EHX Memory Man w/ Hazarai – Release Date: Aug 2007
‘Hazarai’ – according to Electro-Harmonix, roughly translates from Yiddish to mean “All the good stuff” – which means that this pedal series has all the things you might want in a delay/echo pedal. If you are Yiddish, (a dialect of the Jewish community), you might order a hamburger with ‘Hazarai’, meaning ‘Give me a burger with the works!!
The Stereo Memory Man w/Hazarai (aka -SMMH) is not really a looping pedal per se, as much as it is a more feature-rich delay pedal. You could say that the Looping functions were ‘tossed in’ as an afterthought, to see if there is a real niche for it.
Boss at this point had already released 4 versions of Loop Stations, and was set to corner the market as there were not many other brands in the running. Even tho both EHX and Digitech had dabbled with the concept of looping pedals as far back as the early to mid 1980’s, none of the bigger manufacturers had explored the concept until Boss released the RC-20, in 2001. It seems that other brands were waiting to see if there was a real market. Long story short, there was!!
And so, Electro-Harmonix re-entered the game in 2006 with an awesome dedicated looper called the 2880, and then released the Memory Man with Hazarai, the following year. This odd pedal, which has been in production now for nearly 20 years, is about as full featured as you could imagine a Delay/Echo/Looper pedal could be. But what else would you expect from the likes of Electro-Harmonix?? This pedal is digital, and there are numerous parameters that allow for all kinds of uniqueness and unexpected sonic adventure, as is typical of the brand.
The Memory Man w/Hazarai provides:
- True Stereo Input & Output
- Tap Tempo
- 8 User Presets to Save & Recall
- Fade In and Fade Out of repeats
- Intelligent Reverse mode of repeats
- Ping-Pong repeat mode
- Full Modulation effects (Flange, Chorus, etc)
- Onboard Reverb
- Multi-Tap Echo Modes
- Echoes can shift in pitch
- Adjustable Lo-Pass & Hi-Pass Filters for the repeats
- 30 second of Looping time, with overdubs
This might not sound so fantastic, until you realize that the looper actually has access to the onboard effects of the pedal -Reverse, Multi-Tap Echo with Pitch Shifting, (pitch shifting is achieved via variable speed playback) etc. You can double the speed of the track, play an overdub, and reduce the speed again, creating a bass line. Imagine yourself looping, and using a delay where just the echoes are in reverse !! This works, primarily because of the design architecture of the programming. The ‘Loop Capture’ in this pedal actually records the output of the Blend component, at the end of the other processes of the effects chain. And so, the looping portion of this pedal may actually be more feature-packed than many other dedicated looping pedals of the day!!
If you haven’t already, you should spend some time on Youtube, or the EHX website, exploring the trippy sounds that this psychedelic pedal can make.
You might want to be sure and get the Users guide, which will guide you thru the specifics of each & every setting & how to navigate to pedal’s menus.
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