MXR M75 Super Badass® Distortion

Product Information

Among our choices, you'll find multi-channel offerings, blendable drives, and amp-inspired circuits at a variety of price points. Where does my distortion pedal go in the chain? For the price, there had to be some compromised somewhere, and they come in the form of the pedal’s construction. It’s by no means bad - everything is laid out and finished well, including the footswitch, but rather than the usual metal, the SF300 is made from high impact plastic. It feels fine, but there’s a reason touring musicians will buy only pedals with a metal chassis. This obviously gets its name from the Vintage 1978 Marshall JMP Super Lead 100w Amp - also known as the Marshall Plexi. It's one of the great takes on that genre - while it does seem to slip under the radar every now and again. OK, so the SF300 distortion pedal is unashamedly inspired by offerings from Boss, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly isn’t when you get this much pedal for such a tiny price. This thing is basically a catch-all for fuzzy distortion. It can do light 60s fuzz, from the time when overdrive was still seen as a bad thing by a lot of guitarists, to meaty, stoner fuzz that is super distorted.

It is worth noting that distortion pedals are different from overdrive pedals, which are meant to push your amplifier past its headroom for a slight crunch or very subtle distortion. Distortion stompboxes offer extra grit or dirt to your signal without having to push your amplifier, giving you that signature distorted sound even at low volumes. Design wise, this pedal clearly has its target market in mind with its vintage cream facing and funky typography - it looks great. The switches don’t feel quite as robust as some competitors, but overall build quality is superb, and there’s no reason to doubt Electro-Harmonix quality. We also love the crunch button, which unlike a lot of pedal buttons, does exactly what you’d hope it does, and more, to the point that the first time you try it out, you won’t want to switch it off. Ideal if you want a few more lows and highs to build out your sound. So to conclude, there are so many different types of metal, with varying sounds, that it just isn’t possible to say there’s one single greatest pedal for metal. If you pushed us for a choice from this list, however, we’d recommend the Boss DS-1 for its flexibility, and potential for proper distortion. It’s a good starting point for most types of metal, but if you wanted something for 80s shred, then you might go for the Distortion+ or RAT 2. Alternatively, stoner metal might call for the Acapulco Gold. What is the best high gain Distortion Pedal?A distortion pedal can be used anywhere in your effects chain to really give your tone an entirely new sound, and they’re really very easy to use. Unlike some effects pedals and other guitar peripherals, there really isn’t much difficulty to using one. In terms of specs, we’ve got optional true bypass or buffered bypass, which is very nice to see, and will be hugely useful for guitarists that need a versatile pedal. Volume, drive and treble knobs allow you to control the sound, which is designed to be as transparent as possible. We’d agree - at lower volumes there’s very little in the way of tone altering.

What can we say? The DS-1 has been designed from the outset as the everyman’s distortion pedal. It’s versatile enough to be used for a very wide range of music styles, it’s not hard to get it to elicit some great sounds, and it’s priced very attractively indeed. We can easily get everything from a bit of light distortion to some serious growls from the responsive dials, which is great if you’re new to this kind of effect.The sound quality of the MXR Super Badass is certainly not surprising as MXR has come up with other great sounding pedals. But what sets the M75 Super Badass apart from other alternatives is its equalizer which allows you to attain specific tones for whatever genre or songs you are going to play. Typically you’ll be using a distortion pedal for heavier styles of music, and it’s a common question to ask which is best for metal. We’d say it all depends on your particular genre of metal. There are a lot of different styles of metal and thus, a lot of different tones. So have a look at your favorite guitarist's pedalboard and see what they’re using for more inspiration. A really great sounding extended range fuzz with extra texture and character aboard that few fuzzes make use of. I mentioned in the intro that this was one of two MXR fuzzes I still had me eye on along with the La Machine octave fuzz. I just have so many priorities to juggle at one time that I've never hit those two at there right time. With a name like ‘Super Badass’, you’d almost expect this to be a pedal that delivers nothing but straight-forward distortion, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong. This MXR product is one of the most versatile pedals around, being capable of giving you everything from very light overdrive, to screaming, full-bodied distortion. So what exactly are you looking for? The problem with this is that it will depend entirely on the type of metal that you like to play, or think you’re going to play most often. Metal is a hugely diverse genre, more so than many people would initially think, which is why it’s very hard to say that there is one single metal pedal that sits above all others.