Walrus Audio has just dropped the Meraki, a swish-looking stereo analog dual delay pedal it has called “a passion project nearly two years in development”. Its name comes from the Greek word for doing something with soul, creativity or love.
Its design centers around eight MN3005 bucket brigade chips, which is the secret sauce behind the Deluxe Memory Man. By combining eight of these chips, the Meraki serves up what Walrus Audio is calling “delightfully warm, rich repeats with depth and character.” It offers a fairly generous 1200ms of delay time.
Those rich repeats can be manipulated through a host of settings. There are parallel, ping-pong and series delay modes, with independent control over the delay times and modulation for customized characteristics.
There are true stereo in/out jacks with fully independent delay lines whilst a sync switch allows for the creation of syncopated rhythms and classic delay sounds. The sync mode can be pushed into greater extremities by individually tweaking the left and right channel times, tap division, feedback and modulation.
The Meraki is MIDI-compatible too, meaning you can sync it up with click tracks and never have to stomp on what is a very pretty-looking pedal thanks to its custom powder-coated matte black aluminum finish. A touch of gold ink gives it an extra-luxurious sheen. Its exact size, including stomp and jacks is: 2.35h” x 4.98w” x 5.86d.”
In terms of knob-fiddling, there are two feedback controls for independently dialling the left and right channels, a mix for wet/dry and a modulation knob for ramping up or tapering off the modulation strength. Holding the knob down bypasses this mode completely. The time control alters the delay time in between parameters of 80-1200ms with the six knobs completed by a tone control.
Underneath those are four switches. The Mod/Time option is for the aforementioned left and right sync control, the tap divisions on offer are quarter, eighth and dotted eighth notes. The feedback path is where you switch between your delay modes and finally and beneath those is your on/off stomp and a tap tempo.
With this being a passion project, and something of a boutique one at that, many of its parts are difficult to come by. That means that Walrus Audio is staggering its production process in batches of 100.
It’s the first new release to be announced by the Oklahoma-based Walrus Audio in a whopping two days. It dropped the Silt earlier this week, a two-in-one harmonic fuzz pedal it created in collaboration with tube amp expert Jim Hagerman.
This duo of releases follows a busy 2023 for the firm which dropped a host of strangely innovative pedals, including the Melee which offered a retro joystick to blend its distortion and reverb effects, and a second generation of its film projector-inspired 385 overdrive pedal.
The first batch has already hit the virtual shelves of online gear shops and comes in at a hefty $599.
If you fancy grabbing one or finding out more, then WalrusAudio.com is the place to be.
