Dunlop MXR M-80 Hits the Sweet Spot -- No, Really
Sometimes a piece of gear has a functional simplicity that makes you wish everything else was that straightforward and useful. That's how Michael Campbell of the Fervor feels about his Dunlop MXR M-80 bass DI and distortion unit. With a handy noise gate and a swell secret button, it's almost like he ordered it from the back of a comic book -- except it's a bit higher quality.
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: This is the, I believe it's the 180, the M-180 or something like that but it's a basic distortion and DI box and I was just looking for a good distortion to have and I came across this thing which was fairly new I believe and -- but it also works as a DI box. Alone, it runs passive, it's a passive DI but it's really cool because I've actually not used the DI function a whole lot, just for some recording here and there, buy as a distortion pedal it's really good but what got me when I started -- again, I started doing a lot of research before I bought it but the one thing people kept talking about was how well -- It's basically a two-channel pedal and everybody was basically kept raving about how good the clean tone was on it. When you got your compliment to your unit, it's just your usual bass, mid, and treble knobs for the clean channel, but then there's basically a secret weapon button but it's this little button on here. You just press it. It's called Color, and it basically sets a preset like EQ curve that's heavy on the mids or whatever but it's like the bass sweet spot or something and then it's but this pedal I have not ever turned that button off. It just sounds good every time. But then, the distortion itself is pretty awesome too. You can blend between mix and the direct signal with the distortion and here you got your gain but then there it's also got a nice little handy noise gain on it too which really is only useful if you're going to crank the gain up all the way, which I don't really do but nice that it's in there. You know I guess [OVERLAPPING].
PATRICK OGLE: If you decide to try and [OVERLAPPING]?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: Yeah. If I want to, it'll be there. But yeah, it's just really a great versatile little pedal like I don't end up doing a lot more than I thought I would do.
PATRICK OGLE: Is it meant as a bass pedal?
MICHAEL CAMPBELL: Mmm hmm. Yeah definitely it was created just for that purpose. Yeah, it's been getting out of here. It kind of is one of the little keys to the whole rig I got here. I ended up buying like a whole rig in a matter of a month or whatever and this is like the one piece when I had to just tie it altogether. Really sounding good.
Secret Button?
I bought this pedal for the distortion and it hasn't let me down. I really like the dry/distorted blend knob, the whole "distortion section" is really cool(level, blend, gate, gain). The one thing that would make this pedal perfect, in my opinion, would be to allow the player to bypass the eq and/or color switch when the distortion is on. I use a tone shaper multi-effect unit and find it frustrating that my tone changes so much when I stomp on this pedal. Other bassists I know have also complained about this. One may have a ten band equalizer set up just right just to have it squeazed through a 3-band and destroy their tone. By the way, how can the button be a secret if it's on the front of the pedal? @_@
MXR M80 Secret Button
Really now - the 'secret button' is just a Get-Outta-Jail-FREE card.
When you've screwed it up so bad that you can't find home again - just hit that button and play the rest of the set with some really great pre-set EQ.
It's simple, really.
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