Strymon Deco (Digital product)

While modern recording engineers and producers are used to the huge variety of effects options available these days, tape machines were the first devices used in the recording studio as effect processors.

From echo and flanging to the warmth and saturation of the actual tape itself, the entire early history of music would sound completely different if these recording decks weren’t employed in this way.

The new Deco plugin doesn’t just give you the hyper-real sonic signature of these classic tape machines, it’s also unique in that it revives the forgotten art on how these decks were manipulated as a workflow in the studio.

Even though there are currently a number of plugins that emulate entire tape machines down to the smallest degree, the Deco plugin stands alone as the only piece of software that accurately recreates the studio workflow of two tape decks working in tandem. It is the timed/speed relationship between these two decks that creates the phasing, true tape flanging, chorus, echo and double tracking effects that the Sun Studios and Abbey Roads of the world relied on for all of those famous early tracks, and it’s now available in an easy-to-use and utterly convincing plugin.

The Doubletracker side controls the two interactive tape decks and has the power to shift your sound in many different ways, easily achieving psychedelic tape flanging, gorgeous tape chorusing, syrupy slapback tape echoes and anything in between, all by varying the timing relationship between the Reference and Lag decks. If that’s not “old school” we’re not sure what is!

The Tape Saturation side smooths out the response of your tracks with familiar tape compression and saturation, while fattening things up with subtle (or NOT subtle!) tapedriven transparent overdrive.