Spoiled by the various tube driven echo units they have around the shop, Catalinbread wanted the Montavillian Echo to sound and feel just as BIG! So they went all out on the audio path on this thing… They took painstaking efforts to make the dry signal sound and feel better when on than with the pedal bypassed.
The Montavillian Echo utilizes an obsolete delay processing IC, however, rather than slavishly following the path of that chip’s forebears. They cracked the books and ventured out on their own, using their ears to guide them, and what they achieved is a fantastic sounding delay, with a slew of sounds in a small, easy to use footprint. It has great headroom and stacking abilities, which are often shortcomings of echo pedals. They've run the Montavillian into all of their amps clean and cranked (Hiwatt, AC30, 5E3, Super Reverb, Blues Jr. etc.) and also stacked it before their dirt pedals. They even slammed it with numerous fuzzes and overdrives. The Montavillian handles it all with no effort. Should you need even more headroom, the Montavillian can be run at 18V.
