KEELEY ELECTRONICS - Halo Andy Timmons Dual Echo

LONGTIME ANDY TIMMONS fans surely: remember an era when the Texas guitar hero gigged with two vintage Electro-Harmonix Memory Man analog delay pedals at his feet.

- JUDE GOLD

He would run the huge stompboxes in series, with large foot-operable levers attached to the mix knobs, allowing him to adjust effects levels on the fly. It was a primitive setup that hogged an immense amount of pedalboard real estate, but it was all part of Timmons' eternal quest to achieve the ultimate echo sound. Generating pristine, subtly modulated reflections that ricocheted dreamily behind the notes, the setup made simple guitar phrases sound spectacular.

Now you can get Timmons' treasured echo sound without having to spend hours or days toying with a mountain of old analog delays and tape echoes, as he has been doing his whole life. Just hit preset 1A on Keeley Electronics' new Halo pedal, and his go-to echo setting is yours.

For the Timmons fan, having instant access to this sound is a huge score. It's like an RC Cola engineer suddenly getting the recipe for Coke. Playing in mono, à la Timmons' Memory Man setup, the effect is quite inspiring, seducing your ears with hypnotic repeats tastefully chorused via the modulation and depth knobs, and warmed and compressed by the high-pass filter and saturation controls. The most hypnotic aspect of this patch may be how the ethereal, dovetailing echoes gradually diffuse into a pleasant, reverb-like wash - a "halo," as Timmons describes it.