Keeley's new HALO Dual Echo brings Andy Timmons' secret signature sound to the masses

Keeley Electronics has teamed up with Andy Timmons for a new signature delay pedal, bringing the guitarist's long-kept-secret “Halo” tone to the masses.

Boasting that signature sound as its default preset, the HALO Andy Timmons Dual Echo functions as two separate delay pedals – routed to its left- and right-hand footswitches – and offers up to 1,500 milliseconds of delay time and five delay rhythms: Quarter, Dotted Eighth, Halo, Bucket Brigade and Tape.

Notes played through the pedal “dance rhythmically, almost creating a reverb diffusion”, Keeley explains. The same notes are “held together” with tape-style effects like modulation, saturation and compression.

Regarding the pedal's central “Halo” tone, Timmons explains: “The reason I've called it [the HALO] is it's how I imagine the tone, if I were to visualize it. The center of the note stays where it is and then the echoes gently feather away, but actually start to detune at the end.”

There are seven presets in addition to Timmons signature “Halo” sound, each loaded with differing levels of delay and modulation. The pedal is also equipped with saturation, tone and shelving filter dials for enhanced control over its sound.

Other features include soft stomp switches for tap tempo, infinite hold, preset save/recall and more, a status light which indicates when the player has adjusted a knob from home settings, remote switching and expression pedal control capabilities, true bypass functionality and a Dream multi-core DSP for “stunning sound quality”.

As Timmons recalls, the HALO resulted from a search for simplicity. “What I wanted to get was just the ultimate dual echo sound,” he says. “Because for years I would either use a couple of Echoplex EP-3s, and then for a while I was using two [Electro-Harmonix] Memory Mans running into each other. And then the [Strymon] Timeline was kind of replicating those things.

“But I'm a simpler guy [now] in that I don't need a thousand presets and too much flexibility. This is the perfect thing.”

The HALO Andy Timmons Dual Echo is available now for $299. For more info, head to Keeley Electronics.