Electro-Harmonix has collaborated with plug-in maker MixWaves to bring four signature pedals to plug-in form. Big Muff, Memory Man, Electric Mistress, and Small Clone are now coming to your DAW, not just your pedalboard, individually or as a bundle.
Shipping, storage, tariffs… plug-ins have some advantages. So the march of hardware into software continues. Six pedals get plug-in treatment here. (I do mean six — I’m not gaslighting you when there are only four. Big Muff Pi Fuzz models three different pedals in one plug-in.)
Here’s what’s on offer:
Big Muff Pi Fuzz: Big Muff Pi, Ram’s Head Big Muff, and Russian Big Head fuzz pedals.
Deluxe Memory Man Analog Delay: BBD analog delay that’s also a chorus, vibrato, and texture maker.
Electric Mistress Flanger/Filter Matrix: Full-blown modulator.
Small Clone Chorus: it’s a chorus, but it also shimmers.
You’ll see each has dedicated highpass and lowpass filters and gain for input and output, plus independent input and output knobs with their own signal display. And they really perfectly emulate the hardware, with the occasional extra like tepmo sync.
Best of all, these are not at all expensive — $39 a pop, or $109 for the bundle in the intro sale. I haven’t tested them yet, so I’m not recommending them, but I’m excited to see how they are — and Electro-Harmonix is a great independent company, so I absolutely welcome them to the fold.
They are mono-only — as were the originals, of course. For a plug-in version, it could have been cool to experiment with stereo processing. (There was a Stereo Memory Man.) I like what Roland did with their latest BOSS Plug-ins, offering stereo in/out as an option. I’m frequently using Soundtoys‘ stuff for some of this kind of processing in stereo.
But this still looks like a nice first step, and a great addition to Roland, Universal Audio, Softube, and other software effects models of vintage gear. And would I like this in the arsenal? Absolutely. WIll let you know how it goes.
64-bit VST3 / AU / AAX, macOS Intel/Apple Silicon 10.13+, Windows 10+.
iLok 2/3, iLok Cloud & Machine authentication. (Maybe also bad news for some of you, but I’m running a ton of iLok Cloud-authorized stuff on my machine, to be honest.)
Electro-Harmonix EHX Classic Bundle
Here’s their launch video, and the guitar I guess is part of your hint that they would be mono only (but they do sound like the originals, judging from these demos):