Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail review

Modulated delay reaches for the sky

  • £149
  • €188
  • $214
Reviews
By
( )
published
An extra socket lets you send the wet signal separately from the dry

MusicRadar Verdict

An analogue delay pedal that extends the sonic palette beyond the standard.

Pros

  • +

    Practical features. Warm delays, but doesn't obscure existing tone.

Cons

  • -

    Not much.

MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.

A true analogue delay, built around Bucket Brigade chips (BBDs), Seymour Duncan's Vapor Trail offers repeats of up to 600ms, with or without modulation.

"The repeats have warmth, but remain close in tone to the dry sound"

The latter can be added by two miniature knobs dialling in the rate and depth for a more ethereal and floaty flavour to the repeats.

An extra socket lets you send the wet signal separately from the dry, plug in an expression pedal to control the delay mix, or (with a Y lead) add another effect to the repeats.

The repeats have warmth, but remain close in tone to the dry sound - Seymour Duncan has resisted the temptation to make them darker and more degraded than they need to be, but they still have that analogue quality of trailing away into silence.

The 600ms range covers plenty of practical territory, from slapback through to single-head tape delay emulation, helped along by the modulation adding a touch of wobble.

Trevor Curwen

Trevor Curwen has played guitar for several decades – he's also mimed it on the UK's Top of the Pops. Much of his working life, though, has been spent behind the mixing desk, during which time he has built up a solid collection of the guitars, amps and pedals needed to cover just about any studio session. He writes pedal reviews for Guitarist and has contributed to Total Guitar, MusicRadar and Future Music among others.