I’ve owned 4 of these since I’ve been playing. I’m down to two now, but will never go below that number. For years, a DE7 was the only delay I could afford - you used to be able to get them for less than $50.

I believe the first time I encountered this was looking at Omar Rodrigeuz-Lopez’s rig for The Mars Volta, and when I realized you could still find them for cheap I had to get one.

What It Is

At its heart, it’s a digital delay without modulation with some interesting filtering and limiting applied to it. I don’t really know what the genesis is of it - it’s from Ibanez’s infamous Tone Lok 7-series of pedals, but the sounds coming out of these don’t really fit with the nu-metal aesthetic of those.

This series is infamous for quality problems - the switches go - and having owned so many, I believe it. I’ve never had one GO BAD, but Ibanez really does cut corners in weird places, and these things are 20+ years old now.

Apparently there are also a few different circuit iterations of this. I have no idea which ones are which, but all of the ones I’ve ever played have done basically the same thing.

These are getting harder to find, but they’re still not pricey by any means. I don’t think I’ve paid more than $95 CAD for one over the past 3 or 4 years.

What It Does

The DE7 has two modes: Echo and Delay. The Delay mode is whatever - plenty of the demos and sounds you can find online focus on this, but it’s really just a plain delay. Who gives a crap. It’s not as bouncy or rhythmic as a DD-3, it doesn’t do any fun glitching. Just forget this exists.

The magic is in the Echo mode.

Echo mode adds some high end filtering and gain to the repeats - they get dark and growly, and the pedal starts to oscillate if you crank the repeats up. The magic bit, though, is that some enterprising electrical engineer put a limiter on the repeats, so they will start to oscillate and make spaceship sounds, but it never runs away into a speaker-shredding mess like the DMM or DM-2. Instead, it turns into a burbling, gurgling pad that can stay underneath your playing. You can tune the feedback so that it oscillates endlessly, or fades away gradually, but it adds a really lovely organic background to your playing.

I had this delay for years and eventually sold it to try some other ones, but for a long time the DE7 was the only delay I had, and definitely the first I spent any regular amount of time with. Imagine my surprise when I picked up a DD-7 or Memory Man and found the oscillation - if they oscillated - was totally different, that you couldn’t control them. Instead, if you crank the repeats on a Deluxe Memory Man it’ll run away, completely drown out the rest of your signal, and make the rest of the band really angry.

So that early experience with the DE7 kind of spoiled me for other delays. If I try out a delay and it doesn’t oscillate in the right way, out it goes.

What It Doesn’t

Modulation. That’s reallly it. Other than modulation, this is pretty much my perfect delay. You can easily set up a beautiful, floating pad that evolves and shifts under your playing. It just doesn’t modulate that pad; too bad.

Demo

This isn’t mine, but I really like how hovercraft artifact uses the DE7 here.

Alternatives

Here are some delays that do ‘the thing’:

Fairfield Meet Maude
Boss DM-2 (there are two versions of this, and the one with the ‘bad’ chip was often tuned so it couldn’t oscillate. Instead, I found that it would generate a pretty good pad under your playing. Was it as good as the DE7? No, but still pretty good. Not sure that’s worth what a vintage DM-2 is going for now, though - you could buy 2 or 3 DE7’s for that)
Earthquaker Space Spiral
Demedash T-120 VHS Delay