JAM Pedals - Delay Llama XTREME Review
Is it the best analog delay pedal on the market?
I recently had the pleasure of visiting JAM Pedals’ workshop in Athens and talking with Jannis Anastasakis, founder of JAM for an interview on the website (you can check it out here). But as I left, I also took a beautiful pedal with me for a review. The Delay Llama XTREME!
I’ve been thinking of getting the Delay Llama for a long time since I’ve seen a ton of people recommend it for its perfect analog sound and amazing Xtreme modes so now that I have had it for a few weeks, it’s time for a complete review of my experience with it.
The Delay Llama XTREME is the enhanced version of JAM’s Delay Llama MK.3 that adds four XTREME modes on top of Delay Llama’s analog delay circuit. At its core, it’s a fully analog bucket brigade delay pedal with Tap Tempo that sounds fantastic. JAM Pedals are known for their love for analog circuitry and the Delay Llama is no exception. It’s a delay that feels raw & alive, with so much character that is not just there to create a delay effect. As Jannis told us, the Delay Llama is inspired by tape echoes and you can certainly hear this once you start playing with it.
Another important philosophy of JAM is simplicity. On the pedal, you’ll find three knobs and three switches and that’s all you need.
T controls the Delay Time
R sets the amount of the repeats
L controls the Level of the repeats on top of your dry signal
The TRLS switch activates or deactivates trails, the KD stands for Kill Dry, meaning it will only output the wet signal, and with the Subdivisions switch you can choose from 8th, Quarter, and Dotted 8th notes in correlation to the Tap Tempo.
On top of that, Delay Llama XTREME can store up to 4 presets that you can access by pressing the middle footswitch. To save a preset, choose your settings and simultaneously hold the Tap & Preset selector footswitches. Simple as that.
And now let’s go to the good stuff. XTREME Modes!
This pedal’s superpowers are the four XTREME modes. And that’s where the very satisfying arcade-style button between the middle footswitch and the Tap Tempo comes into play. To access the XTREME modes you’ll have to hold the middle footswitch to engage them and then by holding the ALT button and pressing the TAP footswitch, you can cycle through the four modes.
The XTREME modes introduce a whole new dimension to the Delay Llama by further affecting the delay trials in creative ways. To change the settings of the XTREME modes you’ll have to press the ALT button and move the knobs that are assigned to a parameter on each mode.
Vibrato: The first mode is called vibrato and as you’d expect, adds vibrato to the delayed sound. The vibrato is generated by a Sine wave LFO and you can control the Speed (ALT + L) and the Depth (ALT + R). The Vibrato on the delay has a very pleasing & mild sound and adds that nostalgic indie vibe to your signal. It’s a subtle effect but very effective for adding some movement to your delays but it’s also a secret weapon!
By setting the time close to zero, and engaging the Kill Dry switch we talked about before, you essentially get a vibrato effect without the delay. So if you don’t have an analog vibrato pedal on your board, the Delay Llama can cover that too with this little trick! And if you want a Chorus instead of a Vibrato, you can disengage the Kill Dry, and play with the Level knob to your liking. That will create a very beautiful Chorus sound making this mode a very powerful tool with many applications!
Tape-Age: Next mode is called Tape-Age. Here Delay Llama XTREME gets even closer to a Tape Echo by adding slight random pitch variations - Warble to the delayed sound. This is a very common characteristic of tape and you can now use it to emulate the instability and quirkiness of tape delays. You can control how often you want this to happen by using ALT + L.
This is a mode I most often have on because it makes the delay sound even more broken and analog than it already is. Pitch variations at lower settings are not that frequent and add a bit of unpredictability to my sound which is always welcome.
Random: By far the craziest mode on this pedal is Random. Here, you get completely random pitch & rhythm changes to the delay over fixed time increments of your Time knob or Tap Tempo. The pitch jumps all over the place with no correlation to the original pitch resulting in rather dissonant results. It’s not meant to be used as a playable mode for recording or live settings but rather as an experimental and inspiring mode when you need something weird and unpredictable.
But what are the applications of a crazy mode like this? By trying to make this work, I found two scenarios where it shines.
