February Birthdays 
Posted this on TGP, but figured you guys would find it especially useful 
Finally got my Mad Professor Mellow Yellow (CB version) in the post and thought I might as well post afew comments on how I found it compared to my other tremolo pedals
Firstly, I do understand when people say "that's pricey for such a simple pedal". I bought it used, but it's in pristine condition, and even then I was paying £100/$155 so I was hesitant, but I'm so glad I took the plunge!
It's billed as a 'sine' wave, but I honestly found it was actually much closer to a 'soft' square wave, so really close to the Diamond in square mode with the depth backed off, and fairly close to the TR-2 about 5 o' clock. Sounds very unique. Throbby, but certainly smooth, and clean sounding like an optical trem (don't know if it actually is). It's unique, maybe not in a stand-out way like the EQD Hummingbird, but it's different than other trems. Even trying to match these three pedals, each sounded a little different and I couldn't get the other to to quite nail the MY wave shape. The Depth is quite odd in that it gets to 'standard' full depth around 2-3 o' clock, but then goes even deeper, and starts to sound like more of a throb/blip. I think the Catalinbread Valcoder and maybe the Demeter did a similar thing too, but I can't remember for sure. I found that area a little too deep, but again, quite unique. Overall, the sweep of the depth is really, really smooth, as is the Speed and Volume. The Speed doesn't go as fast or slow as most trems. At max, it matches the TR-2 at about 3 o' clock. Having it go a little faster would be better, but it's not the end of the world. The Volume offers a great clean boost, and weirdly, even when dialing the depth up, I didn't feel the need to instantly compensate by boosting the volume, which is rare in a tremolo pedal.
(It's worth pointing out that the position of the knobs in that pic above result it the sound being pretty close across all three. The Speed on the MY isn't quite on full)
So overall, for a simple one-trick pony tremolo it's expensive, but is easily one of the best quality tremolos I've tried. I think if the Demeter had an external volume boost it'd be in competition with that, but I like how smooth the controls are on this thing and how fairly unique the 'wave' shape is. Nice and smooth but with a certain character and there's nothing to be endlessly tweaking about with.
Objectively, I'd say it's only weakness is it's slightly limited Speed range, and the only other downside is purely subjective. I like playing a certain rhythmical way with tremolo, and I honestly prefer my TR-2 for it, especially used with fuzz. There's just a certain way the wave shape is around 2-3 o' clock that I've yet to find in any other tremolo pedal, and it just works really nicely for what I do. However, the MY is better for this than the Diamond.
So for me, deciding which one of these three to keep is a really tough choice. If I can live without the Diamond's extra features, then I have a higher quality, better sounding pedal in the MY, but the TR-2 does have a certain 'something' about it that suits my playing. I guess this is why I tend to write lengthy reviews of pedals, because it's easy to just say "it smokes the others" and leave it at that, but that doesn't help anyone, and sometimes a "lesser" pedal can actually be better suited for certain things.
Also, it was the least noisy, however I don't know if that's just because I had it first in line with the Diamond and TR-2 after it.
Last edited: May 08, 2013 13:41:13
