TC Electronic TC2290-DT Review [ULTIMATE GUIDE]

Video Transcription

Hey guys what’s up, producer and engineer Alex Scott here with Consordini.com and I have a really cool new piece of studio gear that I would love for you guys to check out.

I’ll tell you a little bit about it, it is the TC Electronic TC2290-DT, now this is a really cool unit and a really innovative concept all together that I really hope TC Electronic explores in the future.

Basically what it is it is a hardware controlled re-creation of a classic TC delay unit from the 1980s.

The original TC Electronic 2290 was a rack-mounted delay effects processor that was mainly used by guitarists in the mid to late 80s, early 90s.

Guys like the Edge, Joe Satriani, John Petrucci all had a 2290 in their racks. It’s a really legendary piece of equipment especially for guitarists.

What’s really unique about it is that it is not just an analog or digital delay, it’s what we call a ducking delay.

So basically there is a dynamics controller that’s integrated into the circuit with the delay that causes the delay to duck underneath your signal when you’re playing so the delay gets nice and quiet, but then when you start playing the delay rises in to kind of be at the normal volume you would expect a delay to.

This is really useful to guitar players because when you’re taking like a shredding guitar solo.

It can sometimes really muddy things up if you have a delay running the whole time right, you have those echoes that constantly keep going and don’t stop and can really get in the way of what you’re playing.

Well the brilliance of the TC2290-DT is that it ducks that delay down while you’re playing and then once you stop the delay raises back in.

So this particular unit, the 2290-DT this new one here it’s not actually an analog device obviously, it’s not a rack mounted device, but what TC has done is taken the exact circuit of the original 2290 and implemented it as a plugin that will work in any DAW, it’s a VST plug-in totally standard, but it ships with this really cool little hardware controller that looks and feels exactly like the front of the original rack unit.

So you’ve got readouts here for your delay time, your feedback, presets all that good stuff and this synchronizes perfectly with the plug-in and lets you control the plug-in in physical space, which can really help when it comes to inspiration and creativity.

It sounds amazing more than anything else but I just love this little hardware device, I just set it right on my desk here and anytime I need a good delay I reach for it and I have real-world control over a plug-in, so you get the beauty of recall or any session you pull back up all your settings have been saved just like any other plug-in, but you get to actually interact with a physical device which is really cool and really fun.

So let’s go ahead and come over here and take a listen to how it sounds.

The Sound

Okay guys, so here you can see we’ve got the TC2290-DT hooked up and ready to go, you can also see on screen here that we have our plugin pulled up.

So you can see that the options that you edit in the plug-in are a little bit different than the physical controller. They are not a reflection of one another they actually work kind of in concert together and so you can edit certain things in the plug-in and then also edit certain things only on the physical unit.

Other users who are reviewing this don’t like this feature as much they think it should all be reflected perfectly in the plugin.

I actually kind of like it because it forces you to get creative and get to know your hardware. So I kind of like that feature it forces you to get to know your gear a little bit better.

But the first preset that I’m going to show you guys is this ducking delay that I was talking about where the delay reacts to the dynamics of the guitar playing.

So we’ve got this cool guitar loop setup here. You can already see on the unit you have these amazing little meters that show you when you’re peeking, show you where your input and output levels for the effect are.

That’s great, but it’s ducting delay this is dry right now. But listen when we bring in the ducting delay, so you hear when he holds that big long cord the delay goes away because there’s constant sound from the guitar, but then in the gaps in between you hear the delay rush in to fill the space. Very useful effect.

Other Presets

Now I just want to go through a couple of other presets that are available here.

There’s a nice pass slap back delay, another slap, really great 80’s kind of super flange sound, nice chorus, because it can do panning and all this different stuff within it you can get some really amazing chorus effects, other modulation effects, flange and tremolo all kinds of fun stuff, there’s a Hadley chorus guitar.

And you can edit your presets, you can select your presets from right here on the unit. You also have a bypass, you have special controls which are a little bit more advanced, but those allow you to edit the parameters a little bit more deeply.

You can also of course adjust your feedback all the way down to zero where it’s only playing one echo, so you’re just hearing that one echo.

You can also use your keyboard once you’ve selected you see this feedback light is blinking and it’s quickly enter 50 or 99 I can get an endless delay going on, put that back to something a little bit normal.

Now up here you have all kinds of control over the speed, depth of your panning effect, of the dynamic effects, this is where you set up your ducking delay, you can set it to be triggered in a sine wave pattern randomly so like if you wanted to pan randomly back and forth you can set that up.

It’s really just incredible how many options they give you in this thing not to mention it sounds wonderful.

And of course lastly over here you have your delay time which can be edited in milliseconds, we do have a tap tempo as well or you can sync it to your session tempo.

Now just to give you an example of one of the things you control on screen we move that into the screen here, you can see DAW sync is one of the categories right here.

We have input level which is just controls, volume, your delay mix all this kind of stuff, output levels but then you have here DAW sine.

So right now you can see as we click through its reflecting sixteenth notes, eighth notes, quarter notes, half notes etc.

We can also change our mode from straight to dotted, kind of play around with things that way we’re even tripling. Okay so again very powerful options in this delay.

Conclusion

Okay guys so there’s the TC2290-DT. I love this unit, it sounds great, it looks really cool, it feels really authentic just like the original hardware did.

So if you’re a sucker for kind of the analog feel, like I am, if you like that in your workflow this is a perfect unit for you.

TC I know does have a reverb actually a couple of different reverbs as well as a spatial expander in this same form factor, they’re calling it the icon series.

Those are on the way and I fully plan to buy all three of them when they start shipping in a couple of months here.

But yes, I love it. There are some users who aren’t a fan of the fact that editing parameters in the plug-in is different than what you get on the face of the unit.

I really like that, I think it forces a little bit more creativity, it forces you to get to know an actual piece of gear and feel like you’re using something a whole lot more real than just a plug-in.

So what do you guys think of the TC2290-DT? Let us know in the comments below the video we would love to hear your thoughts and your feedback.

Again thank you guys so much for checking it out and watching, we will see you in the next video.