I rediscovered my Jacques Prisoner delay

Help!I'maRock!

Mediocringly Derivative
Last night I had the sudden urge to buy a DD-3 just so I could use the under 50ms setting. That's stupid, so I hauled out my Jacques Prisoner Delay that I last used when I was still on guitar in The Bird Index last Autumn (been on bass since December, and I love it).

The Prisoner is an interesting pedal. It's kind of the love child of a DM-2 and DMM. A clean analog delay that doesn't get overdriven; with a crazy, fully adjustable, modulation section. It was my main delay for years but hasn't gotten a lot of love recently. The sound overlaps a lot with my Deluxe Memory Boy, but the DMB has a lot more delay time. However, it's delay starts around 30ms. So if you want to do the short slapback thing, the Prisoner is a much better solution. I think it starts at 3ms. You get a lot more travel on the dial to make it happen. Plus, the DMB has tap tempo, so you want to use that for more than just slapback.

I got the time dialed in at about 9 o'clock, so you can just feel the space in the sound. From there, adding repeats can thicken the sound, but it gets super weird if you turn them up all the way and let it sound like an echo chamber. Even better is adding modulation, which gets super weird really fast. So you go from that Echoplex thing, but without the preamp, to something you'd expect the Flaming Lips to use.

The best part though was dialing it in as a chorus pedal. Modulated delay is the best chorus pedal ever. Adding in the repeats keeps it cleaner than a traditional chorus, without that crappy Roland-like sheen to the sound. And then when you add another longer delay (I used the digital setting on the Nux Time Core), the sound gets huge.

I'm not quite sure if I'm going to use this on bass, or if I'm going to build another board for guitar, but I gotta get the Prisoner onto the next iteration. Whatever it is.
 
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I wonder what Jacques is up to today, he was a regular on HC 20 years ago.
 
I wonder what Jacques is up to today, he was a regular on HC 20 years ago.

It seems he's still in business, but refuses major distribution channels here in the US.

This isn't the first time this has happened, is it?

It isn't. The Echorec kicked it off of my board and the DMB is "more versatile". But neither does what it does, and it can't do what they do. So it's worth keeping around.
 
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