MXR® SUPER BADASS® DISTORTION
Decades of 100% analog distortion are at your feet thanks to the Super Badass Distortion. The Super Badass covers a wide range of sounds, from early ’70s low gain distortion to contemporary “scooped” metal distortion and everything in between. Its highly reactive Distortion knob handles it all. You may adjust the Bass, Mid, and Treble settings to finely tune your tone once you’ve dialed in the amount of crunch you want. With the tough case and sturdy parts that MXR is known for, the Super Badass Distortion has true bypass switching and is ready for the road.
With a 3-band EQ to fine-tune your sound, the Super Badass Distortion offers complete and highly responsive spectrum distortion.
The DC Brick™, Iso-Brick™, and Mini Iso-Brick™ power supplies (not included) can be used to power this pedal. A 9-volt battery, a Dunlop ECB003 9-volt adapter, or the DC Brick can be used.
The Super Badass distortion Pedal provides you with a broad range of tones from low-gain overdrive to heavy, scooped metal distortion ideal for singing along, and it offers totally analog distortion that is dynamic and sensitive.
MXR® Super Badass® Distortion is the perfect pedal for any guitarist looking for an edge in sound and performance. With its classic distortion sound, MXR Super Badass Distortion offers a wide range of tones that you can use to create your own unique sound. Whether you’re looking to add grit to your clean sounds or dig deeper into metalcore riffs, MXR Super Badass Distortion has the power to take your playing to the next level.
Benefits MXR M-75 BadAss Distortion
The additional knobs for bass, mids and treble is where the versatility really explodes. You can get that deep crunch with the bass on full and mids/treble at slim to none or you can get the tinny metal fuzzy drive by cranking the mids/treble or you can target any sound in between those.
- Does low gain surprisingly well. The mid control is a really useful feature and sets it apart from comparable pedals.
- Very diverse pedal. You can go from an overdrive to a 70s style distortion, to grunge. to heavy distortion, to a fuzz like tone.
- Accents very well, great harmonics.
- Having a bass ,mid and treble knobs makes it amazing.
- Tight, clear, muscular.
- Works perfectly for bass guitar.
- Easy to use.
- Well built with high quality components.
This is an excellent versatile distortion that gives drives anywhere from mild breakup overdrive to metal distortion, without the glaring mid hump of Tubscreamer-style pedals, and without the overly mid-scooped tones of DS-1 and modded variants – it sits perfectly in between, and allows tone shaping to get close to those two extremes by adjusting the three tone knobs. With my Strat, I run the gain at about 10-11 o’clock, keep the treble at about 12, cut the bass a bit, and bump the mids and get a great classic rock tone that can be driven into punk and alternative territory by driving a Blues Driver into it with its gain at 10.
The pedal does roll off high frequencies and does get a bit noisy with the gain past 3 o’clock, but I’d expect both from a distortion pedal capable of delivering large amounts of gain. It is currently one of my three favorite drive pedals, the others being my Blues Driver and a “more bass, less mids” modded SD-1 which can deliver similar lower gain sounds as the Super Badass, but which is somewhat brighter.
Conclusion
This is truly Super Badass Distortion! This circuit faithfully captures the breakup of a quality tube amp, and excels at pushing tubes to their sweet spot at any volume. I’m running into a Peavey Valveking clean channel, dialed in for robust shimmering cleans, and this pedal allows for volume matched dirty tones ranging from AC/DC crunch or ZZ Top grit to a fully saturated screaming Swedish death metal sound.
The EQ is quite responsive and musical. If you can’t find a useable tone from this pedal, I suspect that it’s your playing ability that needs work… this little bastard sounds great and maintains the character of each guitar, without just blanketing the tonality or having only one voice like many other pedals in this price range often do. Open up the sonic possibilities of your gear and stimulate your creativity – get yourself a Super Badass Distortion pedal and try not to smile when you hear the difference it makes.
This is a good natural sounding distortion compared to stuff like the MD2 or some of the Donner / Rowin ~ cheaper pedals out there. This pedal does everything right up to the super gain new age metal stuff, it stops there, if you are looking for that, check out the MXR full bore, that will get you into the monster gain territory. I got this and the full bore at the same time, looking for what ended up coming from the full bore but this has its place for a lot of great mild to moderate to heavy distortion tones.
It doesn’t do a blues / OD thing in my opinion but picks up right where those types of pedals stop and goes all the way up to the edge of modern high gain distortion. This pedal is organic, tight, clean, quiet and dynamic and to me, covers all the stuff the old Boss pedals do but with a more natural tone that is easier to sculpt.
I don’t know if I will be keeping it since the full bore has what I was shooting for but this does sound great and is extremely versatile in many categories. You can dial this back into led zep / acdc into stuff like white snake, Metallica queens, sound garden type tones and with a little time spent, get right on top of what you are looking for. I like it because it is throaty and reacts to your picking dynamic where the Boss and digitech stuff feels flat. A reoccurring theme with me and distortion pedals is, I like juicing them with a 10 band eq before the pedal in the chain, specifically the caline 10 band eq. I also found this noise gate pedal called the CNZ which is easy to run after the distortion and works much like the ISP pedal but costs less but works the same and is smaller. Thiss MXR is quiet though.
This is a dynamic pedal that works with pick dynamics very well. If you take a few minutes to A/B the tone you are looking for, it can and well easily replace several other pedals and deliver a naturally sculpted tone with warmth and dynamic delivery.
It is also quiet, no hiss or feedback and is really versatile. I think if you are needing a pedal with a wide variety of distortion tones, this will deliver those tones well. If you are wanting the vulgar display kind of saturation, move over to the MXR full bore. Every time I use this I am impressed with its natural sound from stuff like foo fighters to Metallica type tones. It has sustain, tone & body that the boss stuff just sounds false or anemic and fuzzy.
This pedal is small, easier-er to dial in than some or a lot Boss metal pedals and sounds like THE tone, not pasted on or over top of the other pedals. No hiss or problems with feed back or noise. MXR is putting out some dynamic and versatile stuff and this hits the target.
