TC Electronic ND-1 Nova Delay

Very easy to program if you have any experience with recent gadgets. Manual is clear and helpful.

Using a PRS with a Mesa Mark IV. This delay is excellent, offering clean digital delays or analog imitations. Can ape my Boss DM-3 perfectly, or produce exact/clear digital repeats, as needed. Dynamic delay is great for uncluttered leads with sweet delay at any pauses. I can get everything from B-52's to Kurt Rosenwinkel.

No problems so far. (I've had the TC Electronic Chorus for ten years with no troubles.)

Play straight ahead jazz, original power pop and covers (since 1970). Also use a Deluxe Reverb II, 1978 Les Paul, newer Strat and Howard Roberts Fusion. This delay is really all you need and the only one you need.

Its very easy to use, the controls and display are realy good. And the only thing that is good about it is that you can precisely tune the delay time to your song's tempo. You can also change between presets, which could be also very useful.

Here is the problem, the pedal makes the signal lifeless, even when bypassed and the overall result isn't good. What I think is the case is that the pedal converts the signal to digital, even when bypassed. Realy tempting package with everything you would need from a delay pedal, but with out any soul. If the delayed signal was mixer with the original signal(not a converted one), then maybe it would have worthed keeping it.

When I took it home I realised that the plug coming from the adaptor was defective and the cable was poping out. I took it back and iexchange it with the TC classic booster distortion. Shortly I realised that the Gate knob wasn't doing anything I went to the shop again and took another one. So both the delay and distortion where defective. So I guess I have to rate the reliability low.

Never had to contact the company, the dealer was very helpful.

I like all kinds of music and mainly I make my own stuff. I also own an old tape delay which sounds fantastic but its not reliable its very big and heavy, noisy, difficult to adjust and also needs a lot of maintenance. I bougth the TC hoping to make use out of it but my wishes didn't come true. It has everything you might dream of for a delay peday
but without the sound. I realy couldn't enjoy playing my Les Paul through it. Maybe in the future I ll buy another digital delay but for now I am keeping my chain analog and I have other priorities. As a result I am planing to buy an analog delay instead.

Considering the power and potential this thing has to inspire and deliver the style you want id say its a great design. The controls are easy to understand, but reading the first few pages of each section in the manual would do you some good, although i haven't and it works absolutely fabulous for me. The stereo ping pong and excessive feedback options are wonderful. Almost a 10 because it continues to show off features down the road.

I cant say enough about this thing or the quality that must have gone into it. its like the people at tc sat there and went..."you know if we are going to charge someone 240 for this it better turn some heads." And it surely turns mine. Im a tone freak but not a guru, so my chain consists of a tonebone loopbone that has rev. chorus and the delay in one loop and mod and trem in another. it sounds so good sometimes i just want to keep indulging in the possibilities of complex harmonics delayed on top of chorusy riffs and leads. THESE GUYS DID A GREAT JOB.

Seems like the old vantage to me, if you treat it like you don't want to buy another, you wont have. to.

Never Dealt with them but i bet they would make sure your happy with their product.

Hands down one of the finest pedals on my board, and id say just me pedal board alone would cost around 1000 dollars in pedals. It was expensive but it does its thing quite well. Im totally squared away in the delay department and that is hard to do since i am also one of those who cant stand the thought of the grass being 100 dollars away from green if you know what i mean. Maybe its a disease, but this pedal kicks ass and i wouldn't trade it for any other.

lots of features, i had a boss dd-20, which i thought was a little easier to see your settings on a dark stage, but other that,once you read the owners manual and learn about this pedal you will be blown away by all that it can do.

unbelievable. that is all i can say. And for recent posts who says it sucked the volume out of your guitar or the pedal was noisy, these people do not know what they are talking about. First, calibrate your pedal like it says to do in the owners manual. That will take care of evening out the volume when the pedal is off. Second, if you plug your pedal into a channel strip or outlet that runs your lights, computer, tv,etc. you are going to get noise no matter what. that is why it is always worth it to buy a good power source that isolates each pedal(ex. voodoo labs pedal power 2). this is by far the best delay i have ever heard. demoed the eventide timefactor and it did not sound any better. buy far best bang for the buck

built like a tank, love the switches.

have'nt dealt with them. There is no phone# for tech support, just email, which kind of pisses me off, so if i have problems with pedal down the road i guess i will find out.

great pedal, and for all potential buyers take it from somebody who knows what they are talking about instead of the majority of posters her who have no idea how to set up a pedal. If you calibrate the pedal like the owners manual tells you to do and isolate the power source, there will be no loss in volume and tone and no noise! by the way just purchased the nova modulater pedal and it sounds amazing also. Best two pedals I have ever bought.

