by M. Alan Berg
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Jim Dunlop’s MXR has made plenty of these pedals, and they are available everywhere from local musical instrument shops, to the big musician warehouse websites. They retail for about $140 brand new, but keep your eyes out for deals on used gear online and in stores. Like
I said, the M80 is a brick, and despite sharing the same name as a quarter-stick of dynamite, the company declares on their website that the bass d.i.+ is “bomb proof.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to prove the truth to that claim, but I will attest to the unit’s solidity.
The M80 is a pretty good-looking pedal, and would compliment any pedal board. It’s got a matted, hammered black sort of finish. There is also a special-edition version that is silver. As a bonus, the knob labels glow in the dark, in case your music career takes you to the darkest of stages. Lord knows mine has. The knobs are made from a nice hard, rubberized composite of some sort.
“How does the Jim Dunlop MXR M80 bass d.i.+ sound,” you ask. It sounds great. Other DI boxes only have bass and treble tone controls, and they preset the mid-range. The MXR M80 gives you a mid-range control, to optimize and personalize your guitar’s tone. The EQ on the M80 is active, meaning that it acts as a boost and a cut for the frequencies it adjusts. The sweep of knob is pretty dramatic, making the controls sensitive, and making the MXR a very responsive bass preamp. There’s also a “Color” button that adds an MXR EQ preset to the signal, they say is “optimized for bass.” The knobs then tweak the frequencies based on those settings.
The distortion channel on the bass d.i.+ is just what the doctor ordered. Distortion for bass guitars is difficult; the MXR M80 makes it easy. Dial up the gain, dial back ...
