Although MI Audio pedals such as the Tube Zone and Crunch Box are praised by revered pros like Elliot Easton and Brett Garsed, the company’s distant Australian home base has given it a slightly under-the-radar status as a boutique manufacturer. At Winter NAMM 2008, MI introduced its first amp, the Revelation, and since then the company has released several more—including the Megalith Beta, a 180-watt fire-breathing metal beast. The new Megalith Delta is a solid-state version of the Megalith Beta’s preamp in pedal form.
Controlling the Beast
Cramming the essence of a full-fledged amp into a small stompbox is no easy feat, but MI Audio makes the process look simple with a relatively intuitive interface. There are six total knobs—volume and gain are the big ones, while contour, treble, middle, and bass are the smaller ones—a 3-way EQ-shift toggle, and boost and bypass footswitches. To access the battery, you have to unscrew four screws in the pedal’s rear corner. When we looked inside our review unit, the circuit board had the word “goop” splattered all over, along with snarky—though no-doubt warranted—commentary about copying pedal designs. Interestingly, there is no actual goop to obscure your view of the circuit.
Megalith to the Test
I tested the Megalith Delta through the clean channel of a Fender Super-Sonic combo using various guitars, including a Gibson Les Paul Standard, Canton Custom headless, and an Ernie Ball/Music Man Axis Sport. As I began my tests, I remembered initially having to spend a fair amount of time dialing in a satisfactory sound with the MI Audio Tube Zone pedal that I own, and I wondered whether that would be the case with the Megalith Delta—which has even more controls. However, it wasn’t hard to get up and running with this new pedal.
Unlike some pedals where adjusting the EQ doesn’t change the sound much, adjustments to the Megalith Delta’s treble, bass, and mid knobs elicit noticeable change and extreme flexibility. Just moving the treble from noon to 1 o’ clock brought about an undeniable brashness in the pedal’s voice. The 3-position EQ switch is also very helpful for shaping sound. Position 1 offers a British-style voicing, 0 adds low mids and a slight increase in the volume, and 2 reduces the mids and slightly lowers the volume (and, yes, the numbers are very curiously arranged in that order). The contour control can be used to fine-tune things as an alternate mid control—turn it all the way up increases the mids, and as you turn the contour down, the sound becomes more scooped.
Ratings
Pros:
Nearly every possible metal sound you could want in a compact package.
Cons:
Could use more versatility in lower gain settings.
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build:
Value:
Street:
$249
MI Audio
mieffects.com
The boost footswitch activates the equivalent of the high-gain setting on the Megalith Beta amp, taking you from medium gain to the extreme upper regions of the gain zone with added treble and an extra bit of edge. For rhythm playing, the boost adds a tighter attack and a beefy bottom end that made my 1x12 combo feel like a raging stack. And for leads, stepping on the boost switch changed the feel from easy-to-play to something more like the guitar playing itself.
MI Audio founder Michael Ibrahim’s favorite guitarist is Allan Holdsworth, and many have described the company’s Tube Zone as a kind of Holdsworth-in-a-box pedal. While the Megalith Delta may not have been designed with that in mind, with the boost on, the sound is so gooey and liquid that it’s easy to channel the legato master’s serpentine lines with even a lethargic left hand. If you tend to pick more notes rather than rely on a wiggling left hand, you’ll enjoy the pedal’s note separation and clarity—it never seems to get mushy or inarticulate.
The Verdict
With the Megalith Delta, MI Audio did an admirable job of putting the heart and soul of their Megalith Beta amp into a compact pedal. At a street price of $250, it’s a little less than a tenth of the price of its full-sized sibling, and it can authoritatively cover just about any metal style—from classic to thrash—which is a very impressive accomplishment.
EBS BassIQ Blue Label Triple Envelope Filter Pedal
The EBS BassIQ produces sounds ranging from classic auto-wah effects to spaced-out "Funkadelic" and synth-bass sounds. It is for everyone looking for a fun, fat-sounding, and responsive envelope filter that reacts to how you play in a musical way.
