multi-tap

Multi-tap describes a delay effect that produces multiple repeats, or taps, rather than a single echo, a design traced back to the Binson Echorec, which was the first to deliver what is now commonly called a multi-tap delay¹. Multi-tap delays can produce rhythmic, ambient, or percussive patterns², and at short delay times the taps can gather into dense ambience between an echo and a reverb, while at longer times they spread into syncopated patterns³. The concept also appears in pedals such as the Eventide UltraTap, a multi-tap delay based on the idea of a multi-head tape echo that lets players add virtual tape heads and control their position and level⁴, and in modes like the Line 6 DL4 MkII's Euclidean setting, described as producing multi-tap textures⁵.