First, you can have the Kill Dry on and play some melodic stuff while you’re recording and afterward grab a few parts of that recording. It’s great for finding some cool ear-candy snippets that you wouldn't normally play to add to a track. Although this is a trial & error thing that will take time. And people around will think you’re the worst guitar player in the world :).
A second scenario that this mode works great is feeding it percussion and beats. Instead of using an instrument with the Delay Llama switch to a drum machine or sampler, activate the random mode and you’ll get so many cool and unexpected percussive loops that are constantly changing. That’s a very useful way to use this mode and it’ll definitely make your percussion loops sound more interesting!
Pitch-Shift: Last but not least, we have the Pitch-Shift mode. This is my favorite part about this pedal and the reason I think it’s one of the best analog delays right now. In this mode, the pedal again changes the pitch of the delays but this time it’s using specific intervals that sound musical and stay in key with your dry signal. To make this mode easy to operate, JAM decided to have five pre-set pitch intervals that you can switch by using ALT + R and five playback patterns that are controlled by ALT + L. The last pattern has 5 different sequences, one for each interval.
This mode reminds me a lot of one of my all-time favorite delay pedals, the Thermae by Chase Bliss. With the Delay Llama being a lot easier getting your head around and using it! Every combination of intervals and patterns sounds beautiful and the delay instantly becomes so musical and ear-catching. The Pitch-Shift mode is definitely a song-starter mode. You can feed it a very plain melody and it will turn it into a complex musical phrase that will inspire you to add more layers and make it the part on which you’ll write a whole song around it.
It’s rhythmical, musical, and inspiring so you’ll end up playing for hours with this mode. And every time you’ll discover a new awesome melodic line to record. So, that alone is the reason to get this pedal!
You’re not a guitar player? No problem!
Since I’m not a great guitar player myself, I tested the Delay Llama with all sorts of instruments and not only the guitar. And I can responsibly say that it’s a great delay pedal for every type of instrument you use. I used a lot of synths, samplers, guitars, percussion, my modular synth, and vocals and everything sounded great! Synthesizer sounds are perfect for the Pitch Shifting modes of the Delay Llama and since synth sounds can have a lot more sustain than guitars the pitch-shifted delays are perfectly blended with the original signal resulting in lush evolving sounds.
Just like Tape Echoes work perfectly for synths, Delay Llama XTREME can be the ideal delay companion for your synthesizers. All XTREME modes are very useful and the analog character you get out of the Delay Llama enhances the sound of any digital (or analog) synth!
Overall Experience
I was already very hyped about this pedal and it was one of the few times that it turned out to be better than I expected it to be. The fact that it’s fully analog it’s not only for marketing reasons but you can feel & hear the difference between the Delay Llama and a digital pedal or plugin. The repeats are full of sound, they degrade as they fade out and the XTREME modes are amazing for experimenting or adding a bit more depth to your sound. And even without the XTREME modes, I would still recommend it to anyone looking for a powerful and raw-sounding delay!
All the XTREME modes have their purpose and usability. Even the Random mode that feels unusable at first can shine if used accordingly. The Vibrato can work both as a delay with vibrato and also as a Vibrato/ Chorus effect, the Tape-Age makes it ridiculously close to an actual tape delay, and the Pitch-Shift is the star of the show.
Conclusion
It is so nice when an instrument or pedal exceeds your expectations. And that's what happened with the Delay Llama XTREME. I expected to like it but in the end, I fell in love. So much that I have as a send effect for everything in my studio. It can become your one and only analog delay on your pedalboard since it combines a great analog sound and a ton of flexibility with the four XTREME modes it has.
And the best part is that while being extremely versatile, it’s so simple to use and play with. It has a few secondary functions that you’ll memorize after a few days of playing with it and that’s it. And although I enjoy a deep instrument with a lot of features, I always put first the immediacy an instrument or effect provides. If it’s too complicated, I know that I will eventually stop reaching for it. And the Delay Llama has the optimal ratio of complexity vs user experience.
So, in my opinion, Delay Llama does everything right. It sounds good, it’s flexible, it’s inspiring, and it’s very well-priced for a handmade, handpainted boutique fully analog pedal. The aesthetic is of course subjective but no one can deny it’s a pedal that visually stands out from the others. While it also stands out in terms of sound!
You can get the Delay Llama XTREME for 349€ which regarding the competition is a very good price and you’ll never have to buy another analog delay!
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