Eventide’s UltraTap Delay Is Now in a Standalone Pedal

March 17, 2021 · 7 sources

Eventide announced the UltraTap, a standalone multi-tap delay pedal and the third member of its dot9 family, joining Blackhole and MicroPitch. The company said the pedal delivers rhythmic delays, glitchy reverbs, huge pad-like volume swells, and expressive modulated effects in a compact, rugged, gig-ready silver enclosure, with mono/stereo inputs and outputs. It was priced at $279 (MSRP) and was set to ship on April 13, 2021¹².

The algorithm has a long lineage. Eventide described the dot9 UltraTap as the result of forty years of development that began in 1981 with the Digiplex and Multitap Delay algorithms for the SP2016, which later became the H3000's UltraTap and then an H9 algorithm and plugin¹. Reviewers had previously noted that UltraTap was exclusive to the H9, offering 64 delay taps³.

At the heart of the pedal are up to 64 delay taps, which can be subdivided into separate repeats and manipulated into rhythmic or smeared elements⁴. The top panel offers direct control of twelve parameters⁵, and Eventide highlighted several of the distinctive ones:

• Spread: sets the effective distance between up to 64 taps¹
• Taper: controls the level of subsequent taps, fading them up, down or constant over time¹
• Slurm: can smear or slur taps together to produce unique reverbs and choruses¹
• Chop and Speed/Rise/Release: work together for amplitude modulation of taps, chopping a sound source into stuttered rhythms¹
• Guitar/Line Level switch: level-matching with guitars, synths, FX loops or DAW interfaces¹

Two footswitches handle performance control of Active (momentary or latching), Tap Tempo, and preset selection and loading. Five presets can be accessed directly from the pedal, with up to 127 in total stored and reachable via MIDI or the Eventide Device Manager software over USB. The multi-function Exp jack accepts an expression pedal, a single or triple Aux switch, or MIDI over TRS, and multiple bypass modes are available: Buffered, Relay, DSP+FX, or Kill Dry¹.

Power comes from a supplied 9V DC adaptor at 200mA⁶. Later reviews found a lot of pedal for the investment, with scope for a wide range of sounds from traditional delays to unusual reverbs and choppy rhythmical repeats⁷⁴.