Catalinbread Montavillian User Manual

Operations Manual

Spoiled by the various tube driven echo units we have around the shop, we wanted the Montavillian
Echo to sound and feel just as BIG! So we went all out on the audiopath on this thing... We took painstak­ing eorts to make the dry sound and feel better when on than with the pedal bypassed. We decided
that the corksnier OPA2134 Burr Brown opamp was the best sounding option to achieve this.

It is a "companderless" echo... This is a critically important part of the Montavillian Echo's character. So
many companded echos have unattractive repeats, they sorta bubble, chirp, and become messy as the
repeats get quieter... The eect ruins the illusion of SPACE and ambience. The Montavillian has no com­panding therefore the echos trail o almost forever over the horizon. The resulting echos function to
provide a sonic soup, a bed of ambience to play over. The illusion of space and size that the Montavillian
provides, makes it one of the few stompboxes I have that comes close to my big old tube echos.

Headroom and stacking abilities, often short comings of echos. We've run the Montavillian into all of our
amps clean and cranked (Hiwatt, AC30, 5E3, Super Reverb, Blues Jr. etc.) we've also stacked it before our
dirt pedals. We've even slammed it with numerous fuzzes and overdrives. The Montavillian handles it all
with no eort. Should you need even more headroom the Montavillian can be run at 18V.

Layout Overview

The "REPEATS" knob feeds signal from the output of the
delay line to the input. This control allows for a single repeat
all the way to self oscillation.

The "TIME" knob allows for a wide range of delay times,
ranging from around 60ms all the way up to over 600ms
max time.

The "CUT" knob is a really neato control that I haven't
seen before on an echo. It's function is to sweep from
about 400Hz to about 1500Hz, lowpass lter... When the
knee sweeps to the high side it gives a nice little bump
in the mids right before the subtle fall o. Tuning this
knob allows you to sweep from old school BBD dark
ltering to a clear repeat. It gives you the power to
adjust your echoes so that they sit in the mix perfectly
against your dry signal. This control also functions to EQ
the tonality of self-oscillations.

The "MIX" knob is traditional in the way it mixes into your dry path the amount of echo you want. What is not
traditional the amount of boost it permits you to add... So many echo pedals out there can barely tune the
repeat to unity with the gain. This is not at all the case with the Montavillian Echo! You can make your repeats
much louder than the dry signal. This comes in really handy for short repeats for a dramatic doubling eect as
well as self oscillation freakouts.

Power Interaction

When playing the Montavillian you’ll notice that with the cut level down the repeats will self-oscillate fairly
quickly (a little over noon). The Montavillian does this to allow the echo to still self-oscillate even with the cut
all the way up, which has a higher threshold in order to do so. You will also notice that this threshold will shift
whether you are running the Montavillian at 9v or 18v. At 18v you will have added headroom, which also
means a higher threshold before self-oscillation. This change in power will also slightly eect the mix func­tion of the Montavillian. While at 9v, the unity for the mix is around noon, but will be higher when running at
18v.