Product Description
This 5402 has been fitted with two brand new delay modules - these alone cost $1500 - and has had a full service and calibration by one of the few techs in the UK with significant experience with these. It has a brand new custom built power supply. The total restoration cost was over £2250.
It took me years to find an MTM for our studio - few were made, and even fewer remain in perfect working order. Being a modulation freak and admirer of the sonic landscapes of Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and Martin Hannett it was always very high on my wish-list.
Designed in the late seventies by Steven St. Croix, these all-analogue units were way ahead of their time with sonic performance that remains exceptional to this day. It is a truly legendary effect that represents the pinnacle of analogue circuit design – see below for some of the history of how it began as a bet (yes, really).
Our studio MTM A5002 was used by Reinhold Mack on the recording of Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ (not the one for sale here). Tony Visconti used one on David Bowie’s late 70s recordings (eg the main ‘Ashes To Ashes’ riff). Stevie Wonder used his on 'Songs In The Key Of Life' and 'Journey Through the Secret Life of Plants' and an MTM that was used in the signal chain to treat James Earl Jones' voice to create Darth Vader's distinctive flanged voice effect. Martin Hannett used his so extensively in the studio (most famously with Joy Division) that Martin Moscrop of A Certain Ratio told us they used to refer to it as the Marshall Time Waster...
Given its history and recording pedigree, it should be more than clear that this is a very versatile and fabulously-deep box of tricks that will surprise and inspire you: by no means is this just another me-too flanger..
Not always the simplest effect to operate: the various delay/phasing/flanging type effects from this analogue rack seem limitless and - unlike other modulation/delay racks we've used - controls interact in unusual ways and are not necessarily intuitive. It rewards perseverance with some amazing sounds, but treat it with extreme caution and operate at modest volume levels - the levels of feedback that can emanate from this thing can destroy speakers, not to mention your ears!
Supplied with a brand new custom power supply set for 240v for UK/EU.
Intelligent devices have this to say about it: (they make a Marshall Time Modulator plug in version - find it here)
Before there was much "digital" anything, and before records were considered something anachronistic and nostalgia evoking, back when "Dark Side of the Moon" was new and Hip-Hop kind of a distant dream, Stephen St. Croix had an idea: What would happen if you took the the longest analog delay line possible, gave it the greatest signal to noise ratio in a piece of outboard gear, and then made the modulation of it possible over such a wide range that it could effect sound in ways sublime AND outrageous. Something so utilitarian and necessary that it could fit in equally well on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life," or as the means of giving extra gravitas to the sound of a bad acid trip. Stephen called it: The Marshall Time Modulator. You'll call it "indispensable”.