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This thing sound pretty damn good! Wasn't there a lot of hate for it for some reason? Or am I thinking of a different EHX?

No, I think you're right. I've read plenty of hate for the Mel9.

I suspect part of it is about people wanting a pristine sound with no glitch (which CAN be done, but requires some learning and skill), and part of it is lack of understanding with how the knobs affect the sound.

There are settings on the attack and decay that can drastically affect the units tracking, and how glitchy it sounds. For example, on some instruments at some decay settings, you will get a tape bend when you let off the notes...sounds amazing for certain types of music...but for Beatles covers, or cleanly orchestrated jazz, not so much. The tracking on all instruments except "brass" is changed by the setting of the attack knob, so when people are having difficulties with the tracking (even when playing outside the preferred range for the given instrument) there is fiddling that can be done to filter that problem out. The hate is likely from people testing it for 3 minutes and then boxing it up to send back for a refund because it didn't automatically create a choir of angels leaping from their guitar.

There's a LOT of nuances and tricky settings with this unit to get it to sound the way you want it to, and I don't think some people are investing enough time and effort, or giving it as much credit as it deserves.

For those wanting pristine glitch free awesome-sauce...sticking the MEL9 in the effects loop of an EHX Superego is jaw dropping...assuming you've invested the time and effort to learn how to correctly use a superego. LOL.

INDEEEED.. an hour or so deep into this thing I got fixated on this chirpy, kind of buried +1 pog sound, underneath the 'effect' in some of the modes. but like you said you can tweak with the attack/sustain enough to work around these nuances. the (seemingly?) static sample/resample of the effect was also annoying but once you throw in some reverb or delay it's not a problem at all. tricking it with bends/slides sounds SOO awesome. it can take a beating in signal and seems louder in a cranked environment than low bedroom levels (what I mean is at low amp levels, the effect signal seems to be just under unity when maxed, but with loud volume it actually seems to boost). looking forward to using it some more