I feel like I’m being punked here. I mean, the prospect of a Joranalogue all-analog BBD delay is enticing, right? Since there’s always an inventive and inspired twist to everything they do, I was really intrigued to see what they could do with a delay. I was expecting some gooey, glitchy, spacey delay with some Joranalogue analog trickery where they would somehow stretch what an analog delay could be, like extending the delay time to something unimaginable with a BBD, like thirty-two minutes with no artifacts, no degradation of sound or something. I really didn’t know. Of course there are already digital delays for stuff like this, and I really didn’t think Joranalogue would just make an analog delay to behave like a digital one, but I did not figure on Joranalogue making a delay module, calling it Delay 1, and having it be so unlike a delay. What gives? Punked. Basically, Joranalogue took the fast delay aspect, and tossed out some of the most celebrated aspects of analog delays—that being the lo-fi character and so-called warmth. It’s kind of punk, actually. I’m not sure that any other module (or pedal) has taken this approach before and it makes me think of entomologist E.O. Wilson, known for studying ants (among other wonderful things), an insect not nearly as flamboyant as say, a praying mantis, but when looked at with a keen eye is fascinating. Same thing here, and Joranalogue, like on most of their previous modules, continues with their intensely focused exploration of analog circuits with Delay 1.
Delay 1 has an internal VCO that goes from 1 to 50 ms that drives the delay line. BBDs usually have a 500 or 800ms ceiling for delay times, so you can see how short theirs is, how different it is from most (if not all) delays out there. Given that 1,000 ms = one second, and Delay 1 only goes up to 50ms, you can see that it’s fast, and nothing but. Delay 1 isn’t able to attain long, syrupy delays, it isn’t going to give you some spacey (or whatever) sounds. Delay 1 rather, excels in other ways and is great for chorusing, flanging, phasing, Karplus-Strong, and other hard-to-name sonic effects that you can create with it. Joranalogue has engineered it to not have some of the drawbacks of typical BBD delays (noise, squealing), which is no small feat, and Delay 1 indeed sounds excellent.
Delay 1’s controls lie at the top of the module and consist of Fine and Coarse tuning, Time Mod., Damping, Blend, and Feedback, the last three each having a split use Mod. control with the center point being off/0, and CV input. There is a switch for the Damping to select either a LPF or HPF, and an Anti/Sum switch for the Feedback modulation that can invert the feedback signal.
In terms of ins and outs, Delay 1 has one main In, a 1V/Oct input, Tie CV input, a HF (High Frequency for Karplus-Strong) input, and four outputs: a main Delay out, a -Out, a +Out, and an HF thru output. Along with trimmers for adjusting the 1V/Oct and Feedback, that rounds out the controls.
I was really keen to see what Delay 1 could do in a stereo realm, and having the two outputs (- and +) can make for an interesting array of possibilities. If panned hard L and R, you can use Delay 1 to turn a mono signal into a stereo, with an actual stereo spread, not just a multed signal going to the two sides. Especially with headphones on, modulating the time can really warp the sound, playing games with your head and giving a metallic feel (more than a metallic sound) and odd and exciting displacement of the signal. It’s this phase-y, chorus-y thing that Delay 1 does so well, these shifting timbres and tones that have a comb-filtering effect. I loved tweaking the Coarse in a tiny range, changing up the metallic clang ever so, phasing, drifting in stereo from side to side. These are subtle movements of sound, but pronounced and sonically interesting and pleasing. When I would Damp the above sound in HPF mode with the Damp at about 10:00 I got some Eastern sounding percussive metal hits in sync with the drone. I was using just the Expert Sleepers’s Lorelei VCO as an input and some LFOs from Five12’s AV-L along with Delay 1, and that was it. It got pretty interesting as well when I would run the input through WORNG’s Parallax filter beforehand to cut some of the high end off the input. With a slow moving triangle wave coming from Five12’s QV-L, barely shifting the Time on Delay 1, there were three separate and distinct sounds coming from Delay 1; the drone (being sourced from Lorelei), percussive hits, and the shifting background from the Time shifts. In more extreme settings with the Time modulation you can achieve vibrato and tremolo as well, but I preferred the slow movements as I could really hear the changes in sound. In addition to that, modulating the Feedback with a mid-tempo ramp LFO produced a surging in the sound when synced with the trigger for the Pluck input. It was like a cross between ducking and a modulated VCA. The Pluck input converts any signal you patch into it into a working trigger for doing Karplus-Strong; therefore, getting into Karplus-Strong territory is pretty easy with Delay 1. You can use it as a sound source with the 1V/Oct input and tweaking the Coarse and Feedback amount to hear and tweak the decaying plucks is fun to explore.
Since Delay 1’s internal VCO only goes up to 50ms, you can inject an external VCO into the HF input to get slower delay times, and even though the analog whine becomes apparent at this point it’s possible to filter the output of Delay 1 to eliminate the whine (and ultimately most of the signal’s high end) so you can get some muted longer delay times. This is more effective when used as an effect than if you just wanted to add delay to a normal signal, but I found it quite nice and moody when patching a sequenced sound source through the input. With Lorelei as the HF input on Delay 1, I was really trying to see how long of a delay I could get, kind of trying to break Delay 1’s spirit, if you will. It actually felt a bit like kicking sand in the face of those BBD chips, but they never backed down fully, and ultimately my guilt for wanting to abuse them got the best of me and I kept adjusting the cutoff so I wouldn’t have to hear those damn chips whine any more, until there was almost complete silence.
Inverting the feedback is something I’d never really thought about before, though it’s hard to definitively describe the sonic difference between the two modes as it seemed to change with every patch, every turn. Sometimes the difference was super subtle, with no real change, and other times switching from Sum to Anti totally hollowed out the sound, changing it drastically. In one case where I had a droning square wave being processed through Delay 1 I got some sort of delayed clave hit in addition to the drone, which was as amazing sonically as it was surprising. Controlling the feedback in this way is another avenue in which to sculpt the sound, but more than anything I think I’m a bit fascinated by this in concept (as well as in practice), as it’s something that doesn’t exist in most (any?) other modules. Am I sounding like a broken record here? Have you gathered that the folks at Joranalogue search the depths of analog circuitry to bring something unique to the scene with every module? They’re tireless, they are.
Running drums through Delay 1 was one of my favorite uses for it and my go to was with a shifting mutant sounding drum track running out of Modbap’s Trinity into Delay 1 while slowly modulating the Time on D1, to where a glacially evolving metallic slapback percussion would emerge from its cave and crawl right back where it would await its turn in the sun again. Using the square output of Lorelei into the HF in on Delay 1 to get some longer delays and the drum sound truly became warped. Patching a slow, then fast, curved ramp envelope from the Nano Modules Quart into the 1V/Oct on Lorelei and my drum track was fully askew, but still usable as a rhythm track.
I’ve already achieved so many incredible sounds and tracks with Delay 1—some are even with longer delay times via the HF in—it’s given me a real appreciation for how one small aspect of a feature—in this case short delay times—can be pushed to open new territories. I do wonder what Joranalogue could do if they took the same microscopic approach to beloved longer delay times. It’s a lot of pressure, this feat to come up with the unexpected (at least by me), but it’s a fascinating ride that offers up surprises with every Joranalogue release.

Price: $399
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