“Perfect for chorusing, doubling, slapback, and long rhythmic delays alike”: Old Blood Noise Endeavors’ Black Fountain Stereo is an oil can delay emulation pedal packed with modern features

Old Blood Noise Endeavors has unveiled the Black Fountain Stereo, a delay pedal emulating the vintage sounds of a mechanical oil can delay in a pedalboard-friendly format.

Actually, forget pedalboard-friendly for a second, because this goes way beyond that. How about simply an oil can delay sound that’s practical for 21st-century guitar players. There’s a lot of functionality here that would have blown Ray Lubow’s mind if you were to show him it back in 1959 when he filed the patent application for his oil can delay. And it expands upon the original mono versions of the Black Fountain that OBNE has released over the years.

At its core, the oil can sound has a certain character to the repeats that sets it apart from its tape, analogue or digital counterparts. It has the warmth of an analogue delay but there’s some inherent modulation with it, and a little grit, too, that works so well with an electric guitar signal. Black Fountain presents players with a lot of ways to shape their repeats.

There are a lot of dials. That is the OBNE way. Little wonder OBNE gets designer Dan Pechacek to “explain it all” in a video whenever they drop a new design.

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But here are the essentials. You have two separate controls for the left and right channel delays, Time L and Time R, plus the choice of six rhythmic subdivisions when you hold down the tap tempo footswitch (yes, there’s tap tempo).

Tone dials in the warmth of the repeats. Grit dials in the amount of grit there in the repeats. Rate and Depth are there for adjusting the modulation. Between these you will find some sweet spots for sure.

Dan Explains It All - Black Fountain Stereo - YouTube

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There’s also a Feedback control, for setting the number of repeats, Dry and Wet controls to adjust how much unprocessed and processed signal is in your sound, and there is also a Space control that might be one of the three mini-dials but seems integral to how this will sound, allowing you to set the Black Fountain up for mono operation, to adjust the stereo width, and to add diffusion once you turn it past noon.

There are two soft-relay footswitches. One turns the pedal on and off and the other is a tap tempo/aux footswitch that, if you hold it down, gives you infinite feedback. A cool feature.

It also operates as a preset switcher. That’s right, we have presets here. We also have full MIDI connectivity, and you can assign any one of these knobs to an external expression pedal.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Presents - Black Fountain Stereo - YouTube

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Black Fountain is not so much a straight-up oil can delay simulator, it’s a full-on workstation. And it comes in three different colourways: Terracotta, Cream and Slate. Feed it 9V DC and a minimum of 350mA from a pedalboard power supply and you’re good to go.

Priced $299, it is available now. See Old Blood Noise Endeavors for more details.