Scott Henderson Discussion

[mikoo69]

Hey Scott,

Wondering why you (and Mike Landau) use both reverb and delay in a wet-dry wet setup. Just curious to know from your ears what the delay adds as far as ambiance, that you don't get out of reverb alone? Doesn't the delay ever interfere with rhythmic playing or tempo if the band is playing at different tempos throughout the night?

Fan of some players who use just reverb - i.e. Derek Trucks, Jimmy Herring
Others who just use delay - Gilmour

Why both, and what do you miss when it's just verb, or just delay?

Do you adjust the effect level of the delay independently to the reverb, or ever bring it in and out on an expression pedal?

[Scott Henderson]

I mostly use a mix of delay and reverb, but sometimes I use only reverb, like on funk tunes where delay would get in the way. In my experience if you set the delay to the tempo of the song, it kinda disappears anyway. Reverb is much more transparent than delay, so in a loud situation reverb by itself can add too much ambiance and muddy things up, especially in boomy rooms.

I don't like delay without reverb because it sounds too dry, especially if it's a long delay like 500ms. My mix of reverb and delay is set to my taste and after I write the patch I don't mess with it - I just turn the whole thing up and down. It's around 60% delay, 40% reverb.