Seymour Duncan, a leading manufacturer of guitar pickups and pedals, has launched the newest addition to its pedal lineup, Dark Sun, a Digital Delay and Reverb pedal developed in collaboration with Mark Holcomb of progressive metal powerhouse, Periphery.
Dark Sun was crafted based on Mark’s favorite sounds from the Andromeda Dynamic Delay and the Silver Lake Dynamic Reverb pedals. It combines a warm and clean digital delay algorithm with a lush Hall reverb, and the ability to route the two in just about any configuration. Artists can shape the EQ of the effect, add saturation, lush choral modulation, or use Dynamic Expression to control the mix of the effect with their playing.
Mark wanted the ability to change the order of the effects on the fly and assign them to either the left or right channel. With that in mind, the Seymour Duncan Engineering Team designed the Routing Control, a 4-position switch that can create dramatically different sounds depending on how it’s set. Running Delay first means new reverberations are created with each repeat – while putting Reverb first will create less natural and more dramatic repeat of the reverb trail. Setting Delay and Reverb to the left and right channels allows the use of Dark Sun’s two effects in stereo or as two separate pedals in one.
Mark shares, “I’m so excited to finally release the Dark Sun! We’ve designed this pedal to be the ultimate delay + reverb combo but, over the course of its development, it has served as something much more for me: an idea generator; a writing companion – something you can plug into and rely on for inspiration. Finding that creative spark is a constant pursuit for me, and this pedal makes that journey easier. Seymour Duncan has created something truly special with the Dark Sun.”
A complement of filters, gain, and modulation round out the feature set. Applied only to the wet signal, they can totally re-shape the character of the effect. The Low Pass Filter can be used to soften and warm up the sound, or the High Pass Filter used to cut big low-end repeats.
Dynamic Expression has been distilled to one purpose for this pedal – to control the mix of the effect with your playing. Turn it on and play hard and the mix control is automatically ducked, so the delay and reverb get out of your way. When you play softer or let a note ring out, the mix level will rise again, swelling in ambient trails.
Dark Sun has four tap divisions available – quarter notes, dotted eighths, eighths, and triplets. You can set the tempo via the tap footswitch, Time control, or MIDI – and the time can be displayed in milliseconds or beats per minute (which you can toggle by holding the Trails switch while powering up the device). It is fully MIDI capable and features a micro-USB port for firmware updates and preset management.
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