New Music Gear Monday: Electro Harmonix Mellotron Emulator Pedal

It's been a long time since I've been over-the-top excited by a product, but I have to say that's the case with the new Electro Harmonix MEL9 Tape Replay Machine. Why? It's a pedal that gives you spot-on Mellotron emulations yet doesn't use samples or require special pickups or MIDI mods to your guitar.

The MEL9 provides nine of the most famous Mellotron sounds: orchestra, cello, strings, flute, clarinet, sax, brass, low choir and high choir, and tracks guitar bends, slides and even whammy bar dive bombs. And not only does it work with the guitar, but you can use it with bass and keyboards a well.

The MEL9 provides independent Effect and Dry volume controls, as well as separate outputs so you can feed both to different amps. There's an Attack control that sets the volume swell speed, and a Sustain control that adjusts the release time after the sound has stopped, but you really don't have to mess with it much to get great sounds right out of the box.

The Electro Harmonix MEL9 Tape Replay Machine has a street price of around $220. You can find more info in the great video below as well as hear it first hand.

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New Music Gear Monday: EH Talking Pedal

Here's a guitar product that came out at Summer NAMM that I managed to miss. Remember the Talk Box that Joe Walsh ("Rocky Mountain Way"), Peter Frampton ("Show Me The Way") and Aerosmith ("Sweet Emotion") used on their hits in the 70's? While it was pretty cool, one of the problems was that you needed a separate amplifier, not to mention a decidedly unsanitary plastic tube in your mouth in order to play it. Now Electro-Harmonix has released a unique version of the Talk Box called the Talking Pedal that provides the same effect without having to resort to the separate amp and mouth tube.

EH released a Talking Machine pedal about a year ago that provided the same effect automatically depending upon your playing dynamics, but the the Talking Pedal looks to be much more expressive in a similar way to the real thing.

Here's a video of the Talking Machine pedal. It's pretty authentic sounding. The Talking Pedal can be found for less than $100.

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