Mattoverse Electronics Swell Delay

The Mattoverse Electronics Swell Delay is a compact delay pedal with one trick most delays do not have: a momentary Swell footswitch. Press and hold it and the pedal sends your audio into a burst of delayed noise that ramps up at a rate you set with its own control, letting you build swells and walls of repeats with your foot while you keep playing¹. The delay itself is digital, voiced by Mattoverse to sound analog, with warm, vintage-leaning repeats²¹.

The line has since evolved: the pedal was previously named the Swell Delay and originally produced in a larger enclosure³², before being renamed the Swell Echo and moved into the smaller 4.67" x 3.68" x 1.39" aluminum enclosure it uses today².

A digital delay with a swell footswitch

The core idea is simple. Alongside the normal bypass footswitch there is a momentary soft switch labeled Swell. When you press it, the pedal maxes out the repeats and ramps the delayed signal up as fast or as slow as you have set it, building a swell of echoes under your playing until you let go¹. Delicious Audio described it as "a very fun and expressive foot-controllable swell feature (via momentary foot-switch)"².

Pedal of the Day's reviewer made clear what this means in practice:

The delay circuit itself is digital but tuned for an analog character. Delicious Audio called the original "an analog sounding digital delay"², and the maker's current page for the Swell Echo describes it as an "analog voiced dynamic digital echo pedal"³. Pedal of the Day's later review of the Warble Swell Deluxe Delay found it "produces extremely warm, vintage-ish delay tones"⁵.

The controls

The original Swell Delay kept things to four knobs²:

The current Swell Echo carries the same set, labeled Time, Repeats, Mix and Swell, with the Swell knob tailoring how quickly the swell happens after the momentary foot-switch is pressed³⁴.

Two behaviors are worth knowing before you plug in:

• Self-oscillation comes easily. Pedal of the Day reported that "this thing will do some funky, loud, awesome self-oscillation with ease, pretty much anything past 1-2:00 or so" on the Repeats control¹. If you want clean repeats, keep the knob below that point.
• Long delay times add noise. The maker gives the clean limit as around 500 to 600ms, with a maximum of around 800ms "at the expense of some additional noise"⁴. Delicious Audio's 2017 post likewise listed the max delay time before some noise as 500 to 600ms².

Warble Swell and Swell Echo versions

The Swell Delay did not stay put. Mattoverse renamed it the Swell Echo and moved it from its original larger enclosure into a smaller box with top mounted jacks³. The current version is hardwire true bypass and runs on 9VDC center-pin negative power only, with no battery option and no power supply included³⁴.

The bigger development was the Warble Swell line, which adds modulation to the same swell concept⁶⁷:

• The MkII follows an original Warble Swell Echo, which fulfilled the functional promise of its name⁶.
• The Warble Swell Deluxe Delay, reviewed by Pedal of the Day, pairs the swell and warble functions; the reviewer found that using the Swell Rate knob with the Warble function "opens up the floodgates for experimentation and spaced-out, tape echo exploration," and called the pedal "just plain fun"⁵.
• The Warble Swell Echo MKII is described by the maker as "a lo-fi echo exploration machine"⁸. Premier Guitar summed it up as "just a delay pedal that warbles and swells"⁶, and Delicious Audio called it "a vintage-voiced echo/delay with a dynamic foot-controllable Swell feature and gooey tape-like modulation"⁹.

The MKII also upgrades the switching to soft-touch relay true bypass⁷, a step up from the hardwire true bypass of the Swell Echo⁴.

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