Forgot to mention the Great British Spring reverb, or a JHS rack spring reverb if you’re poor. Put one on a bit of foam and connected the output to an input on a mixer. Then apply loads of delay via an Aux and hit the top of the reverbs case hard. Instant 70’s dub mix sound.
Was lucky enough to work out of Mayfair Studios for a while where they have a wonderful old EMT plate in the basement. If you tuned it up too much you could hear the rumble of trucks passing by ha ha.
It’s most of these old units that gave reggae and especially the dub remixes there sound. There are some things like banging the spring reverb that you could never do with a digital unit. And I’ve yet to hear a digital delay go into regen and saturate nicely. For me any of the late 70’s and 80’s BBD analogue delays (that were actually called digital at the time because you could save presets), like the Korg SDD 1000, 2000 and 3000, Roland SDE 1000 and 3000, Frontline DDS-20 and not forgetting the amazing Yamaha D1500, will beat any modern day delay. All these can be picked up from 50 to 150 quid these days and will make any digital delay look silly. You got real time control too to stop the regen going to far and to set the delay time quickly. Plus they look good in ya control tower. I know a lot of guys use the boss RDD 10 half rack delays, but they never sounded good to me (awful regen sound) and the knobs are to small to give real time hands on control.
Add a Rev 500 for reverb on another Aux and there you have it. A very versatile and hands on approach that hasn’t changed for over 30 years and doesn’t need to in my opinion. This is one case where digital really is a backwards step as menus and page scrolling are no use for getting that classic saturated regen that goes into infinity, which used to be one of the best parts of dub for me. Come on we need more of it at dances these days.
