Strymon Brig Echo

*What are some of the differences between the OG Brigadier and Brig?

1. *Voices* - As is typical of anything we make, we don’t ever copy products note-for-note - products and processes are studied to figure out what makes them tick, and then we take a long while to tune them to get them to be super-consistent and musical at all settings. The 3205 voice is inspired by early single bucket brigade chip designs that ran on five volts (think old Boss). Those pedals were able to be powered with a battery, but had limited headroom and delay times as a result, and those limitations get you slightly dirtier and grungier repeats, for great psychedelia. The 3005 setting is inspired by slightly later dual BB circuits (think DMM) that ran on higher voltages, so they had more headroom, more delay time due to the dual chips, and were wonderful for creating distinctive soft and dreamy ambient repeats. The multi setting uses two cross-coupled and super clean dBucket delay machines with golden ratio timing, so it’s purely a Pete creation. The cross-feeding means you can get wonderfully complex back and forth echoes and soundscapes with a huge stereo field. You can think of the dual BB engines in multi as bucket brigade chips that have a ton more headroom than the original units would have, but they still have the distinctive BBD behavior when it comes to repeats, tone, and malleability with the Time knob.

2. *Differentiation* - The name might make it sound like it’s purely a cut down Brigadier, but it’s far deeper than that (definitely study the copy and the reviewers guide):

a) it has a new artifact-free tap tempo mode that works in conjunction with the Time knob. So if you tap in a new tempo, the delay repeats will move smoothly to the new value without any glitching, pitch shifting or other audio chaos that you’d get with traditional BB delays. If you tweak the Time knob you can still get to all of that chaos, but simply tapping in a new tempo will be clean.

b) the new tap tempo mode also allows you to choose the character that you want for your delays without having to worry about available time. By this I mean that the 3205 voice normally has between 30 and 300ms of delay time, and the 3005 voice has more than that, but in tap tempo mode anything up to about 2 seconds is available. That means you can get the grungy and funky texture of the 3205 voice with a long delay time, or the dreamy and warm 3005 voice with whatever value you wish. It’s pretty cool, and it lets you play into the fact that the feedback behavior in each mode is different as well, so you can choose your favorite voice and get it properly in time.

c) Don’t forget USB C, TRS MIDI, 300 presets, MIDI clock sync, our discrete JFET input circuit, mono/stereo back panel switch and stereo ins and outs on TRS jacks.

d) the modulation on Brig is pretty special as well, and the guys working with it on sound sample stuff are totally digging just using it as a wide stereo bucket brigade chorus. In 3205 mode with the Time knob
set to the minimum 30ms and the modulation knob up pretty high, it’s probably one of the best-sounding BB chorus pedals around. When you see Pete’s video and the sound samples you’ll see what I mean.

e) the noise is tunable as well, via the filter knob. It’s important for some of the classic BB character, but you can dial it out if you wish.