Strymon Volante (original finish)

It's been a long time since I've so eagerly awaited a piece of musical equipment.
Since the end of 2006, I owned a 1974 Roland RE-201 Space Echo and let's be honest, nothing else sounds like them; they sound warm, alive, they feedback beautifully and so on. However, they require maintenance and mine had not been the most reliable. In fact, around 2008-2009, the wow and flutter and become so great I had to send it to the one and only repairer in the UK and he had to change the motor for a reconditioned one. That cost an absolute fortune and to add insult to injury, the delightful Post Gestapo charged another fortune for import duties when the unit finally came back.
There have been other repairs too which I won't go into. They've all cost me money, as we all know that anything that involves people actually doing something costs an absolute fortune in Switzerland......
Anyway, I sold the RE-201 end of last year and replaced it with a Strymon Timeline (bought from here) and now the Strymon Volante. Yes, that's right, with the money I got for the RE-201, I bought a Timeline and a Volante. It's an absolute no-brainer!
Now, the Volante emulates a drum echo, typically a Binson Echorec, a tape based echo, eg, an RE-201 and reel to reel recorders, eg like Robert Fripp used to use.
I've never used an Echorec but I also own the Dawner Prince Booner pedal which also emulates an Echorec. FIrst impressions with the drum emulation on the Volante are that it isn't a Boonar! Somehow the echoes don't seem quite as complex as the Boonar when they are on their own but when adding the spring reverb, this adds tremendously to the complexity of the aural landscape. How close the emulation is to an actual Binson, I really cannot say. There are loads of options to get different echo sounds and all very usable musically.
Now the tape echo emulation to my ears really doesn't sound like the RE-201. It's not digital brittleness, indeed the Volante can sound very warm and analog. It's more a case of that the controls really don't respond the same as they do on the RE-201, though I would say the repeats when turned up enough go into a self-oscillation howl which isn't particularly useful and is something that the original RE-201 does not do.
Having said that, again the Volante is extremely more versatile sonically, even in tape echo mode.
Reel to reel mode is the cleanest of the echoes and again sounds crisp without being obviously digital.
There are lots of other features with this pedal which I won't go into; there are loads of great demo videos on youtube etc...
So what's my conclusion? Well, the analog vintage gear cork-sniffers will turn their collective noses up at the Volante and immediately trash it for sounding nothing like a Binson or an RE-201 etc...If you are in that camp, then go on ahead and spend an absolute fortune on a fragile piece of vintage gear that can go wrong at any minute and does something BUT JUST ONE THING very well. If on the other hand, you want something that gets very, very close into the ballpark of emulating two fantastic pieces of vintage echo units BUT DOES MUCH, MUCH MORE PLUS HAS IT'S OWN MOJO, then the Volante is the way to go.
Also, I wanted to have all my effects units on a pedal board so I can tweak the controls on the fly. The RE-201 obviously goes nowhere near fitting on a pedal board.
I have no regrets whatsoever in selling my RE-201, the Volante on its own with all its features more than makes up for the RE-201 "sound", but when you factor in I was also able to by a Timeline with money made on the RE-201 sale, the whole analog versus digital argument becomes ridiculous. That is, of course unless you are a "Cork-sniffer!"