Pittsburgh Modular Analog Replicator

FYI: the active/bypass and active/spillover switches don't work like you think they would-- like you would see on a guitar pedal. the module was intentionally designed this way. Basically: 'bypass' engages the effect. You won't hear delay when in 'active'. Personally, I have no idea why it's this way, but I'm sure someone smarter knows the answer.

Very true about the Bypass/Active. It had me confused for the first few minutes. Bypass issue aside, this delay sounds amazing.

"Bypass" and "Spillover" are the labels for the switches. "Active" is the state. So to bypass, you switch the "Bypass" switch to the "Active" state.

EDITED Nov 25th 2015, 21:09

I use one and have a love/hate relationship with it. I adore its mellow sound, I obviously like the name and the build. It gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing its all analog. I even like the pitch shift effect on time adjustments, it's fun, often surprising, can be made very musical.

However, there's a few things that bother me:
- feedback catches quite a lot of hum
- there's a high-pitched BBD overload sound on higher time settings; you can EQ it out but it's annoying
- BBD aggressively low-passes the signal even in 4k short mode, you can't do razor sharp delays with it
- as others said, it's tricky to get usable feedback amount out of it, even though the knob is huge. It's very easy to overload it (so the sound drowns in feedback) and just a hair length less on the knob gives no discernible feedback at all
- bypass boosts the dry signal level so it's useless for most use cases
- spillover is not the same as disconnecting the input cable, it just lets a single feedback pass through. This means it's also pretty useless, get's silent within a second tops

There's also missing features. Any sort of tempo synchronization would be fantastic, being able to control the timbre of the delay (or just having a way to patch something into the feedback loop) would be great. Stereo output would be awesome. Any of these missing features would trump my gripes with it.

As it stands though, unless you're really into analog signal paths in hardware, get something else. I'm not parting with mine since I learned to use it effectively. But I don't love it.

★★★✩✩

i admit i am a bit confused here with this change of line up. Does the lifeform moniker mean that the new modules are different to the previous line in function or is it just the design?
And more specific, Is this replicator different to the analogue replicator?

EDITED Sep 7th 2018, 13:21

Erica Synths makes a delay that is on my radar. It's digital but has an analog tape mode (pitch shifting) as well as a host of other features like additive looping. SynthDIYGuy did a video on it. It might be an alternative. But it's only available as a DIY and the full kit is 180 Euros.