I’ve had a Deco for years that I got from a friend and always used it quite subtly. I found myself looking at some lofi pedals lately (like the Shallow Water), and decided to see what I could do with the Deco. I have really been missing out by not messing with the hidden high and low cuts. There is some magic in there if you want those really nostalgic tones.

The settings I dig for this are: high and low cuts all the way to the right (maxed), middle position on the toggle, the blend knob all the way to the right, modulation all the way up, and the time knob somewhere between 11:00 and 2:00.

I also found a strange pedal order that worked out well.

UAD Dream -> Deco -> Volante (Reverb up quite a bit on on the Dream and off on the Volante as strange as that sounds)

Sounds like a weird order, but surprisingly super nice having the spring reverb going into the modulation on the Deco, and having the whole thing with a bit of tape delay.

I’ve always found the Deco quite tough to fully wrap my head around because it can do so much, so I thought I’d share.

Strymon kind of gets viewed as pretty vanilla these days since there are so many boutique things out now, but I find their stuff is actually really classy. The Deco was so ahead of its time.

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