MXR Super Badass Distortion

The new MXR Super Badass Distortion is easily one of the most versatile distortion pedals out at the moment. What happens if you have found the perfect amp that sounds amazing clean but gets muddy when you crank the drive or switch channels? Or what if your amp sounds amazing when it's distorted but terrible when clean? Do you need two separate rigs to achieve tonal perfection. “Hell No!” Throw your stack in the bin, get a killer little combo amp and throw a Super Badass in front of it. This pedal is a 100 per cent full-spectrum analogue distortion that goes from a mild breakup to all-out liquid saturation, with a beautifully notched three-band EQ to shape your tone. A word of warning though – there's a lot of output with this pedal, so it can make a combo sound a lot bigger than it looks.

I tested this unit with a Les Paul-style axe plugged into a Fender Deluxe dialled to a warm clean setting. I started out by turning the “Output” down, “Distortion” all the way off with the “Bass”, “Mid” and “Treble” to 12 o'clock, to see what sort of colour the pedal added. At its bare minimum, here the tone simply got fatter and a bit darker. Turning up the mids and distortion took me into classic AC/DC territory with fat tube breakup, compression and singing harmonics. Further increasing the drive takes you into rock/metal territory depending on how you treat your three-band EQ, but what's even more impressive is the response and harmonic overtones present, which makes the pedal behave and act more like a nice saturated tube amp. So throw your stack in the bin and be a real Badass.