New Pedal Day TC Electronic 2290P

[Harley Hexxe]

Hey Gang,

   Okay, I had to look into this pedal when it came out because I had played around with the original rack unit in the studios, and it was fantastic.

   I got the pedal a week and a half ago, and it took me a little bit to get around to it, but I'm not sorry I got it. It has every bit of the fidelity of the original rack delay. Just to try it out as a pedal on a pedal board, I connected this to two of my Fender Cyber-Deluxe return jacks. In front of that is the TC Stereo Chorus Flange pedal with both outputs feeding the 2290P. For the basic tones, I have the CTC Crossfire into an EQD Monarch and an EQD Talons pedal feeding the SCF. The results are AMAZING!

  IMHO, this has to be one of the best pedal delays out there. It doesn't do all the things the original rack does, but it does most things, and it has a couple of things the original doesn't have. There are 20 presets from the original rack installed in this pedal and the rest are new presets that they've created for this pedal version. Surprisingly, most of these factory presets are actually very usable right out of the box.

  There is software that comes with this pedal, but it's not an editor, it's a preset organizer. This allows you to drag and drop your presets into any memory slot in the pedal and arrange them in the order you want. This pedal also has full MIDI capabilities just like the original and can take an expression pedal to alter parameters on the fly. I've just ordered an expression pedal yesterday and I'll be trying that function out when it gets here.

  If anyone is considering getting one of these, here are a few things you should know.

  The manual that comes with this is just a quick start guide. There's nothing about the functions and parameters or editing or creating programs. For the most part, the front panel of the delay is not so complicated that you can't figure it out. The original 2290 rack manual is 164 pages long, however, there are several informative video tutorials on YT that cover this delay and will be very helpful if you get stuck.

   The other thing I would mention is that if you have questions about this pedal, don't bother going to TC Electronic about it. Their support is as lame as you could possibly imagine. You're better off asking someone who has one, or is familiar with how this works to get answers. I contacted them about a recommendation for an expression pedal, and got an answer that had nothing to do with my question. It was some Hispanic guy who replied that seems to not understand English very well, so I don't know how that works for them.

   Personally, I love how this delay works and sounds, and my next test is going to be to use it on the effects loop of my MP-2 and MP-1 Classic. I'll try it there and between the preamp and power amp to see which I like better. Sweetwater sells this delay in a bundle with a rack shelf which looks like I can fit two of these into it, side by side. That's cool since I'm thinking I'd like to get another one and set one up for modulation effects, and the other for delay and panning effects and run them in series with each other. With a Lexicon Reverb after those, and an ADA preamp and power amp. With a pair of split-stack cabs, that would make a nice little half-stack rig.

[MarshallJMP]

Got one too about a month ago, I also really like it. Even the modulation effects are great, I could get some amazing flanger sounds out of it and it has a very interesting stereo image. Put mine on a small pedal board that will sit on top of my rack , all stereo and fully midi.

It has a strymon zelzah phaser, really realy good phaser but it can also do chorus flanging sounds with a dedicated voice knob, very interesting how they do this. You go from phase to flange to chorus while turning the knob.

Next is a eventide H9 which I mostly use for the trichorus.

And last a strymon big sky, amazing reverbs, some are very original.

And there is room for more 

[Harley Hexxe]

That's really cool MJMP,

   Yes, the 2290P does some fantastic chorus and flange effects as does the SCF. I'm looking at dual purpose uses for mine. The two EQD pedals in the pic are going to go away and I'll replace both with the CTC Space Charged V2. I'll add a reverb pedal at the end of the chain and an amp/cab simulator pedal and use that to go direct to a mixing board. I almost forgot, I'll also add a TC Electronic mini Ditto pedal between the Space Charged and the SCF because I will split the signal from the space charged to feed the Ditto into my Vibrolux reverb, and everything after that will feed my two Twin Reverbs. (Wet/Dry/Wet).

  The other purpose would be to use the 2290P with my rack gear and control those programs via midi. I really don't need too much chorus from the 2290P in the rack since with the ADA preamps chorus, I already get very lush chorus. Not to mention I can add more with my ADA effects and Eventide and Lexicon effect too. I have too many chorus effects on tap as it is!

  So, this gives me a way to run direct, into vintage amps, or into rack gear and still get great tones.