If you are experienced with other delay pedals, both analog and digital, then it's fairly straightforward to work out the controls and get a fairly good idea of the range of this pedal's features.

The manual isn't the greatest but fortunately this isn't the sort of pedal where reading the manual is essential (providing you know what delays you want and the theory behind creating them) I'm going to mark it down in useability because the presets are simply not very gig friendly. As others have noted, changing presets on the fly is a bit of a nightmare.

I'm being really picky because this pedal is very easy to use but another thing that would have been good is a footswitch to select between modulation modes. It also isn't true bypass. Back on the plus side, the displays are bright and clear and there's virtually no difference in level between having the pedal on or off, great!

I play my trusty '80s Jap Strat through a menagerie of pedals and sometimes into a Line 6 POD XT in lieu of my Marshall amp.

The TC Nova delay gives me quality sounding crystal clear digital delay which can be warmed up by modulation and a "color" knob that sounds great half way between digital and analog. This is crucial for "warming" the sound up and getting closer to the old-school analog BBD way of things. It's incredibly natural sounding and sensitive to dynamics for a digital delay.

I'm a delay freak and as such I'm always interested in the various delay sounds of U2 - The Edge being pretty much the granddaddy of dotted 8th note rhythmic delay. The Nova is the closest thing I can get to the rack mounted units used by U2 since they stopped using the Memory Man. In fact I can get any delay sound that inspires me through the Nova Delay and make it sound very convincing with no other effects added.

As with all delays, this will do different things depending on where you put it in the signal path. Typically it should go after distortion and modulation - it's always worth trying out in the effects loop but delay should play well with other effects.

I'm still relying on my POD for gigs since I've yet to complete my collection of replacement pedals, so not much to say here... Seems well constructed, it's heavy, the footswitches are not quite as nice and clunky as I prefer though.

Not dealt with support

I play various styles of music. One of my two bands is a church worship band so I have to cover a huge variety of styles and often have to cope with dynamically shifting tempo. Therefore, tap tempo is a Godsend.

I tend to use the dotted 8th note pattern more than anything else, in both bands - it's very useful to be able to to set the pedal to that note division and then just tap on each beat to get in time. Not like the funky back-beat foot shuffle that I've had to do with other pedals.

My first delay pedal was an Electro Harmonix Delux Memory Man and I absolutely loved it. It did every kind of delay and my only gripe was the lack of tap tempo. I bought a Line 6 POD XT Live and found the delay models extremely useful but not quite on par with the memory man. However, the tap tempo feature really won me over to the digital side of things.

The only thing I wish this pedal had is a true analog BBD circuit built in as an option for real analog delay - much like the Pigtronix pedal seems to have. I was sold more on the clarity and quality of the digital delay and the TC Electronic U2 connection than on wackiness of the Pigtronix... I think have enough wackiness in my EH Micro-Synth and Fulltone Choralflange already!

If you want the best analog delay sound, get a Memory Man. If by a miracle you can find a Diamond Memory Lane then please tell me if it's better because I've never been able to get my hands on one for a comparison! However, if you want a very high quality digital delay with which you can pretty much nail any delay sound used by U2 since Joshua Tree, then get a couple of TC electronic rack mounted TC 2290s. If you can't afford that, get yourself a TC Nova Delay!

All in all the Nova Delay is easy to use as far ad basic settings. However, they do have a few setting buried deep so watch holding down the buttons and just trying things blindfolded.
Fairly easy getting around, editing patches, manual could be a bit better, but, not bad and certainly comes in handy for a few functions. My unit is current firmware

guitars used are custom Strat, Custom Tele, Gibson Les Paul Jr, Danelectro Prototype U2....
Doesn't seem noisy ..
One thing I have noticed on several of the new delay units (digital modeling/replicate Analog Delay) is that no matter where you set the balance, it just doesn't seem to sit properly .. to soft / too loud, delay wise. I have an 1982 or so Boss Analog Delay DM-2 tha only goes to 300 ms .. but .. no matter what you are doing or where you set the balance, it just sounds great and blends with your tone , enhances and just does it !
None of the newer Digital pedals get anywhere close to that.
It not a bad pedal, but I'm not in love with the tones or quality.

