TC Electronic drops massive hints on forthcoming effects

TC Electronic has been running wild on social media. Typically, product development is shrouded in secrecy, with wall-to-wall press embargoes carefully coordinating news of the latest guitar effects pedals. 

But here the Danish effects titan has put the tease into TC and just thrown it all out there, with Facebook posts suggesting that not only can we expect to see their classic rack-mountable TC 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay in a stompbox – big news – but that they are working on collecting their vast bank of guitar effects and signature TonePrints onto one multi-effects pedalboard. 

There are no firm details on either. As TC Electronic said in replies to the potential TC 2290 digital delay specs, this is all in the ideas stage. Indeed, there are only CGI renderings of what a potential TC 2290 would look like in pedal form. But there is no question that TC Electronic have given us permission to speculate, and permission to get excited. 

The question is: when will it arrive and what form will the finished effects unit look like?

Let's take the TonePrint pedalboard first. Take a look at the picture below . . . 

What does this picture tell us? Very little, and yet so much! For starters, it is a photograph, so presumably there is a physical prototype. Maybe this is closer to an unveiling – winter NAMM 2020? 

We also know the working title is TonePrint Pedalboard and it has five pressure-sensitive MASH footswitches to control not only TC Electronics vast array of TonePrints, which will presumably be preloaded and available to download onto the unit, but that it will also house a number of TC Electronics' effects pedals.

We might assume the Hall of Fame Reverb will make the cut. Could we also expect the likes of the Corona chorus, Flashback delay and Cinders overdrive, etc., to be bundled? 

But where would that leave TC Electronic's classy mult-FX unit, the Nova System? Perhaps TC Electronic is updating its lineup so that all units feature their TonePrint technology.

Now to the TC 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay. The industry-standard rack-mounted unit was released last year as a desktop-controlled plugin for your DAW. So we have seen what it would look like scaled down. But in pedal form, this really would make the classic effect a more mainstream proposition. TC Electronic is already well-served with delay – the forementioned Flashback is excellent – but the 2290 is revered by recording studio pros. Having that tech in a stompbox would be incredible. 

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These computer-generated mockups offer two different options on how TC Electronic might attempt to squeeze the TC 2290's functionality into a pedalboard-friendly stompbox. While it is hard to tell from a drawing, they look to use three MASH footswitches to control the effect. 

The first design uses a keypad for dialling in tones while the MASH footswitches are designed to offer touch-sensitive control over selected parameters. The second is a cleaner design, a departure from the rack-mounted and desktop versions, and uses a dial and keypad. This might be a little more intuitive when it comes getting a handle on the TC 2290's multifarious features in a floor pedal. 

But still, it is early days. There will no doubt be many changes on a finished TC 2290. The TonePrint Pedalboard? Hmm... Maybe sooner rather than later? As soon as anything is confirmed by TC Electronic, we'll bring you all the news here.