Effects Bay

Okay metalheads, it’s time for the MXR Fullbore Metal Distortion pedal. This highly anticipated pedal came out a couple of months ago, and I wanted to write a post about it. I’m not too much into metal these days, but I’d love to give this pedal a ride. This pedal has some nice features built in to maintain high level of metal-ness, mainly a 3 band EQ (with sweepbable mids) and noise gate built in. It definitely has classic metal tone right out of the box.

Here is the official product description:

This compact but powerful MXR guitar pedal is all you need to unleash the most devastating contemporary metal guitar tones ever heard. The FullBore distortion pedal turbo-charges your guitar signal with lethal amounts of ultra high gain. This is combined with a built-in Noise Gate to knock out the noise associated with extreme gain levels while also adding definition and tightness to syncopated metal riffs.

The effect pedal’s extensive EQ controls, with Bass, Mid, sweepable Mid-Freq and Treble knobs let you sculpt your tone with fiendish precision. The additional Scoop switch provides an instant high and low frequency boost that’ll rumble the room while also adding clarity. Available from MXR, the world leader in analog pedal technology.

MXR M116 Fullbore Metal Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal Features:

• Super high-gain distortion
• Three band EQ with sweepable mid frequencies
• Tight, fast, switchable Noise Gate for syncopated metal riffage
• Internal Gate Trigger control lets you set the Noise Gate’s sensitivity
• Scoop Switch boost the highs and lows while the EQ stays active
• True Bypass with LED
• All analog circuit path

Here is a great video that shows all the features of this pedal by ProGuitarShopDemos.

I also wanted to show a video from gearmandude on this pedal. Even though he claims to be lacking in the metal licks, I thought this video showed some important info (ie: noise gate handling).

You can pick up the MXR M116 Fullbore Metal Distortion for $99.99 at Musician’s Friend.

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Popularity: 16%

I’ve personally been really interested in the Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker, and of course my favorite reviewer on YouTube, gearmandude, had a sweet shoot out between the Big Muff Pi w/Tone Wicker, Little Big Muff and NYC Big Muff Pi. I really wish the Russian Big Muff was in the mix, since that’s the one I’m the most familiar with, but I was liking the sound of the Big Muff Pi w/Tone Wicker!

You can pick up the following pedals at Musician’s Friend:

Big Muff Pi with Tone Wicker for $89.25
Little Big Muff Pi for $66.75
Or find some used/new Big Muffs on eBay at PedalNerd.com

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Popularity: 8%

I have a friend that has been talking about the Zvex Box of Rock for a bit. I definitely like the Zvex stuff (I have posts on the Fuzz Factory and the Mastotron Fuzz). I’ve also seen the Zendrive listed on a few gear pages. So this was a good opportunity to kill a couple of birds with one stone. Again, I have to thank Gearmandude for putting together a great comparison video on the two pedals and running them through their paces.

I thought these two pedals sounded great, but both shined in some cases, and both fell short in other areas, but it comes down to the application of the pedal. He mentions that he probably won’t be able to use these, since he plays through a gained up amp. This is really important to understand when buying distortion / overdrive pedals. If you’re using the gain stage, you’re already dirtying the signal and saturating the headroom (of tube amps). If you’re playing a clean amp, then this is completely different, you get the distortion voicing and boost. Overall, I like the Zendrive’s tone for rhthym work, but the Box of Rock sounded better for leads in my opinion (I also liked the boost of the Box of Rock).

You can pickup the Zvex Box of Rock at Musician’s Friend for $199.00. You can also find the Zendrive on eBay (courtesy of Pedal Nerd) in the $200 range.

Popularity: 6%

After announcing the first Effects Bay pedal give-away, where I’m working with Fat Tone Guitars to give away a prototype F-Bomb Fuzz pedal, I thought it would be cool to shift gears and talk about phasers.

I use to have a lot of fun with phasers. I still own my MXR Phase 100 and I remember playing the older EHX Small Stone (military green box) back in the day. What got me thinking about them again is the EHX nano small stone, and trying to remember how the small stone compared to the Phase 100, and I honestly couldn’t remember. But, as expected, I found a pretty sweet shootout comparison video with my favorite demo dude (gearmandude) where he demos the ModTone MT-PH Atomic Phaser, Electro-Harmonix Nano Small Stone Phase Shifter, MXR CSP-101CL Custom Shop ‘Script’ Phase 90 and the standard MXR M-101 Phase 90.

You can pick up all of these pedals in the demo at Musician’s Friend
Modtone MT-PH Atomic Phaser – $99.95
Electro-Harmonix Nano Small Stone Phase Shifter – $78.00
MXR CSP-101CL Custom Shop Script Phase 90 – $99.99
MXR M-101 Phase 90 – $79.99

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Popularity: 10%

Since I’ve been on a overdrive kick as of late, I wanted to find some ccomparison videos of some popular overdrives out there today. It always seems that gearmandude is giving me what I need to hear when it comes to these shootouts. He is extremely thorough and pushes these pedals in ways that you get to hear what they’re all about.

He created two videos (part 1 and part 2) featuring the Barber LTD Overdrive, Fulltone Fat Boost, Fulltone OCD, Maxon Reissue OD9 and Maxon OD808. Part 1 is with Telecaster and Part 2 is with a Les Paul.

Here is Part 2 with the Les Paul

Barber LTD Overdrive can be purchased at Fat Tone Guitars for $119.95
Fulltone Fat Boost can be purchased at Fat Tone Guitars for $126.65
Fulltone OCD can be purchased at Fat Tone Guitars for $135.15
Maxon Reissue OD-9 can be purchased at Tunnel Vision Music for $150.00
Maxon OD808 can be purchased at Tunnel Vision Music for $135.00

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Popularity: 12%