Strymon DECO V2

Strymon Deco Effects Pedal

Tape: The First Effect

Add a warm dimension and tape saturation to your signal. Teleport vintage sounds onto your board. Effortlessly create a wide range of beautiful, distinctive, and enveloping vintage tones.
Our journey begins with the first recording studios of the 1950s and 60s. The introduction of reel-to-reel tape machines and the creative engineers who used them gave birth to some of the fattest sounds imaginable. These early machines were truly the first effects pedals—they just wouldn’t have fit on your pedalboard!

Mid-Century Maverick.

From the inherent warmth and lush tape saturation to the forgotten art of manipulating these machines, Deco brings back that original inspiration, giving you those vintage tape effects from the earliest recording studios, right on your pedalboard.
Deco’s Tape Saturation softens your sound with familiar and delicious tape compression and saturation, while thickening your tone with transparent and subtle overdrive.
The Doubletracker gives you the ability to alter your sound in multiple ways, allowing you to achieve syrupy tape echoes, psychedelic tape flanging, and gorgeous tape chorus sounds.

A Classic Sound, New Features.

Our second-generation Deco delivers the same superb magnetic tape sounds as the original, while adding several important new features, incorporating technological advances, hardware improvements, and design enhancements to give you more flexibility, power, and ease of use on stage and in the studio.

MIDI

Full MIDI implementation means you can remotely control virtually all switches, buttons, and settings by sending MIDI commands from your controller or digital audio workstation via the Deco’s EXP/MIDI jack or USB-C connection.
Lag Deck delay time can be synced via MIDI Clock Sync, and the sync setting can be saved for each preset.
300 MIDI preset slots are available to load and save your favorite settings.

New Tonal Options

We’ve added new controls for even greater sonic flexibility.
Deco now features an all-new cassette tape tone that uses an automatic level control (ALC) process common to many high-end cassette tape machines, resulting in a compressed and fat sound.
Additionally, a new dedicated Tone knob lets you adjust the tape saturation tone exactly to your liking, from dark to bright.

Hardware Improvements

A premium JFET analog input circuit ensures superb responsiveness to your playing, and you can select mono or stereo input with a simple switch on the rear panel.
All this, along with a new ARM DSP chip, provides more processing power for every sonic nuance, with lower power consumption on your pedalboard.

Features:

MIDI

Unlimited possibilities.
Our new generation Deco features full MIDI implementation, allowing you to remotely control virtually all switches, buttons, and settings by sending MIDI commands from your controller or DAW via the Deco EXP/MIDI jack or USB-C connection. Lag Time can be synced via MIDI Clock Sync, and the sync setting can be saved for each preset. 300 MIDI preset slots are available to load and save your favorite settings.
Bypass or engage the pedal remotely, sync Lag Time changes with your songs, automate knob settings, recall unique presets for each song in your setlist—the possibilities with MIDI are endless.

True/Buffered Bypass

Choose your bypass mode.
Deco lets you opt for true electromechanical relay bypass for a 100% intact and unprocessed signal when the pedal is bypassed (this is the default setting), or you can choose our premium buffered bypass that conditions your signal to preserve its integrity by preventing high-frequency loss that can occur due to cable length.

JFET Input

Analog touch.
Dynamic and uncompromising feel. Exceptional touch sensitivity and responsiveness. Deco is as pleasing to the touch as it is to the ear, thanks to a discrete Class A high-impedance, ultra-low noise JFET preamp.

Boost / Cut

Turn up the volume.
We all need a little boost now and then. El Capistan features a secondary +/-3dB boost/cut function that lets you add a bit more “oomph” when engaging the pedal—or lower the volume slightly if you need a more subtle delay without changing your Mix control.

Stereo

Stereo movement.
No need to compromise on signal routing or pedal placement—Deco features full stereo input/output capabilities.
A single TRS input jack allows Deco to maintain its compact form factor while giving you the option to use a stereo input signal. A dedicated input switch on the rear panel lets you easily set Deco to operate with a stereo (TRS) or mono (standard TS) input source. Dual low-impedance TS output jacks let you use Deco as a stereo effect.

Studio Mode

To another level.
Pedals aren’t just for guitarists. Deco’s Studio Mode makes it a versatile tool with endless applications, from studio to stage.
By setting Deco to Studio Mode, you get an additional 10 dB of headroom, allowing you to use Deco with active pickup bass guitars, synthesizers, keyboards, effects loops, and much more.

ARM Processor

Significant developments in mobile phones and computers have led to an evolution in technology that now allows our pedals to perform more simultaneous processes with less power consumption than ever before.
This means more processing power for every sonic nuance with less power consumption on your pedalboard.

Inputs, Outputs, and Switches

• High-impedance, ultra-low noise, discrete Class A JFET stereo TRS input.
• Independent low-impedance stereo TS outputs.
• Expression pedal input allows connection of a TRS expression pedal, MiniSwitch, MultiSwitch Plus, or TRS MIDI connection.
• USB port for MIDI control from a computer or to perform firmware updates.
• Dedicated footswitches for Tape Saturation On/Off and Doubletracker On/Off.

Audio Quality

• Premium JFET analog front end
• 24-bit 96 kHz A/D and D/A converters with ultra-low noise and high performance for uncompromised audio quality.
• 520MHz Superscalar ARM processor
• 32-bit floating point processing
• Frequency response from 20 Hz to 20 kHz
• Audio input impedance: 1M Ohm
• Audio output impedance: 100 Ohm

More Information

• Solid, lightweight silver anodized aluminum chassis
• 9V DC power supply included
• Power required: 9 volts DC maximum center-negative, with a minimum of 300mA current.
• Dimensions:
  
  • 4.5" depth x 4" width x 1.75" height
  • 11.4 cm depth x 10.2 cm width x 4.4 cm height
• Designed and manufactured in the USA