Showing posts with label MXR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MXR. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2015

Memory Lane: MXR 6-Band Equalizer Pedal Review

Aloha!

My son and I enjoy heading to the Long Beach Antique Flea Market each month as it is nice to spend some time together poking around through piles of treasures, and we usually find something cool to bring home. He seeks out old coins and vintage video game gear, and I am always on the lookout for music equipment, old Zero Halliburton cases, and vintage skateboard crap. I have had a good run the past few months, bringing home a 1960s Acoustic brand 260 guitar amp (Jaco!) and a super clean Yamaha BB bass (not to mention a cool od Viking board). Well, I did ok this month too, as I found a neat old MXR equalizer pedal!

Judging by the logo, this one was made in the mid to late 1970s. It is on the smallish size for a pedal, measuring just 2 ¾ x 4 ¼ x 1 ½ inches, but it certainly is solid as it weighs in at just a half ounce under a pound.

This MXR unit is about as simple as they come, with single ¼-inch input and output jacks, and six sliders. The sliders each provide 18 dB of cut or boost on these frequencies: 100Hz, 200Hz, 400Hz, 800Hz, 1.6kHz, and 3.2 kHz. There is no bypass switch on these vintage pedals, so just plug it into your signal chain and you are good to go.

And this 6-band EQ is a product that does exactly what it is supposed to. It provides a lot of flexibility to your tone that you might not be able to get with your guitar or amp settings, and it does not color the tone – it is very transparent with no added buzz. It works well for guitars, and passably for bass and keyboards due to its lack of lower end.

This pedal works fine, and it is in reasonable shape for its age with some scuffs and scratches and some flaking of the original silkscreen printing. Amazingly it still has all of the little rubber slider tips, which are often missing on these. It certainly works fine, with not much of anything in the way of added noise to my signal chain, and it is definitely worth the sawbuck I turned over to get my paws on it.

If you need a basic EQ to clean up your guitar tone, you do not need much more than the MXR 6-Band EQ to do the job, and you can find nice ones on eBay for $75 to $100. Or you can buy the brand new updated ones for around $80, but they are a bit more complicated as they added a bypass switch and a clipping circuit, so you have to deal with batteries or an AC adapter.

Mahalo!

Monday, December 30, 2013

MXR M169 Carbon Copy Analog Delay Guitar Effects Pedal

Hi there!

I have tried out more delay pedals than I can count over the years, and have only found a few that I like. The digital T-Rex Replica is my all-time favorite, but it costs an arm and a leg, and the MXR M169 Carbon Copy analog delay pedal comes in a close second for a fraction of the price.

MXR is part of the Dunlop Company, which also sells all kinds of stuff, including picks, strings, accessories, and the Cry Baby Wah pedals. Using my unofficial count, there are over 50 different MXR pedals that you can stick on your pedalboard, and generally they are very well regarded.

The Carbon Copy is one of the more simple delay pedals that you will run into, and there are only three knobs (Regen, Mix, and Delay) and a modulation ON/OFF switch on its tiny chassis. Regen controls the amount of delay repeats, Mix controls the wet signal level, and Delay sets the delay time. The MOD switch controls the up and down pitch shift of the delayed signal, and this is adjustable for rate and duration internally (screwdriver required). It does not say this in any of the literature, but it appears that the lettering for these controls actually glows in the dark a bit. Between this and the nice bright LEDs, it is ready for the stage!

There are also the expected footswitch, input and output jacks, and a jack for a power supply. By the way, the footswitch provides a true hard-wired bypass, in case you were wondering. If you choose to go the 9-volt battery route, you will have to pop the back off to change it periodically. This is not terribly convenient.

As I said earlier, this is an analog pedal, and with its bucket brigade technology it can provide up to 600ms of delay (0.6 seconds for us non-math types). This is obviously less than what you can get from a digital delay, but it makes up for this with an awesomely warm tone and natural decay without undue muddiness. I was able to get a lot of really useful sounds and tones from this pedal when used with either a bass or guitar, though none of them had the crisp hi-fi character that you can get from a digital pedal. The MOD switch adds a notable depth to the tone, so you can try to emulate your favorite prog rock sounds.

I found that it is good for blues and country, but I found that it shined the most when used with a Stratocaster for straightforward rock or funk with my Precision Bass. It is a blessing to have such simple controls, and changes on the fly are very easy.

The Carbon Copy has a quality feel to it, and the pots and switches do not feel like they are going to break any time soon. I am amazed that they could cram so much goodness into a normal-sized pedal, so it leaves plenty of room for other stuff on the pedalboard. The true bypass switching is exactly what they say it is – the signal comes out just as clean as when it went in. In my usage I found no added noise from this unit and the Replica would be equally at home on the stage or in the studio.

The MXR M169 Carbon Copy delay pedal is a winner, and you are not going to find a better analog pedal for the money. These pedals have a list price of $254.61, and street price of $149.99. Check one out if you get a chance.

Mahalo!