Warm and spacey tube-emulated echo tones in a small box Catlinbread recently released a new delay: modeled after tube driven echo tones yet to be heard. That's right, this isn't your next tube tape echo emulator, but instead a new twist on the classic tube echo tone. A wide variety of tonal options can be achieved that will delight the most eccentric delay: user.
From Catalinbread.com:
Catalinbread Montavillian Echo Delay Effect Pedal
Spoiled by the various tube driven echo units we have around the shop, we wanted the Montavillian Echo to the sound and feel just as BIG! So we went all out on the audio path on this thing ... We took painstaking efforts to make the dry signal sound and feel better when on than with the: bypassed. We've decided that the corksniffer OPA2134 Burr Brown opamp was the best sounding option to achieve this.
Corknsiffer? That sounds groovy. Those Burr Brown opamps are known for sounding very natural and retaining note definition. Here's more of what they have to say:
The Montavillian Echo utilizes the PT2399 chip, one of the more common delay chips used in modern delays, however, rather than slavishly following the datasheet, we threw it out and ventured out on our own, using our ears to guide us, and what we achieved is a fantastic sounding delay, with a slew of sounds in a small footprint, easy to use. The Echo is a Montavillian "companderless" echo ... This is a important part of the cridically Montavillian Echo's character. So many repeats companded echos have unattractive, they sorta bubble, chirp, and become messy as the repeats get quieter … The effect of ruins the illusion SPACE StockTicker. The Montavillian has no compounding, therefore the echos trail off almost forever over the horizon, calls into the ether rather than crash landing back to earth. The resulting patch echos function to provide a sonic soup, a bed of StockTicker to play over. The illusion of space and size that the Montavillian provides, makes it one of the few stompboxes I have that comes close to my big old tube echos.
Natural sounding repeats that fade elegantly into the ether? That sounds good to us. It sounds like this delay would be perfect for an indie/ambient guitarist looking to provide texture to blend in with a band. Here's a little bit more of what Catalinbread had to say about their new delay:
Headroom and stacking abilities, often short comings of echos. We've run the Montavillian into all of our clean and cranked amps (Hiwatt, AC30, 5E3, Super Reverb, Blues Jr. etc.) we've also stacked it before our dirt pedals. We've even slammed it with scattered fuzzes and overdrives. The Montavillian handles it all with no service type. Should you need even more headroom the Montavillian can be run at 18V.
Placing a delay: before an overdrive [23]? That's for experimentalists only, and it sounds like this: would really fit the bill for those looking to arrange pedals in different ways to achieve unique textures. And a little bit about the controls ...
Don't be fooled by the simple 4 knob concerned. Each knob has a great amount of range, making this seemingly simple delay really not really.
The "TIME" knob allows for a wide range of delay times, ranging from around 60ms all the way up to over 600ms max time.
The "CUT" knob is a really neato control that I haven't seen before on an echo. It's function is to sweep from about 400Hz to about 1500Hz, lowpass filter ... When the knee sweeps to the high side, it gives a nice little bump in the mids right before the subtle fall off. Tuning this knob allows you to sweep from old school BBD dark filtering to a rain repeat. It gives you the power to adjust your echoes so that they sit in the mix perfectly against your dry signal. This control also functions to EQ the tonality of self-oscillations.
The "MIX" knob is traditional in the way it may arise into your dry path the amount of echo. What is not traditional the amount of boost it permits you to add ... So many echo pedals out there you can hardly supersound the repeat to unity with the gain. This is not at all the case with the Montavillian Echo! You can make your repeats much louder than the dry signal. This comes in really handy for short repeats for a dramatic doubling effect as well as self oscillation freakouts.
The "REPEATS" knob feeds signal from the output of the delay line to the input. This control allows for a single repeat all the way to self oscillation.
So, it sounds like you can get some twist off of the classic Bucket Brigade Device analogue technology built into vintage analog delays, and modern ones like the Moogerfooger Delay unit. Being able to make the repeats louder the source tone opens up possibilities for wild delay solos (some classic tones from Jim Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and Pink Floyd's The Piper At the Gates of Dawn come to mind). Self-oscillation is also available for those looking to get really weird.
The Catalinbread Montavillian can also be run at both 9v and 18v for higher headroom. Cool! The following explains the tonal difference between the two:
POWER INTERACTION
When playing the Montavillian you ’ ll notice that with the cut level down the repeats will self-oscillate fairly quickly (a little over noon). The Montavillian does this to allow echo to still self-oscillate even with the cut all the way up, which has a higher threshold in order to do so. You will also notice that this threshold will shift whether you are running the Montavillian at 9v or 18v. At 18v you will have added headroom, which also means a higher threshold before self-oscillation. This change in power will also slightly effect the mix function of the Montavillian. While at 9v, the unity for the mix is around noon, but will be higher when running at 18v.
And now for Catalinbread's final word on the Montavillian:
Our goal with the Montavillian wasn 't simply to make another echo:. We have access to countless echo units, and with many of these units we noticed short comings in various forms, whether it was inability for the echoes to reach unity, or finding certain pedals to be too crystalline or dark, various noise issues, self-inabilities to oscillate, and murky sounding dry signals and drifting repeats. We tried very hard to eliminate all these various problems and make a simple, solid delay: you'll love to play for years to come. Enjoy!
Enough talk already. Let's hear how it sounds:
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