I purchased mine from Guitar Center Nashville > artist relation on 2/28/ 08 .. it apparently never worked properly. I had to isolate every pedal in my board to find the problem.
I am using there stock power supply they send with the unit.
What happens is. I lose my signal as if there were a master mute. All pedals still getting power, all lights still lit. For some reason, the TC Nova Delay just stops working .. no sound, but all appears normal as al lights are still lit. I have to unplug the unit, then power it up again and its fine ... for a short while. It is intermittent within an hour of use. On several sessions where I was using effects to track and had my pedalboard in the loop, we lost my tracks, had to punch in .. simply pretty much killed the artistic vibe of the moment .. plus, pretty much bummed out the Producer, Engineer and clients.

Well, I've been to corporate dinners with CEOs in the past (several years ago) and was certainly treated different then. It seems there support is geared at the user being a novice. SUpport seems to hold you off as long as possible .. pretty much corporate stuff.
After a week of emails, phone calls .. their support site didn't send some of my information, serial #, etc ............. I am told that they will send me an RMA and turnaround time I'm told i about 3 weeks. Guess I should have bought two or three to be safe .. or gone with the Eventide or Damage Control Timeline or Glass Nexus .. which is what I plan to do.
Support is nice and all, but very ineffective for the Pro Working Player. I had requested as GC said, to have TC contact artist relations GC to replace my Nova Delay, which certainly would have helped me .. but no.
I did receive my Rush RMA via email immediately .. well, after a week of emails and phone calls, will be returning it and it will be sold immediately on return.
I was going to give them a 1 rating here , basically useless as t really is for me .. but, they try and are bound by corporate rules.

I play mainly Rock /Classic / Blues / Rock~Country/ .. I've been playing my whole life , well over 25 years. My pedalboard includes a Paul Cochrane Timmy, Demeter Compulator, Xotic AC+, Fulltone Fulldrive II Mosfet, Ibanez TS-10 (modified), Original Rat (original Keeley Mod),Demeter Fuzzulator, Demeter Tremultor, Ibanez Bi-Chorus, Nova Delay and a few other things that come and go .. Vox 847 Wah (modded, Enie Ball Volume pedal, Boss EQ7 original, and more.
If it were lost or stolen, I wish it would have been before all this tech repair support started as it sure has taken a lot of time .. by time we get it straightened out, it will have been a month .. not including never really working properly or troubleshooting or lost tracks.
I use to have the original TC Chourus/Vibrato (I think thats what it was named) and I can say that there is no comparison between those two pedals by TC as far as quality and being great product .. the nova doesn't get anywhere close to the old TC Chorus !!!!!!!

I don??t know, if it easy to use. When I first plugged it between my guitar and the amp (in front of the amp, not the loop) I noticed a remarkable sound loss, even without having it engaged. I could not believe it and I had my friend plug and unplug it very quickly while I continued playing. For both of us, the sound loss was really noticeble!
I can??t live with an effect which degrades my sound (for which I??ve spent thousands of EUR to get it as good as it is) as much as this unit does.
I am staying with my Hughes & Kettner Replex, which colour the tone when it is engaged (in a good way) but it leaves the original sound as it is, when the effect is disengaged.

see above

An effect of this prize category made from a company which has such a good reputation should not degrade your original sound, when you put it in your chain. I am very disappointed.

Very easy to get a great sound out of.

The sound is the best I've heard from a delay pedal. Uncoloured, no volume boost or drop off. Musical in every way. From digital to analogue settings the quality is immaculate.

All seems to be very good

There is one feature that I find completly annoying that no other reviewer has mentioned. Why doesn't the unit show which patch your on rather than the beats per minute? Live this is very frustrating if your swapping patches for each song ie( what bloody patch am I on!!!). And then when trying to go from one patch to another if you don't hit the right footswitch then the left and scroll through the pacthes you can reset the tempo and alter the patch by mistake. I've done this a couple of times and been really annoyed at trying to get the tempo etc back to what I had. I rarely want to work out the tempo anyway based on tapping my foot and having that as the display for a gig. Counter intuitive if you ask me!!!

