The pedal has settings for nine different sounds inspired by the classic Mellotron – Orchestra, Cello, Strings, Flute, Clarinet, Saxophone, Brass, Low Choir and High Choir – and introduces an incredible amount of possibilities. It requires no special pickups, no MIDI implementation, no modifications to your instrument at all to work, and it can track bends and slides and other modulation with ease.
Its not just for those selfish guitarists though, it works for bass guitar down to the open A string, and for keyboards within its 5 note polyphony and its pitch range from A1 to A5. With dry, effect, attack and sustain controls, there is plenty of room for tweaking the sound within the pedal, but it also offers a dry output so you can retain your un-effected guitar tone as well.
There seems to be more pedals coming out these days that enable guitars to sound not like guitars and the MEL9 is certainly one of those. The sheer weight of options in this pedal means that there is going to be at least a couple of sounds that any guitar player could find useful, or at least that they like.
Electro-Harmonix products are distributed in Australia via Lamberti Bros. For more details, head to lamberti.com.au.
