# Who wants one of these?



## k tone (Oct 7, 2008)

I do!


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## Ti-Ron (Mar 21, 2007)

Looks really nice! 
EHX is doing a nice move since last year. They are listening to their costumers and change their lines to accomodate people!
I'm really gasing for the Little Big Muff with tone wricker and the Nano Holy grail!
I'm just wondering if all the new effects will be true bypass!


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

I wish they'd make their pedals in a more reasonable sized box. I like the sounds of their pedals, but I hate those gigantic-ass boxes that they put them in.


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## k tone (Oct 7, 2008)

I have the Holy Stain and the SMM with Hazarai on my board and there is hours of fun to be had with those vs stand alone boxes. Both of those pedal are true BP and the website lists the DMM as true BP as well.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

bagpipe said:


> I wish they'd make their pedals in a more reasonable sized box. I like the sounds of their pedals, but I hate those gigantic-ass boxes that they put them in.


Well, this pedal definitely looks smaller than my DMM. If the sound is the same, I would be very interested in picking it up!


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## k tone (Oct 7, 2008)

They are making a whole generation of new pedals with the same footprint. The SMMH, Holy Stain, Stereo Polyphase, and now the New DMM share the same style box, 6 knob configuration. In reality the do not take up much space. They do require their own power supply though.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

bagpipe said:


> I wish they'd make their pedals in a more reasonable sized box. I like the sounds of their pedals, but I hate those gigantic-ass boxes that they put them in.


I "boldly" predicted a few years ago over at the DIY Stompbox forum that the new packaging would erode the EHX brand, but I was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. The Nano series is starting to feel like an afterthought as a newer image of EHX pedals being replete with features starts to entrench itself.

Yes, the newer cast aluminum chassis are bigger (certainly bigger than BB-sized), but aren't as big as the old folded-steel chassis that the Memory Man, Microsynth, and so many other pedals came in. Equally important in my books, the power connector is on the rear skirt....YAY!


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## Guest (May 4, 2009)

mhammer said:


> Equally important in my books, the power connector is on the rear skirt....YAY!


And it's 9VDC. No more AC plugs to run a DMM.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

iaresee said:


> And it's 9VDC. No more AC plugs to run a DMM.


Hmm, my eyes tell me the DMM power connector says 24VDC. I would think 9V would be way too little for that particular pedal, but yes, definitely not AC - yay!

But more importantly, what do the guts look like? Are they using MN3005s, MN3008s or something else entirely? I was lead to believe the supply of these chips was low, so maybe EHX has something else in there?

Here's a comparison shot of the old and new DMMs


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## Guest (May 4, 2009)

hollowbody said:


> Hmm, my eyes tell me the DMM power connector says 24VDC. I would think 9V would be way too little for that particular pedal, but yes, definitely not AC - yay!


Very well could be 24VDC -- but yea, no more AC.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

hollowbody said:


> But more importantly, what do the guts look like? Are they using MN3005s, MN3008s or something else entirely? I was lead to believe the supply of these chips was low, so maybe EHX has something else in there?


You're partly correct.

When Matsushita/Panasonic was the only remaining manufacturer of 4096-stage BBDs (Reticon stopped making them much sooner), Mike Matthews bought up the lion's share of the world's supply so as to keep the DMM viable for as long as possible. This was a response to a much earlier incident in the early 80's when he found out that, in a spate of nationalism, Matsushita had reserved most of their production for Japanese companies and left EHX on the margins, hamstringing production of what was one of EHX's bread-and-butter items at the time. This was one of many concurrent events (including labour issues) that resulted in EHX largely disappearing from the scene for a little while. Matthews details all of this in an interview I read with him in a business mag. I gather, he did not want to be caught chipless again, so he cornered the market. Did the same for the CA3094 chip as well, to keep the Small Stone and Microsynth afloat.

Since the late 90's, though, other companies have purchased/leased the dies from Matsushita and are producing their own chips. Beiling manufacturing produces their own MN3102, MN3207 and MN3208 equivalents (BL3102, BL3207, BL3208), and Coolaudio (a spinoff of Behringer) also manufactures an MN3205 equivalent ( http://www.coolaudio.com/products.html ). I don't know who makes the house brand chips for Visual Sound, Maxon, and others, but obviously none of the pedal-makers produce their own chips in house.

Does EHX use Coolaudio chips? I have no idea. My point is simply that BBDs went from ohmygodtherewillbenoneleftanydaynow some 7 years ago, to being cheaper and more plentiful now than they were in the 80's. Enough that pedals using 2, 3, and even 8 BBD chips are commonplace.

Decent digital-delay chips have emerged that are very competitively priced and permit SMT production. Danelectro and other companies use them and people don't seem particularly disappointed in the sound quality. Indeed, 3 years ago, I would regularly recommend to people that if they wanted to build a delay line to simply set analog aside and go digital because it was easier, cheaper, and with the right filtering, every bit as "warm" as analog was felt to be (a number of supposedly "analog" delay pedals out there in production actually use the Princeton Technologies PT2399 digital delay in this manner). With the arrival of Coolaudio chips on the scene, however, it is every bit as cheap to make a 600ms delay from a pair of analog chips with decent bandwidth as to get 350ms out of a comparably-priced Princeton chip, so the pendulum swings back to recommending analog chips.

Either way, EHX is in fine shape to keep the DMM line alive and kicking for years to come.


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## CDWaterloo (Jul 18, 2008)

k tone said:


> I do!


I wish they put a second footswitch for modulation....


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

CDWaterloo said:


> I wish they put a second footswitch for modulation....


+1, but that's what the Memory Lane is for.


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