Fuzz Imp Echo Moon Delay Pedal Review

What direction will this Fuzz and Overdrive-focused brand go with their boosted delay pedal?

Fuzz Imp, a pedal company led by a fine fellow named Justus, has made most of their reputation behind the sale and development of all things gain and fuzz. Is that really a surprise given the name of the brand though?

What was a surprise was when I saw that he had released a delay pedal a little while ago, when most of his focus had been on stackable drives, modded Big Muffs, and fuzzes that blended octave and feedback. So I eventually decided to buy one, and if you want to buy one too they’re currently $139.99. I’m a bit of a delay connoisseur, anyone who grew up listening to The Edge/U2 can be, so I was very curious about if this could unseat any of my beloved delays.

The big idea here is that this delay pedal is meant to work with gain stages very well. The lofi mode (up on the toggle) is especially sculpted to work with dark, high gain pedals, by producing a less dark signal when compared to the warmer, analog feel of “full” mode. Standard controls like time, repeats, and mix are also outfitted here for dialing in 5-600 ms of delay.

This analog voiced delay is supposed to bring its own character and EQ to your sound, as opposed to being a bland repetitive repeat machine. A massive boost knob sits in the center of the pedal, which should allow for some fun higher gain delay sounds.

Time For The Demo

I’m running my RWM Tele into the Echo Moon, with a KTR in front of it for some drive. That’s all going stereo out, with a Vox-voiced amp sim on one side, and a Fender Deluxe Reverb-amp sim on the other.

So Justus is right, this thing does sound really good when paired with some gain pedals. The lofi mode totally leaves some room for the drive and gain to fill out the echoes, without pushing them out of whack. But both the lofi and full modes are also pretty great while just being used as a standalone delay. Overall, I think the demo speaks for itself, there’s a lot of tone here.

The boost knob is particularly interesting, as this pedal has a lot of onboard gain. It’s almost an overdrive pedal all by itself. To me, the saturated delay is basically like a tape preamp on steroids. I’m sure the circuitry is different under the hood, but I would have marketed this to a lot of tape preamp fans and said it’s that with a lot more oomph.

When paired with the higher gain sounds, I was really impressed with the Echo Moon. I think Fuzz Imp is onto something here, and it makes sense considering how well they do high gain pedals. I do wish there were some more interesting controls here though, to pair with the lofi-full modes. I think particularly a knob to scoop the mids (or atleast a tone knob) would do a better job of framing this pedal as delay-for-drive. You could really do some cool shape shifting here, because the pedal sounds sooo good as is.

I give Fuzz Imp a lot of credit though, this is a cool delay pedal at a time when the market is very saturated with delays. It’s worth checking out, especially if play with a ton of gain, and I think the boost knob/onboard gain is kind of a brilliant design here. The Echo Moon is a drive pedal with delay functionality.

I like it, and recommend you go give it a long look!