Montreal Assembly Count to 5

The Montreal Assembly Count to 5 is a compact delay and sampler pedal with three main modes: pitch delays, random sampling and layered looping¹. Delicious Audio describes it as a granular delay, a delay/sampler whose three modes are pitch delay, random sampling and layered looping². It is a digital pedal, and its firmware can be updated over USB, which matters because the pedal has shipped on several different circuit board revisions over its life, each with its own firmware compatibility.

The pedal was designed by Scott Monk, whom Pedal of the Day called "the mad scientist behind it"³.

What it does to your sound

The three modes cover a wide range for one small box. In a guest review on Pedal of the Day, Ric N., who had owned the pedal for nine months, described what it produces: "It has some gorgeous digital delay and mod delay sounds. It does a shimmery chorus. It can tune your guitar 5 frets down" with added tremolo, reverse glitches and multi-pitch arpeggios³. That places it closer to a granular and pitch-shifting tool than a conventional delay, in the territory of what Premier Guitar called "glitchy pedals like the Montreal Assembly Count to Five and Red Panda Tensor"⁵.

The pedal runs two different firmwares with slightly different functionality: a stock firmware and an alternative "Nightly" firmware². The fifth anniversary edition shipped with the nightly firmware but also supports the regular firmware, which you can download and install using Windows, OS X or Linux⁴.

Controls and connections are minimal. There are no presets and no MIDI³. An expression pedal can be connected to control feedback³.

Power and bypass

The Count to 5 requires up to 150 mA at 9VDC, with the typical 2.1mm negative tip power supply connector¹. Delicious Audio's product page gives the same figures². The fifth anniversary edition is listed at 130 mA at 9VDC with the same connector⁴. The pedal is true bypass¹, a point on which the maker's product pages and Delicious Audio agree²⁴.

Board revisions

The Count to 5's main circuit board is tagged "xyz rev XXX", where XXX is a lowercase letter between h and m inclusive⁶. To find yours, take off the backplate and read the silkscreen label on the main pcb, which reads "xyz rev ###" where ### will be h, i, j, k, l or m⁷.

Rev m exists because the CODEC used on rev k and l boards became unavailable, so a new board revision was made using a different but similar quality CODEC. Montreal Assembly calls this virtually the only difference from the previous version⁶.

Firmware: versions and compatibility

The firmware history on the maker's update page includes these versions⁷:

• 0.971k, the most current standard firmware for rev k, l and m boards, similar to 0.963k but also working with rev m boards
• 0.97k, for rev k, l and m boards, outdated, with some bugs in mode 3 alt functions
• 0.963k, for rev k and l boards
• 0.962k, for rev k and l boards, adds one new feature
• 0.96k, for rev k and l boards, adds some new features
• 0.95k, what shipped with rev k and l boards up to July 1, 2016
• 0.94k, the outdated/original firmware for rev k and l boards
• 0.941k, an alternative firmware for rev k and l boards
• 0.931h, the latest for rev h/i boards
• "Nightly" firmware .92, which updates the nightly branch to work with rev m boards and makes the tap gesture easier to trigger, for rev k, l and m boards
• "Nightly" firmware .911, an earlier nightly build

How to update the firmware

Montreal Assembly lists what you need and the process⁷:

1. Gather a computer with Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, a USB A to USB mini B cable, the pedal, the STM Dfuse software (free, for Windows) or DFU-UTIL (for Mac and Linux, which also works for Windows), and a Phillips head screwdriver.
2. Remove the backplate.
3. Locate the mini USB jack, which sits beside the large IDC header close to the bottom of the pedal.
4. Connect the pedal to the computer.
5. Locate the firmware you downloaded, which has a .dfu extension.
6. Load it with STM Dfuse or DFU-UTIL.

Before starting, confirm your board revision and check that the firmware you downloaded lists your revision⁷⁶.

Price

Montreal Assembly lists the Count to 5 at $200 USD, with the product page showing a sale price of $170 USD as of October 2026⁴. The fifth anniversary edition was also listed at $200 USD⁴. A 2024 Guitar.com review noted that the pedal "still crams in pitch delays, random sampling and layered looping for $200"⁸. A 2022 Guitar World feature on multi-effects pedals versus individual pedals placed the cost of exotic pedals like this one at around $300⁹.

What reviewers said

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