Belcat delay pedal

[Ge_Whiz]

Just back from the London Guitar Show with a heap of goodies, including a 'Belcat' delay pedal that cost only £20. It was on the Hofner stand next to one with the Behringer delay - ugh. The Belcat comes in a standard die-cast box with a steel base, has 'rate', 'repeat' and 'level' (mix) controls and sounds fantastic. I opened it up as soon as I got home and it uses a PT2399 DIL chip; everything else is surface-mount including a TL062, voltage regulator, and one lone transistor, and the component count is way higher than the 'Rebote': probably additional filtering for its impressively olde-analogue sound. £20? I could barely build one for that. It's very well made and takes a standard 9V supply plug, too. Bargain.

(Oh, and I also bought another Digitech RP50 to mess with.)

[Pushtone]

Sounds a lot like this Artech delay my buddy got about a year ago. Uses same chip. $40.00 here in Vancouver.
Didn't sound so good.

[MartyMart]

I was there on friday, had a good look around but managed to escape having only bought
several sets of regular slinky's @ £3 a set  - from a small stand with lots of old guitar goodies.
My mate got a pair of Seymour duncan vintage HB's from the same guy at half price !!  Nice !
I did "drool" over the Orange Tiny Terror for a few minutes though .......
PMT's stand had loads of stuff - including their van in the middle of the stand ! - makes pack up
nice 'n quick 
My Belcat OD is real nice and also well built .... how do they do that ??

[Mark Hammer]

Can't make out what the large SMD chip is in the middle of that board.  Is it a compander chip of some sort?

[Pushtone]

The 16 pin chip in the middle reads SA57:D From Philips

[Mark Hammer]

The "SA57" part indicates a compander, with the stuff between the 7 and D likely a poorly printed "1".  I gather we are looking at wghat is VERY close to a PT-80 or a Fab Echo with the variable tome modification already done.

I'm not suggesting a "pirate"/clone, or anything of that nature.  Rather, is is the basic appnotes type of design, and those tend to resemble each other a great deal.

[puretube]

yep, the pins 2&3, and 14&15 tied together sure looks like compander.

Funny: the name of the Pedal and the PCB (upper left corner on Pushtone`s pic): "Analog Delay"... 

[Mark Hammer]

You're right.  Hadn't noticed that.  It's a pity that there is no governing body to determine and enforce when something is and isn't "analog" or "Tube", the same way that the food industry enforces what can be called "fruit juice" and what must be called "fruit drink" (or "cheese" vs "cheese food", "ice cream" vs "ice milk product", etc).  I suppose the grapevine (places like here and HC) can do some policing, but many consumers ARE still confined to what they see on the product itself for their information, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that music store sales staff could tell the difference and inform the customer (or want to).

[Ge_Whiz]

Sounds a lot like this Artech delay my buddy got about a year ago. Uses same chip. $40.00 here in Vancouver.
Didn't sound so good.

Well, the Artec has a much more complicated circuit than the Belcat, and I can assure you that the Belcat (a) sounds great and (b) sounds analogue.