I was looking around for a Mellotron sound for a recording project and this little Electro Harmonix Mel 9 FX pedal popped up as an advert in the browser. The brilliant thing is you just plug the guitar in, no midi pick up needed, so could this be an easy win to replace my midi pick up driven strings in my live set up? Not too expensive so I thought I'd give it a go.
I tried setting it up by sending an aux signal from my FX unit to the Mel 9, but it didn't drive the Mel 9 too well. But I got a really good result by plugging guitar straight into the Mel 9 and taking its dry output into my FX pedal. A credit to the quality of the EFX signal splitter which adds no detectable colouration on the guitar sound.
The first test had to be a bit of King Crimson! Apologies for the under rehearsal - but I was impatient to hear the device. Follow this link to hear:
Crimson
Very powerful sound but harder to control than my existing midi set up which has a volume control on the guitar. The Mel 9 would sit better in a live band I'm sure or I could simly set up a volume pedal for it - but I am trying to keep my guitar FX foot print to a reasonable size!
Playing covers would only need a string pad so next I tried it in a ballad:
Hollies
Not quite as smooth as the existing set up but I think the sound could be quite usable in a band if I set the volume pedal up. I've got one somewhere in my music room so that will be another test session when I find it!
In conclusion - yes I think it can be tamed with a volume pedal for live use. Unlikely I will use it on a recording because there are so many quality string plug ins - including some great Mellotron samples from G-Force.
I tried setting it up by sending an aux signal from my FX unit to the Mel 9, but it didn't drive the Mel 9 too well. But I got a really good result by plugging guitar straight into the Mel 9 and taking its dry output into my FX pedal. A credit to the quality of the EFX signal splitter which adds no detectable colouration on the guitar sound.
The first test had to be a bit of King Crimson! Apologies for the under rehearsal - but I was impatient to hear the device. Follow this link to hear:
Crimson
Very powerful sound but harder to control than my existing midi set up which has a volume control on the guitar. The Mel 9 would sit better in a live band I'm sure or I could simly set up a volume pedal for it - but I am trying to keep my guitar FX foot print to a reasonable size!
Playing covers would only need a string pad so next I tried it in a ballad:
Hollies
Not quite as smooth as the existing set up but I think the sound could be quite usable in a band if I set the volume pedal up. I've got one somewhere in my music room so that will be another test session when I find it!
In conclusion - yes I think it can be tamed with a volume pedal for live use. Unlikely I will use it on a recording because there are so many quality string plug ins - including some great Mellotron samples from G-Force.
