MXR M103 BLUE BOX

Double octave down

I checked out this pedal right after I realized that Paul Gilbert used this pedal on his signal chain to produce that crazy massive monstrous tone that he used before he starts crazy tapping(see his live videos on youtube, he always uses this pedal right before Eudaimonia Overture song starts). It sounds crazy and I figured that I should try one and imitate that craziness on my signal chain. I also figured out that Jimmy Page used this pedal long time ago on one of Led Zeppelin's song.

It's basically an octave fuzz pedal. Different from Octavia or any regular vintage octave fuzz pedal. This one generates two octaves down; it has blend knob so you can control the amount of dry/wet signal that's coming out.

How does it sound?

Just like Paul Gilbert on the video that I watched haha! I got that crazy monster tone, but I didn't get the Eudaimonia Overture tapping lick *sad*. To be honest, this pedal is only good for that monster tone, but you can't really use it for regular playing because once you start doing that, it'll sound so muddy, overly-compressed and lifeless.

The fuzz is not really that sweet, this is intended for someone with experimental attitude that has the courage to explore this wild tone and make it into something useful. Maybe you can use this to get a synth-like sound out of your signal chain, but to be honest this won't do the job perfectly as other synth based pedal on the market(micro POG, POG, whammy pedal).

Strange pedal I must say

It has some sort of analog tracking circuitry, sometimes it can generates up to 2 octaves down when you play high enough but if you play on the lower notes then sometimes you'll get only 1 octave down. Even sometimes what comes out from this thing is only random note-less fuzziness. It's quite unpredictable !!

Anyway, this pedal is a true bypass(almost......but the tone sucking doesn't really bother pups with output of 140mV and above) and it's simple enough to understand the features that this thing has. Place it in the front of your signal chain, preferably after the compressor so you can use the output knob to adjust the amount of bad fuzz coming out of this thing.

Beware

Some people complained about the low output level of this pedal even if the output knob is cranked all the way. That doesn't happen to me but if it happens, just follow my suggestion to put it in the very front of your signal chain.

Also beware that this pedal contains it's own version of some noise gate circuitry inside. Try to play a sustained note from your guitar and you will hear how "digital" the sound is when the note starts to fade. YIKES!

Does it worth?

Retail price below $80.00. I say it really depends on your purpose of putting this pedal to your signal path. If you have the courage to make this strange pedal works on your guitar playing, then it's not really too bad. If you look for something that's easy to tame and frequently used, this guy won't match your taste. If you just want to imitate that Paul Gilbert lick or Jimmy Page guitar solo, it's worth a try, but maybe this pedal won't last long on your pedal board.

From 0 to 10

This also depends a lot. I would pull a middle line and say it's around 7.3. To be honest, I'm a little bit disappointed with how it overall sounds. It's too compressed and has some artificial tone quality that I really try to avoid. I'm not saying this is a bad or useless pedal; it all really depends on our skill to tame this weird pedal to work our way. As I said on my previous post, a good player can even make a thin metal box sounds good to your ears.

Cheers and God bless :) !

p.s. Starting mid August, I will edit most of the posts and we can have links to audio clip containing dry guitar sound vs guitar sound with related pedal engaged. Stay tuned !