If you're a gigging musician and need several different delays and need to switch back and forth between them, this unit is not for you. While it does produce excellent lush modulated delays, TC Electronics didn't make it easy to use on stage. What I don't like about this unit:
(1) to change presets you have to hit the tap / tempo button then quickly hit the on / off switch pretty quickly or it won't change presets.
(2) you can't go to one preset on the fly; you have to cycle through them. My feeling is that they should have put a 3rd button to cycle through the presets to make it much easier.
(3) while you can set tempo by strumming the strings and pushing down on the tempo / tap button for 2 seconds (which by the way, is a brilliant idea), it cuts off the volume while you set the tempo). For stage work this might not be a good option.
(4) Tapping the tempo while standing is not always as easy as it looks and is a little difficult on stage. Not difficult to do at all when sitting down though.
(5) Slight hum noticeable. I think this could have been fixed with better shielding or better design of the power supply which seems to be the source of the hum.


Okay the pluses +:
(1) VERY GOOD delays; particularly the modulation effects. If you want to sound like U2 this unit will do the job.
(2) Ability to change tempo in real time via tap / tempo or use or by strumming strings is a great idea and is genius.
(3) Digital readout very easy to read in the dark.
(4) compact size of the pedal leaves more room for other pedals on your board.

I tested the unit for a day using a Marshall AVT275 amplifier and a Fender Stratocaster 60's retro strat with HS-3 and YJM pickups and an Epiphone Les Paul Ultra II (new). I have been playing for over 30 years and have listened to a lot of delay units in my time including Eventides, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, various Boss delays including the DD-20 and those built into my GT-8.

I did notice that the modulated delays did have a tendency to make the distortions resonate and feed back a little strangely. Not the best lead sound on certain settings per my experience with the unit.

The normal "built like a tank" addage works here. You could use it without needing a backup.

No experience with customer support.

I play metal, classic rock, alternative rock, gospel / christian, country music...a little of everything, especially after 30 years. Believe it or not, I listen to and like a lot of the current bands that the teens listen to. Good music is good music, regardless of the genre or age.

I have listened to a lot of other units and did a lot of research before buying the Nova Delay ND-1 which I am sending back because of it's difficulty for using in stage work. The delay units that sound best to me are the Eventide, T-Rex, and the Line 6 DL4. If they would make the DL4 more compact, put it in all metal casing, change that ugly green color and make a few cosmetic changes, and just generally build it better it would be in a class by itself.

Having said all this the Nova Delay ND-1 would be excellent if they eliminated the hum and made it more stage friendly. It would be excellent for recording in a studio as long as you eliminated the hum.

It's not immediate but takes max 1 hour to understand. There are some special features like different mod types, a nice ducking delay, and especially the audio tap tempo, which lets you set tap/delay times with hitting the guitar with your hand in rhythm while the output is muted, VERY good. Also the different available note values (with triplets and stuff) is very nice.

Also there is adjustable level which can take quite a range, and the unit is selfadjusting the levels to your amps loop, which is really cool.

Also going from Digi to Analog to Tape tone wise is cool.

For the price and the build quality of this unit, it's a straight 10.

I don't dig so much the dynamic delay (I would like to be able to set a delay level for the ducking, so it doesn't disappear completely while playing).

Reverse is funny.

Pan/PingPong not so relevant for me (playing mono) but wanna try with a second amp.

But the simple delay is great! With the many controls it can be tweaked to deliver MANY different tones, from U2 to Gary Moore, from Pink Floyd to Doors to very modern stuff.

Have tried it in both, a Marshall Vintage Modern and a Bogner Shiva, and both amps are picky about stuff in the loop, and in both this pedal sounds absolutely neutral, dynamic, clean (or dirty if you set it that way). Especially on the Bogner I was only satisfied with Lexicon rack gear so far, so this is the first pedal being as good in that context.

Again: for the price this is as good as it gets!

seems rugged but just had it 2 weeks. no opinion yet

couldn't tell

just what is available on their website in terms of downloads and information is really cool, which is an important part of overall service

Compared to other units in the market, the Eventide or Damage Control or T-Rex or TC or Roland, this is the best price/value and quality option on the market.

I have owned delays from Ibanez, T-Rex, Lexicon, Danelectro, and this is a great unit, both usability as well as sound wise.