“An outstanding selection of delay tones in a budget-friendly and space-saving enclosure”: Nobels’ DEL-mini offers three delays and the width of the stereo spread all from a super-compact $99 pedal

Word association time: What is the first word you think of when you hear Nobels? It’s overdrive, right? The ODR lineage of overdrive pedal is Nobels’ bread and butter – the guitar effects pedal that made the brand famous.

But that’s not the whole story. What about the DD-800 and DY-1 Delay Special? Delay pedals have been part of Nobels’ history too. And today, it is very much part of its present with the the launch of the DEL-Mini delay pedal – a small pedal that is big news for Nobels, and potentially for your pedalboard.

The DEL-Mini is the definition of compact powerhouse, offering players three modes, tap tempo, and mono or full stereo operation all from a ‘board-friendly guitar mini pedal format.

All the main delay food groups covered. The DEL-Mini has an analogue mode for those who like their repeats darker and warmer. There is a digital mode for those who like ‘em clean and precise. And then there is a tape echo emulation for those who would rather we went back to mechanical units, with all that musical wow and flutter.

“All three modes all faithfully capture the iconic delay tones that have shaped music across genres, past and present,” says Nobels. Selecting them is easy too. There’s a three-way switch on the enclosure for that.

The controls are as you would expect/want from a greatest hits of delay, with dials for Time adjusting the length of delay, Feedback setting how many repeats there are, and Mix controlling the balance between the repeats and the dry signal coming from your electric guitar.

The tape echo mode has a maximum delay time of 553ms. The max analogue delay is a little shorter at 402 ms. Digital is where you can really stretch it out with a maximum time of 1000ms allowing those repeats to pulse in the air in time with the second hand on the clock.

Nobels DEL-mini - YouTube

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This is a mini-pedal so there is no room for a second footswitch. This one pulls a double-shift. By default, it engages and bypasses the effect as you step on it, but hold it down and you enter tap-tempo mode, allowing you to tap out your repeats to be in time with your track.

Select mono or stereo operation via a switch on the top of the pedal. There you will also find a two-way switch for selecting buffered or true bypass. And another neat detail is the aesthetically pleasing and practical feature of glow-in-the-dark pointer knobs, so that you can see your settings in low-light situations. Nice.

The DEL-mini takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply and draws ~ 58mA. It ships with Nobels Monty-P mounting pads, to help you get it on your 'board, and it is available now, priced £85/$99. See Nobels for more details.