Walrus Audio Melee evaluation

The Walrus Audio Melee: Wall of Noise just about describes itself – it presents a tussle of distortion and reverb with a joystick to mix the 2, complemented by an easy array of a quantity knob and three toggle switches. 

The primary two present three variations on tone and reverb decay, whereas the third change toggles the impact order from the standard distortion feeding into the reverb to the extra experimental possibility of making a distorted reverb path, really conjuring up an enormous wall of noise. 

There’s additionally a secondary perform so as to add modulation (none/slight/excessive) to the reverb tail. You get a alternative of three reverb varieties: an enormous ambient reverb for washes of sound, a doomy octave down reverb, and a reverse reverb with suggestions that truly sounds extra like a cool reverse delay.

Left to proper, the joystick adjustments the reverb combine from dry to moist, whereas growing the distortion stage on its up/down axis. Whereas it’s very simple to maneuver, it’s going to additionally keep firmly in place wherever you place it. It’s sturdy sufficient to nudge into place along with your ft, though for those who’ve fastidiously sculpted a sound by putting it along with your fingers, you then’ll in all probability need to preserve your Doc Martens properly away from it on stage.

Richly textured with a great deal of maintain, the distortion sounds nice and the reverbs are huge. It’s only a matter of transferring the joystick till you discover a mixture of the 2 that works for you – and there are many very usable blends obtainable, whether or not you’re in search of epic single-note lead sounds with atmosphere, bashing out a cavernous glued-together bedrock of chords, or creating some off-the-wall sonic mayhem.

The footswitches have a number of capabilities to assist efficiency. The Bypass footswitch can be utilized latched as regular or to convey the impact in momentarily, whereas the Maintain footswitch can momentarily ramp up the reverb trails to max and again once more. 

Alternatively, it may be latched for a ‘pattern and freeze’ perform to maintain the reverb decay for pad-like sounds. Usefully, for those who’d like to make use of the distortion completely dry, you may latch it if you haven’t performed something so it captures silence somewhat than a reverb tail.

Specs

• PRICE: $299 / £305
• ORIGIN: USA
• TYPE: Distortion & reverb pedal 
• FEATURES: 3x bypass modes (True, DSP, DSP+True), Joystick management of sound, 3x reverb varieties, versatile impact order
• CONTROLS: Quantity, Tone change (Medium/Darkish/Brilliant), Decay change (Minimal/Medium/Max), D>R/R>D change, Joystick, Bypass footswitch, Maintain footswitch
• CONNECTIONS: Commonplace enter, normal output
• POWER: 9V DC adaptor (not provided) 200 mA
• DIMENSIONS: 98 (w) x 118 (d) x 80mm (h, together with joystick)
• CONTACT: Walrus Audio (opens in new tab)