Bicycle Delay *Demo/B-Stock*

INTRODUCTION The Bicycle Delay is a physical manifestation of the experience of consciousness, letting go of the desire to control everything, experiencing the present and maintaining a positive attitude in order to leave room for a positive experience. The Bicycle Delay is as organic as a computer growing from a tree. Sonically the pedal is ever changing, even turning the knobs has an amorphous behavior. Go with it. QUICK START You are about to meet the Bicycle Delay. Plug your instrument into the Bicycle Delay and directly into your amplifier. Set all knobs to noon, clear yourself mentally and, for a time, destroy all notions of control. Listen to what the Bicycle Delay has to say. Approach each knob with an open mind. Take note of how they interact with each other and you. One knob at a time, be mindful of where the Bicycle Delay is taking you. Speak and listen. There is opportunity and consequence to what you bring to the conversation. The quiet voice brings calm, reasoned responses; the bombastic can incite a strong reaction you did not anticipate. Many voices create a cacophony, the lone voice is heard clearly. Each can foster harmony or discord depending on what is being communicated. But always listen… LUCIDITY [WET/DRY MIX] Yin and Yang. There is a balance. The weight of each side is symbiotic and ever changing. REFLECT [NUMBER OF REPEATS; FROM ONE REPEAT TO SELF OSCILLATION] Envision a staircase. REFLECT determines the number of steps in the staircase. Each step climbs or falls depending on MOOD. MOOD [DETERMINES DIRECTION AND VELOCITY OF THE PITCH SHIFT OF THE REPEATS] MOOD determines the steepness of the staircase. Tailspin or ascending a thermal? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. Even at the center there is chaos in the tranquility. Embrace it. EXPANSE [DELAY TIME] Where is the focus? Inward, close at hand? Or gazing outward at a far away horizon in the mind’s eye? Somewhere in between? Your journey can be as short or as long as you care to make it. Take your time. RADIANCE [REPEATS FILTER] Darkness or light. Dulled or sharpened. You can find opacity or clarity here. DESIGNER NOTES Bicycle Delay was something like an “Albert Hoffman moment” (to quote good friend and guitarist Neal Casal). I sat down with no plan of where I was going, but allowed myself the freedom to be open to wherever the journey took me, and document the experience. Really a strange path to travel when it involves something as cerebral as programming software. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s a pure form of creativity, to use the boundaries of programming as a medium for art? The result was a pedal as autobiographical as any I have been involved in. The more time I spent with the Bicycle Delay the more it unfolded its complexities to me. The harder I thought about what it was doing, the more difficult it was to put my finger on it. The more that I surrendered to what it was showing me, the more it set me free to be musically creative. In much the same way it took a computer to visualize a Mandelbrot Set, it took the Bicycle Delay for me to find the organic beauty in disharmony. The way this pedal behaves is also metaphoric to how I’ve been looking at life. Approach it from a negative perspective, go ahead, make it spiral downward. There is beauty in it, like there is enjoyment in picking at a scab. It’ll take you to darker musical places fitting for the vampires at night. It all depends on your mood. Bring it up, it wants to take off. Happiness in a madhouse. The most difficult and interesting stuff begins to happen when you keep it balanced. Edges of notes brighten radiantly to prominence, like the flora and fauna do when I walk Clemma in the early morning sun. – Nicholas Harris PRO TIP: You can set the Gain trimmer for a pre-determined amount of boost so when you hit the Bicycle Delay, your sound will get louder, juicier and have more impact. Great for emphasizing certain passages or for epic leads. Catalinbread Mechanisms of Music are made in Portland, OR   ***This unit has been used for various demonstrations. Pedal and box shows some wear. It is 100% functional w/ original packaging.***