JHS Pedals has taken inspiration from old vintage analogue units for the latest additions to its 3 Series, adding Rotary Chorus, Tape Delay, and Oil Can Delay to the beginner-friendly $99 guitar effects pedal range.
The 3 Series might be the Kansas City stompbox company’s stripped down and simplified range, with a simple three-knob control layout for dialling in an effect and shaping your electric guitar tone but they are surprisingly versatile, with a toggle switch expanding your options.
And they might be the “basics range” of effects but there’s something cool about the uniform enclosure design on these, not to mention the utilitarian names.
This aesthetic is reminiscent of the generic no-brand branding from Repo Man where everything is named for what it is “Drink,” “Corn Flakes” and “Yellow Ling Sliced Peaches” – just plain text on a white background.
So here’s your Rotary Chorus, Otto, no prizes for guessing what that does. It is a chorus pedal that emulates the sound of a Leslie rotating speaker – a very cool but very unwieldy piece of hardware originally designed for the Hammond organ. The knobs across the top of the pedal control Volume, Intensity and Speed, and the toggle switch.
Oil Can Delay is referencing a real cult item. The oil can delay was pioneered by Ray Lubow, patented in ’59, and featured a drum and belt system. There is a distinct flavour to their repeats. JHS Pedals supremo Josh Scott has actually made a delay pedal version of an oil can delay before, a one-of as a gift to Wilco’s Nels Cline (Cline’s tastes in delays should give you an idea of what to expect).
Now, you can have one. Controls include Mix, which controls the balance between the echoes and the signal coming into it, Speed, which adjusts the delay time from 100ms to 330ms, and Feedback, which sets the number of repeats. The toggle switch selects two intensities of modulation that are applied to the repeats.
Finally, Tape Echo. We’d all love a vintage Echoplex or Roland Space Echo in perfect nick. But then we’d all like a lot of expensive pieces of gear. Most of us will have to do with a tape echo emulator – and although it might be less cool to show your friends, it is a heck of a lot more convenient to just pop those sounds on your pedalboard, and orders of magnitude cheaper, too.
There are controls for Mix, Tape Speed, which has a range of 15ms to 950ms, and Repeats. The toggle switch applies the “mild modulation, warble, and flutter” that you get from those old units as the mechanics of the tape echo degrade over years of use.
All these pedals take 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply. They are all just $99. And you can check them out at JHS Pedals.
