Electro Harmonix MEL9 Tape Replay Machine

I was really excited to purchase this, but in my set up at least it had a noticeable volume drop, and some inconsistency in the volume of notes which seemed like a sensitivy issue. I play hard and wanted the pedal for some weird, noisey leads / drones, and my set up is pretty simple, so it's possible that with a pedal board with some loops in it or other set ups you could ameliorate the volume drop issue, and also if you're looking at it for more atmospheric purposes the issues I had might not annoy you. I did try running a compressor before it, as suggested in the Sound-on-sound review I found, but it didn't solve it. The pedal sounds are good but not worth the effort for me. I have a Boss Sy1 which had absolutely zero issues out of the box, slotted straight into my set up. I'm a bit frustrated to be honest, but I thinik possibly people using this pedal for mellower applications might not find the volume drop to be an issue.