According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a Melee is a confused hand-to-hand fight or struggle among several people, involving confusion and turmoil. If that's what you want in a pedal, welcome to the new Walrus Melee "Wall of Noise" pedal.
The fact that this pedal has a joystick tells you it's not your average distortion pedal. The Melee is designed to deliver very high levels of distortion and reverb to create extreme, ethereal, shoe-gazey, and downright chaotic textures. It's not only a noise pedal, but if that's your jam, this is your pedal.
The joystick is a continuous blend of distortion (up for max) and reverb (right for full wet). You can move this joystick all around to find just the right -- or bizarre -- blend of each. But instead of knobs for tone and decay settings, they go easy on you with just three-position toggles. The third toggle allows you to position the distortion before or after the reverb. Putting the reverb before the distortion creates billowing clouds of distortion perfect for the soundtrack for "Stranger Things."
The Melee had three types of Reverb accessible by momentarily pressing the sustain and bypass buttons: Normal, Dark (the reverberation is an octave down), and Reverse. Even the Normal has the capability to be totally expansive and anything but normal. But the prize goes to the Reverse Reverb, which can create huge swells after you strike a chord or note. And depending on where you have the "stick" and the decay toggle....wow. Lastly the Sustain button can be used to latch the Reverb trails endlessly, or extend the trails as long as you hold it.
You adjust this pedal to make perfectly mainstream distortion with reverb sounds, but that's not the point. This pedal is not for everyone, but if you have a mischievious -- and maybe a slightly dark -- side, the Melee can unleash many levels of emotion. It's the Edvard Munch of pedals.
In the words of Walrus Audio:
We give you the two most quintessential effects that yield unruly amounts of power and influence to an instrumentalist: reverb and distortion. They have been harnessed and woven together for an eternity of ethereal power with The Melee: Wall of Noise. The Melee unapologetically uses a joystick to meld reverb and distortion into one massive blaze of sound. With the flip of the order switch, run the distortion into the reverb or reverb into distortion; signal chain is your call now. For the explorer, the Melee can run one of three different reverb programs Ambient, Octave, and Reverse.
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