EHX Deluxe Memory Man (MBP Dirtbag Deluxe)
Happy new year everyone! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read my blog in the last year, and I can promise you I’ll have some interesting projects in the works for 2013.
First, a little bit of a confession. When I first starting building pedals, the Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man was a pedal I knew I wanted to build, but didn’t think I’ve ever have the skill/patience/luck required to build one. However, as my builds started to get more and more complex I decided to bite the bullet and order the parts required for this legendary analog delay.
I found out that MadBeanPedals sells a PCB for the DMM that they call the Dirtbag Deluxe. A nice thing about this board is that you can use CoolAudio v3205 BBD chips and you don’t have to build a time machine or sell your house to get a pair of rare M3005 chips (which is the chip used in the original DMM). While the v3205 chips don’t quite sound the exact same as the M3005, I’m plenty happy with how my build turned out.
Using the power of the internets I found some original artwork for the DMM, and I modified it using GIMP to suit my build. While this pedal will fit (snugly) into a 1590BB enclosure, I decided to go a bit larger as to closer match the insanely large footprint of the original. Here’s how she turned out.
Look familiar?
The pedal sounds fantastic. The vibrato and chorus are lush and deep, and the delay is pure analog goodness. The delays do distort slightly if your input signal is too hot, but that’s just part of the charm. I’ve got to say this is my favourite build so far, and by far my favourite delay pedal.
If you plan on building this pedal please do your research first. Read through the great PDF file located on the MBP site and understand that this pedal will take some time to complete. I believe it took me several hours just to populate the PCB. The pedal did fire up right away, but it did take a fair amount of time to properly calibrate the unit. Enjoy!
Woody Laboratories 
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