Holy crap this is dope – the new Mel9 pedal from Electro-Harmonix turns your guitar into my personal favorite keyboard of all time, the Mellotron. It might just be residual associations with one of my top 5 bands, The Beatles, but I love the sound of those lo-fi flutes and strings. Now you can plug your guitar into this pedal and get those sounds without a MIDI pickup and sampler unit and the resultant tracking and latency issues.
Using the same technology that powers the award-winning B9 and C9 Organ Machines, plus the KEY9 Electric Piano Machine, EHX’s new MEL9 Tape Replay Machine emulates classic Mellotron® sounds. Nine of the most distinctive are included: Orchestra, Cello, Strings, Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Brass, Low Choir and High Choir.
The MEL9 was designed to work on guitar without any modifications, special pickups or MIDI implementation and tracks bends, slides, even whammy dive bombs! It will also work with bass down to the open A string as well as keyboards. A rotary switch allows the user to select the sound of their choice. The pedal includes independent Effect and Dry volume controls so you can create the perfect mix at the Effects output jack, plus an always-active Dry output jack that outputs your input signal at unity gain.
An Attack control sets the volume swell speed. As it’s turned clockwise, the volume swell time increases and notes fade in gradually. The Sustain control adjusts the release time after a sound is stopped. As is it turned clockwise, the fade out time increases.
Electro-Harmonix President and Founder, Mike Matthews, stated: “The distinctive sound of those early polyphonic tape replay keyboards has become part of the fabric of modern music. Our new MEL9 provides guitarists and other musicians with a portable, practical and affordable way to emulate some of those amazing sounds.”
The MEL9 Tape Replay Machine comes equipped with a standard EHX 9.6DC 200mA power supply, is available now and features a U.S. List Price of $295.10
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You Don't Know Me / March 15, 2016 2:30 pm
Love the idea but to me these kinds of pedals always sound off to me. Even ones with the best tracking still get glitchy sounding here and there. Decent for a live setup where you need a guitar to fill in for a keyboard part but maybe not the best option for recording. I guess it’s still better than Electro-Harmonix putting out more clones or Muff variants?
I say if you have a keyboard with some sort of MIDI capabilities (whether it’s through USB or actual MIDI cables) go for a mellotron VST of some sort for a better sound. There’s ones you can purchase for less than this, but there’s also some really nice free ones people have made if you do a quick Google search. You can get a good Mellortron sound without breaking the bank.
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