Electro Harmonix MEL9 Tape Replay Machine

For years, I was hooked to the mellotron sound of many Beatles, Moody Blues and early Genesis classics. Well, as soon as I came to know of the existence of this toy and my finances were in good order, I could not resist it.

Imagine the goosebumps when I first played a chord on my guitar and had the orchestra mode full on.....I could not count the WOW's going through my mind.

I can advise this little baby to everyone with warm feelings for late sixties proto-prog and early seventies prog rock sounds,. you will not be disappointed.

Small con: the attack volume for, as far as I have tried and experienced, on my electric 6 string, acoustic 6 string and acoustic 1 string can be somewhat loud on playing first time when you put the effect know all way out. I advice to adjust the attack and sustain knobs when you try it out, on your own playing style.

Update on recent sound experiment in combination with the EHX keys9 pedal: this combination gives some wonderful sound textures somewhat reminiscent of Devin Townsends music. It is as if your guitar releases a cathedral-like wall of sound (especially with a creamy fuzz turned slightly open...). So this pedal is not just for the retro-prog enthusiasts...........

Update 2: this pedal on your bass amp, in combination with the Keys9 pedal on preset Dynamo, Tri-glorious or Organ and with the Dry button of that pedal half open, your bass can replicate the bass instrument sounds of Mike Oldfields' Tubular Bells.....EHX, when will you stop amazing me???

I'm a huge fan of prog music.
I grew up with the keyboard sound of groups such as King Crimson and Genesis, and PFM (I'm italian). Only in recent years I undestood the important role of Mellotron in this music but, alas, i'm only a guitar player so the Mellotron was not wish list. When I heard of MEL9 i could not believe to my ears: i could play mellotron sounds directly from my guitar, without using any MIDI esaphonic pickups. I own several MIDI esaphonic pickups for guitar, including Roland GK-2 and Fishman Triple Play. Each one features some latency and some incorrect note detection, and needs additional hardware (PC and/or Sound Generator) to produce sounds, so I use them not so often. The great advantage of Electro Harmonix MEL9 versus MIDI esaphonic pickups is that it does not require any extra hardware to produce keyboard sounds. I still don't undestand which technology has been applied, but it works. I simply connect my guitar to MEL9, and as I play I hear tipical mellotron sounds coming out of MEL9 with virtually no latency.

I tried it with both electro-acoustic steel string guitar and electro-acoustic nylon string guitar, and the result is good on both type of guitars.

About the sounds: some sounds are really convincing, especially the "Orchestra" sound which we hear in many Genesis and King Crimson historical tunes. Other sounds are far less convincing, such as "Cellos" and "Brass".

On the negative side:
1) this pedal is raher pricey, so more sounds would be appreciated. Also I would greately appreciate an USB connection to PC for modifying envelope curves and timbre.
2) The pedal switch is very noisy, so when I turn it on / off in my room al low volume level, the acoustic "click" is too much loud for me.
3) The MEL9 is able to effectively convert only notes played rather loudly. In softer phrases, the converted sound is slightly out of tune.
4) The only way to switch between the presets is via the dedicated rotary knob. A dedicated preset switch would be appreciated, especially during live performances.


However all these negative sides don't prevent me to enjoy playing it very often, and I recommend it especially to lovers of classic prog music.

I was really excited to purchase this, but in my set up at least it had a noticeable volume drop, and some inconsistency in the volume of notes which seemed like a sensitivy issue. I play hard and wanted the pedal for some weird, noisey leads / drones, and my set up is pretty simple, so it's possible that with a pedal board with some loops in it or other set ups you could ameliorate the volume drop issue, and also if you're looking at it for more atmospheric purposes the issues I had might not annoy you. I did try running a compressor before it, as suggested in the Sound-on-sound review I found, but it didn't solve it. The pedal sounds are good but not worth the effort for me. I have a Boss Sy1 which had absolutely zero issues out of the box, slotted straight into my set up. I'm a bit frustrated to be honest, but I thinik possibly people using this pedal for mellower applications might not find the volume drop to be an issue.

I purchased this for one particular project, to get a cameo Mellotron sound live, using a keyboard.
The alternatives using samples would obviously have a more accurate sound, the benefit of MIDI, switchability etc but also the cheapest of those would cost many times what the Mel9 does. And in a home studio, obviously the computer has the capability to run genuine Mellotron samples easily, so other than live, for me a module isn't needed.
So given that it is NOT playing samples but mutating the sound of the instrument you use (guitar, keyboard, anything) and using complex pitch-recognition to extract the notes you play in order to do this, I have to say - I'm extremely impressed!
In use with a keyboard, it's quickly noticeable that the type of sound you put in affects the "realism" of what comes out - you can switch waveforms on a synth, or try brass patches, flute whatever, and I seemed to find that more harmonically rich sound did the trick better for me. So, a string or brass patch sounds better than a flute, sawtooth better than a triangle, and so on. I haven't tried it with a guitar yet, but I did try it with my Boss SY300 on a string-like patch, and that came out pretty well.
So once you've decided on the sound to drive it with, how are the results? For me, the best are the flute and violins - these are pretty much my favourites from the real thing, so I'm pleased that those are in the bag. The choirs (one low, one high) are also pretty good, not quite as accurate to the original but certainly enough to fool the ear in a mix or a live context. I'd also give a special mention to the solo cello, which is very usable, and quite realistic, at least to the original 'Tron.
As a fan of progressive music since the dark ages, and being lucky enough to have a friend obsessed with the big white boxes to the extent of owning A Real One, the sound of the Mellotron always sends shivers down my spine, and I'm happy to say this little box, with the right sound going in, gave me a big dose of that thrill.
It won't quite stand up solo in the spotlight of a studio recording, in my opinion, but in a live mix I'd say few would really know the difference.
Now I'm off to re-learn Starless, Nights In White Satin, Watcher Of The Skies...........

This takes a little skill to use, but well worth it. The sounds are just what we expected and are really authentic. What's not to like? Well........
Small points but, I would prefer true bypass, not a buffer, but having tested it it seems to be pretty good at just passing the signal on in bypass mode. If I want a buffer I would use one. Too many buffers in a chain is going to cause problems, so now I need a switchbox.
I would also prefer a switch to turn the dry output off and on, as in it's current state you can't, so the dry output socket is useless, being able to live swap amps would be much better. I would definately buy the Mk II if these faults were corrected