Strymon Timeline

I have used the Strymon Timeline delay since 2014 and I really cannot fault it, the quality is as expected from everything Strymon produce, awesome and the sounds it can produce are simply amazing.
I primarily use it for guitar and find the looping feature very useful for creating guitar parts and playing off them when I am playing alone. The only wish I would have is to be able to loop record for a little longer although that said, the actual looping time is no real impediment to its usefulness.
The quality and clarity of the modulated echoes are stellar and give quite a few high end rack units costing a lot more a great run for the money it costs, no doubt this is why its commonly found in so many guitarists pedalboards and racks, I also use it for recording as a send effect and I get great results with vocals as well as keys/guitars.
One of my favorite effects this unit provides (as well as echo) is the almost synth like crystalline tracking of the pitch shifted echoes, this produces in my opinion one of the best examples of this effect which I believe originated on the high end Eventide Harmonizer rack effect units and is often used by the likes of The Edge from U2
If top quality echo and ambience is your thing, you will not be disappointed with this unit, it has a wealth of amazing features and can be expanded upon by adding one of the 3rd party add on pedals on the market which can greatly expand on the already brilliant looping features.
An excellent delay effect and definitely one to have in your arsenal if you need something to sweeten your sound up and produce great ambient sounds!
10/10!

Have had this for about half a year now. It's a great sounding module. There's no way around it. It sounds pure, clean, beautiful.

However, it doesn't sound gritty, even if you use the grit button or the filters. It's just not dirty, it's clean and you can't get it to sound dirty. That limits a bit the cases you can use it for of course, but it's a great sound for specific sounds.

Unfortunately, programming it is just not fun. Using presets is uninspiring as it's hard to reprogram them. Going from scratch has the same issue, it's just totally not intuitive. Sometimes you accidentally hit or touch a button and it will skip to another program.. For instance the delay time has a dedicated button, but to finetune you have to use the value button which also selects presets. I don't know, it's just not fun to use. It's great sounding but the fun factor is low.

I started using Strymon pedals with Mobius and now I replaced my Flashback X4 with the Strymon Timeline. Where to start from? Flashback X4 by TC electronics is a great pedal and I've used it so much, but Timeline? Timeline is a whole new world. I have had it for a week so far and I haven't discovered not even 5% of what this pedal can do. It is more expensive by at least 150 than any other delay pedal, but I'm telling you, it's worth every penny. The quality of the sound is so good, it cuts through the mix, but it doesn't cover your tone, or alter your signal. All the little knobs on this pedal are so responsive and they change the sound exactly according to my needs. So far I haven't created many sounds of my own, because the default sounds in it are already so good. The Looper also works just fine and it's simple to use. It seems like a very difficult pedal to handle but it's really not. Just a quick study (2-3 mins) of the front page of the manual to get to know what every knob does and then it's really easy to do the rest. The size and weight of it are just fine as it is not as big as any other big delay pedals of the same category. Strymon forever and ever amen.

One of the most versatile delay pedals I guess. Great for soundscapes, ambient, The Edge-style I just play simple stuff but it sounds awesome playing tight rhythms on the delay patterns (joke!) ..and even weird trippy tape-style loops. I can spent all days and nights with this thing.

Yes! It's expensive but you get a lot of fun and inspiration in return. The ad/da converters are really clean (sample rate of 96kHz/24bit) and thus are very useful in the studio on almost anything as well. Your original signal is still analog and untouched unless you'll drive it 100% wet.

Strymon pedals have an overall clean and wide character in their sound, but the dirt and grittiness of tape delays are also convincing enough though.

I was dead set on an Empress Echosystem after watching Youtube reviews and having been really impressed by the engines that can run in so many ways, and I thought nothing would change my mind.
However, I said to myself that I should give the Strymon Timeline a chance as well. I had the opportunity to spend some time with both of them for about 10 days and while indeed the Echosystem seemed to be more innovative with the features and the algorithms, what eventually made me go with the Timeline was most of all that it just sounded so much better to me and was easier in my opinion to dial in a good sound quickly.
Also, regarding the simplicity of the interface with the Echosystem, while I initially thought it was a good thing, in the end made it feel quite poorer in comparison.
Finally, as I already had a Strymon Mobius, it helped a lot that they are very consistent with their interface. And it is in the end a much better interface for me.
While the empress is also a very good pedal, in my opinion I don't think they can quite justify charging the same price as a strymon unit..
I think it's definitely interesting what Empress does with the engine modes (series, parallel, left/right) but I am not sure this was something that I would even need in the longrun, probably something that I would have fun for a while and then never use again.
I hope this helps someone having the same soul eating dilemma as I had :)

I was amazed at the size of the foot print when I opened the box. I dont know why but I always expected this to be bigger than it is. Dont get me wrong this is a good thing I was just surprised.

It took around 30 mins of mucking around to get the hang of this pedal. The configurations and settings just took me a bit to get my head around but its all fairly easy really.

The delays sound amazing. The duel delay is just the dogs nuts really. I was also worried with this being a digital delay that it would sound hollow or just too clean like so many others. Well you can have that if you want but can also have a wide range of sounds to make it less digital and more analog if you want to go to the other extreme. Very versatile.

I am not sure I would use all of the delays on this the Hifi one isn't something I think I will get too much into but the ice and swell delays are fantastic. Makes you start thinking about ideas for songs that you never did before.

This is very expensive at the end of the day and you can't get around this. I saw that most of the 2nd hand units get snapped up really quickly so i wasn't worried if I didn't like it. That being said I think this has a full time slot on my pedal board for the foreseeable future.

The best sounding digital delay I've ever used, rack, pedal or plugin. Was originally using it on guitar, and it was perfect. Tried it with my synths and it worked great for them too. All the emulations (tape, analog) sound amazing, really warm and organic, and the more esoteric delays such as the filter and shimmer can be really creative if used properly. The unit is built to withstand a nuclear explosion. Only problem I had with it was a slightly dodgy footswitch, but I contacted Strymon directly and they sent me a new one totally free of charge! Only issue I had with it in use is that I don't like menu diving, which there is still some because of all the params unique to each delay type. Maybe could have had a couple more knobs for the more common params, but I'm just nitpicking now.