Caroline Guitar Company Megabyte

The Caroline Guitar Company Megabyte is a lo-fi delay pedal that builds on the company's earlier Kilobyte. Where the Kilobyte uses a single PT2399 lo-fi digital delay chip for over 500ms of repeats, the Megabyte wires two PT2399 chips together, doubling the delay time to 1200ms with what the maker calls improved noise performance¹²³⁴. It adds the feature Kilobyte players had been asking for: a tap-tempo footswitch with three subdivisions¹².

Caroline calls it the Megabyte Lo-Fi Delay Computer, and it carries over the Kilobyte's character, including a Havoc footswitch for runaway self-oscillation, here described by the maker as "a nastier, dirtier runaway havoc"¹⁵. The pedal is now listed under Legacy Products on Caroline's site¹.

What the Megabyte does

The Megabyte is a lo-fi delay: the PT2399 chip family it uses is known for bandwidth-reduced, low-fidelity repeats rather than the clean reproduction of a studio delay. Pedal of the Day's review of the Kilobyte noted "the fact that it uses a low fidelity, bandwidth reduced PT2399 digital delay chip" as central to that pedal's sound⁴²⁶, and the Megabyte carries the same approach with two of the chips wired for increased time and improved noise performance².

A modulation control detunes the repeats for greater depth and color². The pedal can be set to either trails mode, where repeats in process are still heard after you turn the effect off, or true bypass, and it switches between the two simply by holding down the bypass button². On the limited first run, the bypass mode glowed blue for trails and red for true bypass⁵.

Inside the pedal are internal controls for a 100% dry-kill for production work and a maximum headroom option on the havoc/oscillation side⁷.

The controls: tap tempo, subdivisions, and the Havoc stomp

The Megabyte's most requested feature over the Kilobyte was tap tempo, which lets you tap in your desired delay time with a footswitch². Caroline describes it as "a fun and functional tap-tempo with three subdivisions"¹.

The second footswitch is the Havoc stomper, which doubles as both the tap-tempo switch and a momentary runaway-oscillation control⁸:

• Tap: tap in your delay time, with three subdivisions available¹²
• Hold the tap button: activates Havoc, runaway repeats that build into self-oscillation²
• Hold the bypass button: switches between trails and true bypass modes²

The maker describes this Havoc as nastier and dirtier than the Kilobyte's, with a maximum headroom option on the inside to shape how far the oscillation runs¹⁵.

Kilobyte vs Megabyte

The Megabyte is a direct descendant of the Kilobyte, Caroline's lo-fi delay that Pedal of the Day reviewed in 2015 and 2017. The press release for the Megabyte's wide release framed the new pedal as answering players who "wanted a taptempo version of our popular Kilobyte™ delay"², and Delicious Audio noted that "the device picks up where the company's Kilobyte left off"⁹.

Premier Guitar's reviewer observed that the Megabyte "builds on Kilobyte's legacy"⁸.

Where it came from

The Megabyte first appeared as a limited advance run announced on January 14, 2020, in black with rainbow stripes, including a special tee shirt and "invader" patch. That run sold out on the announcement date, and Caroline donated 10% of its sales proceeds to Sexual Trauma Services of the Midlands⁵. The advance sale raised more than $3,000 for the nonprofit's victim assistance and operations².

The pedal then went into wide retail release through Caroline's worldwide retailer network in February 2020, at a MAP and street price of $249.99²⁶. MusicRadar reported the UK price as £259¹¹, and Guitar.com listed it at £259 in April 2022¹²¹¹. Delicious Audio, which had first reported on the Megabyte at NAMM 2019, wrote in January 2022 that "it finally appears to be ready for shipping"⁹.

Caroline designed the pedal with collaborators John Snyder at Electronic Audio Experiments, who worked on the hardware side, and Scott McCombs at McCohms Labs²⁵. The guts were manufactured by Cusack Music to Caroline's spec, and the pedal is assembled in the USA at Caroline's workshop in Columbia, South Carolina²⁵. The user manual is a simple postcard².

What reviewers said

Premier Guitar reviewed the Megabyte in June 2023, noting its top-mounted jacks ("In, out, and 9V jacks reside along the top") and that "the havoc stomper now doubles as tap-tempo"⁸. The reviewer's overall verdict on the design:

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