Knif BBD: The $4000 Final Boss of Delays

20 Jan by Stefan Wyeth | |

2,3 / 5,0 | Reading time: 2 min

Knif BBD: The $4000 Final Boss of Delays · Source: KNIF AUDIO

Knif BBD · Source: KNIF AUDIO

Inside · Source: KNIF AUDIO

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The Knif BBD is a stereo bucket-brigade delay unit constructed with advanced companding and a high-end tube distortion stage for adding colour.

If you’re familiar with Jonte Knif and his small team of expert engineers at Knif Audio, you’ll know they don’t do half measures when it comes to designing gear. Every piece is created like a work of art, sparing no expense. So, as you can imagine, we are equally surprised and excited to check out the Knif BBD.

Knif BBD

The Knif BBD is housed in a beautiful monolithic oiled walnut cabinet with an engraved front plate that finishes the design with Finnish finesse. With its adaptive anti-aliasing and reconstruction filters, the BBD can reproduce an incredibly wide frequency range for any delay time you dial in, with no chance of aliasing.

This immediately makes Knif Audio’s boutique approach to bucket-brigade delay quite different from anything we’ve used or even heard of before. Inside the Knif BBD, there are six 4096-step bucket brigade circuits, giving you up to 600 ms of stereo delay time and 1200 ms of mono delay time.

Knif BBD · Source: KNIF AUDIO
Inside · Source: KNIF AUDIO

For creating a range of different delay effects, there are seven different operating modes. What’s more, there is a range of ways to alter the signal with an LFO, low-pass filter, drive, and distortion, as well as CV inputs for controlling delay time, sync, and feedback level. Possibly the coolest tap-tempo button you’ve ever seen is linked to a microcontroller that allows relay switching, and the clock generation, like the signal path, is 100% analogue.

The tube stage is positioned before the delay circuits, with four NOS tubes that allow you to control the distortion amount independently of the overall level, and there is a selector for even or odd harmonics. Overall, this BBD is a thing of beauty that is likely to sound as good as it looks, as well as make your jaw hit the floor when you find out the price.