Electro-Harmonix discontinues the Deluxe Electric Mistress, and immediately brings it back as the Andy Summers Signature Walking on the Moon Flanger

Once bitten twice shy they say! And after the J Mascis signature Ram’s Head episode I can’t really trust anything that EHX puts out per se. Some will say this is great marketing - getting the best known user of your particular pedal to have their signature on it as an endorsement. While for a brand strategist and marketer like myself this is a somewhat cynical exercise which takes customers for fools.

Where I feel that as for the J Mascis Ram’s Head Muff - which was just a skin-job on the existing EHX Violet Ram’s Head pedal - with not an iota of artist input or tweakage. It kind of reminds me of those bogus Fender and Gibson ’Signature’ guitars where a certain artist just gets a different paint job - but otherwise it’s just a bog standard production guitar - typically with an extra slice of price hike.

And I suspect in this case we will find the PCB exactly the same as before. Andy Summers has not sat down with EHX and tweaked or pivoted this pedal in the slightest to make it his signature pedal. There’s nothing signature about this at all really - you can’t just take a stock product, stick a signature on it and pretend it’s somehow different. The Electric Mistress pedal Andy used during his band heyday was quite a different version with different components. If they had managed to source some NOS parts to recreate the Electric Mistress that Andy used on tour - then sure - that would be a fitting ’Signature’ pedal - while this is just an endorsement deal where Andy gets a percentage for having his name on the pedal.

It would be more honest to say ’We’re renaming the Deluxe Electric Mistress as the Walking on the Moon’ rather than sort of pretending it’s a new signature product. It’s not the same at all as say the Keeley Andy Timmons Halo Dual Echo - which was a 2-year project of prototyping and iteration with the artist involved at every step - that is a proper signature pedal - while this Walking on the Moon is something else, and it’s all slightly unsavoury. How about some honesty and transparency? Just tell it like it is for a change!

You can clearly see exactly the same topology :

Controls - Color, Range, Rate, Switch : Filter / Matrix

Of course there was nothing wrong with the Deluxe Electric Mistress - for these are both one and the same - and if you liked that one - then sure get it in a different ’artwork’ but don’t pretend it’s an artist editions when it’s just a skin-job.

I’ve always liked the Deluxe Electric Mistress, while I believe there are better versions of that available elsewhere - like the ThorpyFX Camoflange and PastFX Elastic Mattress for instance.

The Walking on the Moon is proper Analog BBD, and very reasonably priced at $129 - available at US dealers immediately, while Europe typically needs to wait a month or so.

This is a cool bit of merch for The Police and Andy Summers fans - but please don’t pretend it’s anything other than a skin-job on the Deluxe Electric Mistress!

By all means feel free to weigh in with your own thoughts and opinions in the comments below.