Free The Tone launches Flight Time FT-1Y Delay

Free The Tone's FT-1Y Flight Time delay
Free The Tone's FT-1Y Flight Time delay (Image credit: Press image)

Boutique Japanese effects maker Free the Tone has launched a new high-end digital delay pedal that aims to combine rack-quality tones with next-generation features.

The Flight Time FT-1Y delay, which runs off a 12-volt power supply that draws 400mA, has been long in development, but Free The Tone are claiming several breakthrough functions for it. These include the Realtime BPM Analyzer, which takes a tap-tempo entered by the user via a footswitch and hones its accuracy by +/-20 percent automatically as you play. The FT1-Y also allows users to apply a Delay Time Offset function which finely adjusts the degree to which the delay time is off-tempo.

The latter feature is designed to prevent the delayed notes being masked by flow of on-tempo notes that follows, by offsetting the delays a little off the core tempo. This opens up extra creative options, Free The Tone claims: setting the time value shorter than the current BPM enhances speed picking while setting it longer than the core tempo, adds extra atmosphere to washes of long delay. These functions are served up by a 32-bit DSP that also offers modulation, sound-hold, record & repeat, and delay-phase functions, while favourite delay sounds can be stored on up to 99 user presets.

In common with Free The Tone's other pedals, the pedal features the Holistic Tonal Solution circuit which aims to eliminate both 'tone-suck' associated with buffered pedals and the treble-sapping capacitance problems caused by long cable runs and multiple true-bypass pedals. High and low-pass filters for the delay tails add to the tone-tweaking possibilities.The Flight Time will go on sale in the UK for £377.

Jamie Dickson

Jamie Dickson is Editor-in-Chief of Guitarist magazine, Britain's best-selling and longest-running monthly for guitar players. He started his career at the Daily Telegraph in London, where his first assignment was interviewing blue-eyed soul legend Robert Palmer, going on to become a full-time author on music, writing for benchmark references such as 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and Dorling Kindersley's How To Play Guitar Step By Step. He joined Guitarist in 2011 and since then it has been his privilege to interview everyone from B.B. King to St. Vincent for Guitarist's readers, while sharing insights into scores of historic guitars, from Rory Gallagher's '61 Strat to the first Martin D-28 ever made.