There Was An Attempt... To Plug In An MXR Carbon Copy Delay Pedal

I ♥ This Thing

& May Have Broken It

Pairing A Modular Synth With A Delay Pedal Is Perfection, Right?

Last night I decided that I was going to be brave. I looked right in the mirror, told myself I could be something more, and decided I was going to make a change to my noise making area.

I decided to finally start adding some of my old guitar pedals to the barren lands in between my audio interface, an Apogee Duet 2, and my modular synth setup. It was going to be so awesome.

And awesome it was. If only for a while.

The MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay was a pedal I bought because it looked pretty. It’s that simple. The exterior is sparkle flake green and it came with blue LEDs. On top of that, it sounded great.

I still played guitar when I got the delay. Unfortunately, I injured my hands at a previous job doing a serious overload of computer work. So I shelved the guitars and all of my pedals for years.

Until last night that is!

Setting Up The Effects

I popped a fresh new battery into the Carbon Copy delay. It was the first time it has ever had a battery in it. Wow. Breaking new ground here. That was the first pedal in line on the pedal chain.

Next in my fresh new line of effects was the Walrus Audio Descent pedal. They call it a Reverb/Octave Machine. I call it super relaxing. I still don’t really know how to use it, so I’m going to leave a video about it right below here, in support of future me’s pedal education.

My plan was to add additional pedals in line before the Carbon Copy. I thought checking out the sound of these two pedals together would be a good idea before getting much farther putting the effects together.

Everything was turned on. I set up a nice and simple arpeggio on the Arturia MiniBrute 2S and let it rip. The reverb was working!

That’s A Cool Story, But…

The delay was only making one copy of each note no matter how I positioned the dials. The mod button seemed to do nothing when engaged.

Then I hit the footswitch to bypass the Carbon Copy. When I turned it back the lights came on… but no delay effect happens now at all. It’s kaput.

So long CC, I barely even knew ye.

I’m not sure if there’s a way to fix this. Who knows until you try though? I’m going to reach out to Dunlop and see if there’s anything to be done. It’s years past the warranty would have covered it. I’m going in with no expectations and that’s fine.

If not, this lovely pedal will be joining my Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man (with Hazarai) and an optical compression pedal, to become a distant memory sitting in a quiet drawer for years to come. You know, the whole saving random things for parts in that overloaded parts drawer thing that people do.

I try to stay positive, so with any luck and effort, this Carbon Copy will be back up and running soon.

Got a cool story like this?

If you’ve fried some gear or lost a favorite pedal (RIP) share your story with me on the socials. Links are below. I’d love to hear about it.