Bursting out of New York, Electro-Harmonix’s Canyon comes filled to the brim with as much style, versatility and ingenuity as you’d expect from this long established manufacturer.
The first thing you’ll notice when inspecting this stomp box for the first time is its elegant, fairly simplistic design and what on the surface appears to be minimalistic controls, but once you look a little closer, you soon realise the full potential of this amazing little piece of kit.
In true EHX style, it comes with 11 different types of delay to play with. From the classic echo and modulation modes, to more creative effects like the glistening shimmer, which upon turning the FX LVL control to full, creates enormous swells fit for any ambient soundtrack. This effect really helps to fill space within a live performance and avoids the clichéd sound of guitar chords being strummed away at the back of an indie pop band. Other stand out effects include the Deluxe Memory Man emulator and the reverb delay, which can be used as just a reverb effect with the feedback dial set to 0. It’s also worth mentioning there’s a built in loop function, capable of holding up to 62 seconds in one loop. The active switch also acts as a tap tempo for all modes except loop, although I found this feature useful, occasionally I would accidentally tap a new tempo when turning the effect on and off. This can be avoided through using an external tap tempo, I would recommend doing this to anyone who can afford to.
To many other manufacturers, this may seem like enough to warrant a very good delay pedal, and they’d be right. The tones and effects achieved are up there among the best in its category, but there’s more than meets the eye, as is the case with most EHX products. A quick look in the manual and you’ll find a world of tone shaping possibilities. Each mode, bar the loop and echo, can be adjusted with secondary knob functions, when activated, this changes the functions of the delay and feedback knobs. I would go through them, but the shear amount of changes possible would see this review go on forever. I implore everyone who owns this pedal to thoroughly explore the secondary knob functions.
In summary, this pedal has changed the way I write and play guitar. The synth-like shimmer effect and glitchy reverse delay have helped my creativity flow more than any other piece of kit I’ve bought, as well as giving me more tone shaping possibilities than I could’ve hoped for with a delay unit. I wholeheartedly recommend this pedal to anyone in the market for a new delay.