Reverend Vernon Reid Totem Series Electric Guitar - Shaman
Silos features six presets, tap tempo, one full second of delay time, and three voices—two of which are styled after bucket-brigade and tape-delay sounds. In the $150 price category, it’s not unusual for a digital delay to leave some number of those functions out. And spending the same money on a true-analog alternative usually means warm, enveloping sounds but limited functionality and delay time. Silos, improbably perhaps, offers a very elegant solution to this can’t-have-it-all dilemma in a U.S.-made effect.
A More Complete Cobbling Together
Silos’ utility is bolstered by a very unintimidating control set, which is streamlined and approachable. Three of those controls are dedicated to the same mix, time, and repeats controls you see on any delay. But saving a preset to one of the six spots on the rotary preset dial is as easy as holding the green/red illuminated button just below the mix and preset knobs. And you certainly won’t get lost in the weeds if you move to the 3-position toggle, which switches between a clear “digital” voice, darker “analog” voice, and a “tape” voice which is darker still.
“The three voices offer discernibly different response to gain devices.”
One might suspect that a tone control for the repeats offers similar functionality as the voice toggle switch. But while it’s true that the most obvious audible differences between digital, BBD, and tape delays are apparent in the relative fidelity and darkness of their echoes, the Silos’ three voices behave differently in ways that are more complex than lighter or duskier tonality. For instance, the digital voice will never exhibit runaway oscillation, even at maximum mix and repeat settings. Instead, repeats fade out after about six seconds (at the fastest time settings) or create sleepy layers of slow-decaying repeats that enhance detail in complex, sprawling, loop-like melodic phrases. The analog voice and tape voice, on the other hand, will happily feed back to psychotic extremes. Both also offer satisfying sensitivity to real-time, on-the-fly adjustments. For example, I was tickled with how I could generate Apocalypse Now helicopter-chop effects and fade them in and out of prominence as if they were approaching or receding in proximity—an effect made easier still if you assign an expression pedal to the mix control. This kind of interactivity is what makes analog machines like the Echoplex, Space Echo, and Memory Man transcend mere delay status, and the sensitivity and just-right resistance make the process of manipulating repeats endlessly engaging.
Doesn't Flinch at Filth
EarthQuaker makes a point of highlighting the Silos’ affinity for dirty and distorted sounds. I did not notice that it behaved light-years better than other delays in this regard. But the three voices most definitely offer discernibly different responses to gain devices. The super-clear first repeat in the digital mode lends clarity and melodic focus, even to hectic, unpredictable, fractured fuzzes. The analog voice, which EQD says is inspired by the tone makeup of a 1980s-vintage, Japan-made KMD bucket brigade echo, handles fuzz forgivingly inasmuch as its repeats fade warmly and evenly, but the strong midrange also keeps many overtones present as the echoes fade. The tape voice, which uses aMaestro Echoplex as its sonic inspiration, is distinctly dirtier and creates more nebulous undercurrents in the repeats. If you want to retain clarity in more melodic settings, it will create a warm glow around repeats at conservative levels. Push it, and it will summon thick, sometimes droning haze that makes a great backdrop for slower, simpler, and hooky psychedelic riffs.
In clean applications, this decay and tone profile lend the tape setting a spooky, foggy aura that suggests the cold vastness of outer space. The analog voice often displays an authentic BBD clickiness in clean repeats that’s sweet for underscoring rhythmic patterns, while the digital voice’s pronounced regularity adds a clockwork quality that supports more up-tempo, driving, electronic rhythms.
The Verdict
Silos’ combination of features seems like a very obvious and appealing one. But bringing it all together at just less than 150 bucks represents a smart, adept threading of the cost/feature needle.
EarthQuaker Devices Silos Multi-generational Time Reflection Delay Pedal
