Catalinbread Adineko ‘Oil Can’ Delay Pedal Limited Edition Starcrash 70 Collection

The Catalinbread Adineko ‘Oil Can’ Delay Pedal is a throwback delay pedal with modern tech and controls. Original oil can delays were known for their inconsistency and for being somewhat maintenance-heavy, but their effects were mysteriously cool. That's why Catalinbread decided to make a digital version of the oil-filled mechanical delay. The result of their efforts is a user-friendly, reliable delay pedal with modern precision that still offers up the retro vibe and swirly sonic goodness of an old oil can unit. Part of the limited-edition Starcrush 70 Collection, this version of the Adineko pedal radiates 1970s looks with a throwback finish. 

Oil can delay units were manufactured by a company named Tel-Ray who later became better known as Morley. Tel-Ray mostly focused on being the OEM utilizing their oil can technology (Patent US3530227 A), branding units for Gibson (GA-RE4), Fender (Dimension IV), Acoustic, etc. They employed an electro-static storage method where the signal is recorded to a spinning disk, a layer of oil (for years rumored to be a mysterious carcinogenic oil) prevented this signal from leaking into the air before a ‘pickup’ moments later played back the signal recorded to the disk. Compared to the counterparts of the day (tape, drum, wire delay machines), their sound was more low fidelity, murky, often with a more consistent musical vibrato that correlated to the spinning disk speed. The sound is described as mysterious. The Catalinbread Adineko pedal is an echo, reverb, vibrato pedal that faithfully models the sonic experience of these oil can units.

This knob functions like the repeats on any echo unit; it feeds back the wet output back into the input of the delay line. On oil can delays and the ADINEKO, the repeats quality smears into a soupy, foggy texture due to the low fidelity of the record medium and the fact that the echoes are always modulating.

This control allows you to mix between 100 percent wet and 100 percent dry signals. The original units featured tube preamp stages; the ADINEKO’s preamp stages are tuned to provide very much the same experience as a healthy example of an original unit. Viscosity controls the modulation depth.

A majority of original oil can units have a fixed rotation speed, hence a fixed delay time and fixed vibrato time (there were models with a mechanical motor brake to slow it down); however, the actual maximum delay time was very short, ranging from 80-120ms. The Adineko extends your modulated delay time up to one second.

Original units had a short and long echo playback head selectable by a pair of slider switches or a rotary switch that allowed the user to select one or the other, or both on at the same time. Catalinbread expanded upon this concept by putting the playback heads on a continuous mixer, allowing accents and new rhythmic possibilities by favoring one head volume over the other. Counter-clockwise is the short delay time head, clockwise is the long head, and noon is both heads at equal amplitude.

The Adineko must be powered with center negative, regulated 9 to 18V DC external power supply.