay 'TIME, LEVEL and REPEATS') made it hard to distinguish if you are using TAPE, LO-FI, are ANALOG. They are become soft, washy background noise.
In Conclusion
When I picked up this pedal (besides being blown away by the mere fact that Digitech produced it) I was expecting something radical out of it. The image on the front made me think that this pedal could produce a "death-rattle" effect. After cranking knobs and playing to its strengths, I could hardy tell that this pedal was anything but a delay. In that regard, it is a fine delay. It is reasonably fun to play with the DEGRADE knob and it is almost look one of those 'Look and Find' puzzle to spot the differences in the MODE settings. The reverse doesn't really fit in with the whole "degrade" angle, but it too is fun to play with. If you are into ambient noise you might be interested in this pedal for the fact that it extremely flexible in the ways of degrading delay trails. If you are looking for a good work horse delay, you may want to look into a DD-7 for the some money. The build of this pedal is super-solid and the graphic is very cool (way cooler than a Boss box). It's just not the crazy-sound-inducing pedal that it's hyped to be.
