TC Electronic 2290 P

The classic ’80s delay effect has been reborn in pedal form.

TC Electronic’s 2290 Dynamic Digital Delay is a classic ’80s rackmount effects processor that went far beyond the standard delay units of the time. Thanks in large part to its powerful modulation section, it could be thought of more as a delay‑based multi‑effects system, with which it was possible to dial in chorus, flange, automatic double‑tracking, panning, tremolo, ducking, gating, and even pitched delays (more on this later), in addition to the typical echo effects that you’d normally expect on a digital delay. The 2290 is still sought after today, and a few years ago TC created a plug‑in version (with an optional hardware controller). More recently, they decided to recreate the whole thing in pedal format and the result is the 2290 P, reviewed here.

Overview

Housed in a rugged enclosure, the 2290 P offers up to 9.999 seconds of delay time and boasts the sort of retro‑futuristic aesthetics that suggest it might have been plucked straight from the cockpit of a certain DeLorean. Besides the three footswitches (more on those below), the user controls take the form of many buttons and a single scroll wheel, with settings indicated on a few ’80s‑style numeric displays. A sleek top cover is designed to prevent accidental parameter changes while tap‑dancing around your pedalboard on stage, and it’s a thoughtful inclusion — when fitted over the top, you can still see the displays (though darkened), and the buttons are shielded to leave you with access to just the footswitches and encoder.

On the back, there’s a power inlet for the supplied centre‑negative 9V DC supply (if using a pedalboard supply, you’ll need 250mA available). There are also MIDI in and out/thru five‑pin DIN sockets, and a USB‑C port — the 2290 P can connect to a Mac/Windows machine running a software librarian, which is mainly for preset organisation but also to configure MIDI settings, and it’s the only way to map the quarter‑inch TRS expression pedal jack. There are four TS jacks for the analogue in and out. These can function as stereo in and out or, in a mono configuration, as a main in and out with an effect send/return for the feedback loop — you set the mode using a toggle switch between the two jack pairs.

The analogue I/O can be configured either as conventional stereo in and out pairs, or as mono in/out with an effects send and return in the delay feedback path.

Features include 128 presets in 64 banks (selected with the A and B footswitches) and, in tribute to the original, the pedal’s first 20 presets are recreations of those found in the rack unit. There are three footswitches, labelled A, B and Learn. The first two switch between different patches, while Learn is another nod to the original rack unit — that was released before ‘tap tempo’ had become the ubiquitous term! This is capable of controlling tap tempo for presets individually, both A and B at the same time, or as a global tempo control. There are many rhythmic sub‑divisions programmable via the...