Here's something you haven't seen in a while: a pedal review from
moi.
I purchased a Memory Boy with the hopes that it would be the end of my personal delay quest. Two things are for certain: it's not going anywhere any time soon, and it has a few surprises that made me jump for joy.
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SIZE: Standard EHX XO series chassis - 3.75" x 4.75" or so.
POWER:
9VDC, standard Boss-style jack (2.1mm, center-negative), and
45mA. EHX was kind enough to publish the current draw info in the manual, and I hope they continue to do this with other pedals, too! The Memory Boy can also operate on a 9V battery.
INS AND OUTS: Mono input, mono output, and an expression pedal jack for controlling delay time or modulation rate.
CONTROLS: Pretty loaded for an XO-size pedal. It has four knobs and two flip switches.
- Delay: delay time (duh!). Ranges from 30ms to 550ms.
- Depth: modulation depth.
- Blend: allows you to mix the dry and delay sounds to taste. Ranges from 100% dry to 100% wet.
- Feedback: number of repeats. Causes self-oscillation when cranked.
- Triangle / Square Wave: Sets the waveform of the modulation. Triangle is traditional, and square wave is freaky.
- Modulation: Allows you to set the modulation to Chorus (slow rate), Vibrato (fast rate), or Expression Pedal (medium rate if no pedal is plugged in).
BLENDING: I pause for a moment to celebrate the Blend knob on this pedal. First of all,
it goes to 100% wet, which is a noisemaker's dream considering what craziness you can get out of this pedal. All of the other analog delay pedals I've used only go up to 50% wet. But even better than that is this:
no volume drop! EHX must have figured out how to do it right this time.
SOUND (no modulation): The delays are
dark and warm, which I expected from an analog delay like this. Never harsh and always musical. There is a small degree of hazy noise in the background, but it's really low and goes away completely when you mute the strings. It seems that there may be some mild internal noise gating going on.
When you tweak the Delay knob in real time, the pitch of the repeats is warped. Tweak the Feedback knob at the same time for some classic oscillating fun.
Speaking of
oscillation, the Memory Boy does it with style in the fashion of its father, the Deluxe Memory Man. I'm having a lot of fun with it. Plus it's easy to "kill" so you can play with it and not worry as much about blowing your speakers.
SOUND (modulation): With the Depth turned up past zero,
the modulation switch acts as a "fixed" rate switch of sorts. On the Chorus setting, the rate is slow. On the Expression Pedal setting, you can manipulate the rate with an expression pedal, but if no pedal is plugged in, you get a "medium" modulation rate. On the Vibrato setting, the rate is fast.
Triangle wave is the classic waveform. Chorus and Vibrato sound like you'd expect them to,
detuning the repeats to your heart's content in a pleasing manner (if the Depth knob is set low). In true EHX fashion,
the Depth knob has a bizarrely high range and can pro\duce incredibly pronounced and dramatic delay modulation. If you only want mild modulation, you won't need to turn the Depth knob up very much at all.
Anything past 9:00 is probably too much for the average musician!
Square wave is an unusual waveform, delivering strange noises like bleeps and bloops in a tremolo-like fashion. This is especially evident when you turn the Depth up. This is not for the typical delay user, but the EHX fanatic or noisemaker will certainly find uses for it.
EXPRESSION PEDAL: Although I don't have one at the moment to play with, I can still tell you what it does.
When the modulation switch is set to Expression Pedal, the pedal can be used to control the modulation rate. Its range goes beyond the fixed settings on the Memory Boy.
When the modulation switch is set to either Chorus or Vibrato, the pedal can be used to control delay time. When used for this purpose, the Delay knob sets the maximum delay time setting. Real-time tweaking of the pedal would allow for some bizarre repeat pitch-shifting.
INSIDE THE PEDAL: Two PCBs are inside, and this is one dense circuit! The upper board has six trimpots inside the pedal, labeled "TRIM1" through "TRIM6." There is also a "TRIM7" label on the lower board, but I can't see the trimpot. Near the "TRIM7" label is a label that says "GAIN ADJ", presumably for gain adjustment of some kind. Again, no sign of the associated trimpot (probably trimpot #7). It might be on the other side of the lower board.
I do not know what any of the trimpots do. I would highly suggest NOT tweaking them, as there are way too many in there to comfortably play with, and they're really tiny!
Other noteworthy labels include the words "break away" and the EHX logo with the letters "FTW" inside of it.
ISSUES: Very few, and relatively minor:
- I wish you I had more control over the modulation rate without an expression pedal. I love the fixed rate settings as they are now, but it'd be nice to be able to change them if I wanted to without using an expression pedal. Perhaps those trimpots have something to do with it?
- I wish I knew what the trimpots actually did.
- The input and output jacks are set further south than they are on other XO series pedals. I wish they were further north so it could sit neatly in line with most other pedals.
VERDICT: Awesome, awesome pedal. IMO,
EHX's true Carbon Copy adversary. To be fair, this doesn't sound much like the Carbon Copy at all. This is genuinely EHX, in the same sonic vein of its father, the Memory Man.
I originally thought I wanted a digital delay, for the features they tend to have that are absent in most analog delay pedals. Over time, I found much love for warm analog repeats and oscillation, and not much need for things like tap tempo or long delay times. The trick was finding a pedal that could do 100% wet without volume drops at the 50% wet setting, sweet-sounding and deep modulation with user-friendly tweakability, and oscillation that was pleasing to the noisemaker's ear. The Memory Boy has all of this.
Once again, I'm reminded of why I have so many EHX pedals. When it comes to modulation, they continue to make my favorites.
SCORE: 
