It’s worth noting that in addition to the sample rate, the companding to improve SNR and filtering techniques for anti-aliasing and reconstruction usually employed to (attempt to) retain signal integrity play a large part in the character. A lot of people think of them as “dark” but that voicing can vary a lot between delays depending on how the designer chose to bandwidth limit it; therein lies the real art of analog delay!
I’ve been working on an MN3205 with digital controls and pushing it well past its reasonable specs is very fun; 4096 stages really starts to fall apart past 300ms, and when you clock it down to more than a single second you get a wet robot fart out of the other end!
Highly recommend it! The chips themselves aren't the cheapest but xvive and coolaudio are still cranking them out so you don't have to resort to tracking down NOS parts. Complimentary PWM from a microcontroller and a gate driver for the clock pins (the MN3205 has 2800pF input capacitance) and you're in business!
I'm always on the lookout for a deal on a space echo or echorec! Keeping them in working condition is not the easiest unfortunately, and it's tough to justify the real thing when incredible emulations exist (I highly recommend the Strymon Volante for scratching that itch)
I’ve been working on an MN3205 with digital controls and pushing it well past its reasonable specs is very fun; 4096 stages really starts to fall apart past 300ms, and when you clock it down to more than a single second you get a wet robot fart out of the other end!