ElectroHarmonix

116 Guitarist January 2010
ELECTRO-HARMONIX MEMORY BOY & RIDDLE: Q BALLS
£69 & £129
EFFECTS
E
lectro-Harmonix is
seemingly relentless in
its progress down the
product development path of
late. Whether it’s pro audio
tools or dear old stompboxes,
the New York native’s take on
things is always slightly left
of centre. Driven by the
imagination and eccentricity
of boss Mike Matthews, the
results inspire countless players
to make all kinds of fuzzy,
squelchy and ethereal noises
with their guitars and basses.
Welcome then, two of the latest
additions to the family…
Memory Boy
Continuing the lineage of the
seminal Memory Man and
Memory Man Deluxe delays,
the brilliantly named Memory
Boy comes in a much smaller,
more robust, cast metal housing
than its predecessors, with the
added advantage of taking up
less pedalboard real estate.
Pots are securely chassis-
mounted and the switch is
heavy duty – stomp heavily, but
avoid those micro switches.
Devotees of the MM love its
warm, analogue and modulated
delay sounds that you can also
manipulate with powerful
feedback abilities for a bit of
on-your-knees psyched-out
weirdness. The Memory Boy
picks up the mantle with all of
the above, with the ability to
effect the modulated repeats
with either chorus or vibrato,
and their respective waveforms
to a triangle or square wave –
that’s to say smooth or stepped
pitch changes.
Maximum delay time for a
single repeat is around 550ms,
which is pretty short by modern
standards, but if you’re buying
this as a straight delay then,
frankly, there are far better
options available. No, the
Memory Boy’s raison d’etre is
its modulated delays. The first
mode, vibrato, is a fast pitch
modulation of the delayed
signal. The middle setting,
pedal, is medium speed and the
chorus setting is a slow speed
pitch modulation. If you want to
control the rate of the
modulation yourself, you can
use an optional expression
pedal and select ‘pedal’ on the
switch. However you do it, the
depth pot varies the intensity of
the modulation: how far the
pitch goes up and down. If you
want simple warm delay with
no modulation, turn the depth
pot fully anti-clockwise. The
remaining controls are blend –
a useful wet/dry mixer – and
The rivals
Memory Boy
There’s no shortage of delays
with modulation out there,
but none that go as far as
E-HX. The MXR Carbon
Copy (£219) is our fave new
analogue delay, with a subtle
modulation setting. Not
analogue, but fully featured,
is the Line 6 Echo Park
(£136.85) based on the
brilliant DL-4. Also check out
Behringer’s distinctly E-HX-
alike VM1 Vintage Time
Machine (£79). Cheeky!
Riddle: Q Balls
DigiTech’s X-Series Synth
Wah (£85) is a capable auto/
envelope filter, adding some
bowel-shaking synth
nastiness to the pot. The
BOSS AW-3 Auto-Wah
(£119) puts that trusted
brand at your feet and with a
vocal sim to boot. The MXR
Auto-Q (£219) has that
Crybaby lineage and would
be our quality choice.
Electro-Harmonix
Memory Boy &
Riddle: Q Balls
£69 & £129
An old delay favourite shrunk in size and the funkiest
of fellows to fettle your freak on… by Mick Taylor
You can get some utterly bonkers
oscillations going [via the Memory
Boy] with frequencies that would
never normally come out of a guitar:
addictive, albeit atonal, noise
PHOTOG RAP HY BY DAVE CAUDE RY
GIT324.rev_eh 116 3/12/09 9:19:59 am