NPsD: MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe & Source Audio True Spring

markv · March 2019

Been re-doing my board and slimming it down slightly, and these two pedals are part of that.

I bought the Carbon Copy Deluxe because I love the original Carbon Copy but wanted the features of the Deluxe, particularly the expression pedal input and the tap tempo.

I have to say - I'm a bit disappointed. I can't do a direct comparison because I sold the CC as part of paying for this, but I'm finding it hard to find exactly the same sound. The "Mix" and "Regen" controls are only really useful between about 12 o'clock and 3 o'clock - any less and there's nothing happening, and any more and it's too loud and out of control.

Also annoyingly, you can control most params with the expression pedal but not regen, which means it's harder to use the expression pedal to control self-oscillation. (It does say this quite clearly in the manual so this is partly my fault for not doing my research properly before I bought it).

All that said, it's still great at what it does. I'd love to do a comparison with something like the Stone Deaf Syncopy or one of the EHX Memory Man variants.

The Source Audio True Spring is a reverb and trem, I guess in a very similar vein to the Strymon Flint. In fact originally I was going to get a Flint but this is cheaper (new, anyway) and smaller and does more, so I thought I'd give it a go.

I've not had much time with it yet, but so far I really like it. The spring sounds are very good, to my ears, but not subtle, so dialling them down so that they're just part of the sound rather than an obvious special effect takes a bit of balancing. The trem options (harmonic, bias and opto) are also very good. There's a huge amount of control via the Neuro app, and I particularly like being able to put modulation on the trails. Of course, if you want something other than spring reverb you'll need something else but, by using the app, there are about 10 spring models to choose from, with lots of variations in the individual models.

If your'e not using the app, getting at the trem settings is a bit fiddly and you can't change the reverb/trem order. Also, the app is send only, which means if you set up a sound from the app and then tweak it with the knobs, the app then doesn't know what you've done so if you want to save that as a preset, you'll need to redo those settings in the app first.

Overall I'm really pleased with this but again I really want to compare it with the Flint, and maybe against separate trem & reverb pedals (say, the SA Vertigo and the Neunaber Immerse) - which would of course be about twice the price!

TimmyO · March 2019

markv said:

Been re-doing my board and slimming it down slightly, and these two pedals are part of that.

I bought the Carbon Copy Deluxe because I love the original Carbon Copy but wanted the features of the Deluxe, particularly the expression pedal input and the tap tempo.

I have to say - I'm a bit disappointed. I can't do a direct comparison because I sold the CC as part of paying for this, but I'm finding it hard to find exactly the same sound. The "Mix" and "Regen" controls are only really useful between about 12 o'clock and 3 o'clock - any less and there's nothing happening, and any more and it's too loud and out of control.

Also annoyingly, you can control most params with the expression pedal but not regen, which means it's harder to use the expression pedal to control self-oscillation. (It does say this quite clearly in the manual so this is partly my fault for not doing my research properly before I bought it).

All that said, it's still great at what it does. I'd love to do a comparison with something like the Stone Deaf Syncopy or one of the EHX Memory Man variants.

Really interesting to read that - because I too was really excited by the specs of this but for whatever reason really wasn't feeling it when I played one - I wonder whether there are circuit changes?

markv · March 2019

I don't understand much about the electronics but although there are other changes - tap tempo, tap divide, expression pedal control - my guess would be it's the extra delay time likely to cause the biggest change. Wouldn't that involve different chips or something?

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NPsD: MXR Carbon Copy Deluxe & Source Audio True Spring

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