Mad Professor 1 Brown Sound Overdrive Effects Pedal

"I want to sound like Eddie van Halen". So did I, now I do. End of story.How many times have you searched online for "van halen sound" only to find a bunch of dudes tweaking knobs, telling you to buy several hundreds of dollars worth of crap and then maybe you get the sound?This pedal is it, don't believe the other tone snob reviews with low stars. For 95% of us guitar players who want that sound this is perfect, total plug and play. Don't let people shame you into "getting your own sound" instead of copying. Sure, do that when writing your own songs. For a cover band, I don't want a cookie cutter distortion when I play panama, I want to sound like eddie van halen when i play it damnit!!!Pedal details:- it has a very good bite to each note you play so the tapping is crystal clear- the brown knob enhances harmonics so you get that squeal when you whammy dive bomb (super sweet)- Will make women fawn all over you as you rip eruption at 11 volume in the middle of the stage (or your mom when you play in your basement).Cons:- you will need a phaser pedal or equivalent to get that 100% sound. mad professor does sell it, but in my opinion you don't really need it. most amps these days have built in effects, just run it on a clean channel with a phaser and your good!Jam on fellow VH enthusiast! This is a great pedal, believe the hype.

Super nice sound quality! Awesome distortion and reverb. Put it on your clean channel and turn it on. You will not be disappointed in this product. If you like heavy metal or like alot of distortion, this is a pedal you should consider!

At first the pedal had a good sound, the pedal has now started lose its Brown Sound. It seems to have a loss of gain when you attempt to let notes ring out when the pedal is engaged, like a torn speaker effect a la Jimi Hendrix. Don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing...Depending if you're a big fan of Van Halen or Jimi Hendrix...

The Mad Professor "1" was released in early 2013, and it caught my attention at the time as a pedal claiming to layer the famed "Brown Sound" - Eddie Van Halen's famous high gain, Marhsall-fueled tone from the late 70's and early 80's - over your amp's clean channel. It also had the additional quirk of a digital plate reverb built into the pedal (though you could turn it all the way off and disregard, if you like). Mad Professor is a Finnish company, and most of their stuff was far out of my price range at the time, though I believe the "1" was initially offered as a exclusive product to everyone's favorite retail guitar store chain. You know, the one with the red sign and the aggressive sales people that work on commission.Fast forward to 2016, and I found a used version of the Mad Professor "1" at said retail guitar store in good condition and at a significant discount. So I figured "why not". In the intervening years, I had picked up a number of Marshall-in-a-box pedals including the MI Audio Crunch Box (traded in) and the Wampler Pinnacle, which some consider the king of "Brown Sound" pedals. So, I have several other options to compare it to. Let me break down some of the Pros and Cons I've noted in the relatively short time I've had the pedal, and I will update my review if my thoughts change in the future.PROS - The first thing I noted about the Mad Professor "1" is that it has TONS of output. Unity gain versus clean bypass tone was somewhere around 9:00 on the Level knob. Actually, I recall that being true of many of the Mad Professor pedals I've demoed before.A lot of reviews of the "1" derided it as a "one-trick pony", but I think that's a result of the pedal's inspiration and a misunderstanding of how to work with that tone. Van Halen, of course, was prolific at working the volume knob on his guitar and getting all kinds of crunchy and even cleanish tones to contrast the all out overdriven chords, solos, and fret tapping passages. The Mad Professor "1", if it works as advertised, should let you do the same, and serve as an "always" on pedal at the end of your signal chain.For the most part, the "1" does deliver. From the first driven chord, the "1" has a very powerful and cutting feel to its brand of distortion. It has not one, but two knobs focused largely on dialing in the upper end presences and harmonics that make individual notes shine through, even while offering quite a bit of gain. Some people have noted that it has less overall gain/sustain versus other "Brown sound" pedals, but I wouldn't rule out being able to push it even further with a boost or other overdrive in front of it.The reverb knob is the real eye-catcher here - it's a fair question to ask why you would even want a 2-in-1 pedal combining distortion and reverb. But I actually the vintage era plate reverb in this pedal, and it's almost as critical to that early EVH sound as the MXR Phaser (not included, sorry). The Mad Professor "1" also has two internal trim pots adjusting reverb "decay" and "tone", which means that the external "Reverb" knob seems to be controlling "Mix" or "Amount" of reverb. My time to actually play guitar is quite limited at home, and several of my amps do not have built-in reverb, so the idea of being able to hook the "1" up with a battery or power supply as a grab-and-go pedal into an amp is pretty appealing.CONS - While I feel that the Mad Professor "1" is very well built and sounds fairly authentic, there's a few maddening things about it that you would immediately notice by glancing at this brown pedal with 4 knobs. I can't think of another higher-end dirt pedal I own that has this many knobs and features, but lacks BOTH a true tone control and control over the amount of gain! I had assumed that "Brown" knob controlled the amount of gain, but it really doesn't. Even with the knob fully counter-clockwise, the "1" pushes out a searing level of gain. The brief description of the Brown knob from Mad Professor indicates that is "controls the amount and harmonic overtones of the distortion". In my opinion, this is not exactly the same as a gain control - it seems to get a little saggier and "busier" as you turn the Brown knob up, but it really doesn't change the amount of gain or the length of sustain. Those are pretty much set to what they are for the pedal, and you are expected to roll back the guitar volume if you want a cleaner tone.Of course, if you wanted a full clean sound, you could just turn the pedal off, but that ties into the second "issue" with the pedal, which is that the reverb cannot be run independently from the distortion effect. Which is too bad, because for the "1" to truly be a "two-in-one" pedal, it would be nice to be able to use just that reverb into a clean tube amp. Here's an idea: why didn't they set the pedal up so that the reverb was always on (even in bypass), and then you could just roll the knob all the way down if you didn't want reverb on the bypassed signal?Finally, while there is a Presence knob, and it does work quite effectively to roll off (or add) some excess brightness, the pedal lacks a true tone control. A competitor pedal (like the excellent Wampler Pinnacle) with an independent bass control really helps to dial in a "big" sound on a smaller amp, or take away excess low end to prevent loss of clarity at gigging volumes. The Mad Professor "1" is engineered more to try and deliver a very specific range of sounds, and allow you to tweak the presence and character of that sound from there. Again, I think it accomplishes this fairly well, but it might be a little disappointing to those expecting a more general purpose distortion pedal that could cover a variety of crunchy and high-gain sounds.What all of this means is that the Mad Professor "1" is very likely to be a "hit or miss" pedal...not just with specific guitar players, but even with particular amps and setups. There are challenges to using this pedal the same way you would use any other distortion pedal. While the built-in reverb limits how much you can move it around the chain, I'm considering throwing an EQ pedal behind it to compensate for some of the tonal flexibility that the pedal lacks. But it's a unique and fun offering from Mad Professor that mostly hits the mark.

Love this pedal! Quick shipping! One of my favorites!

The pedal sounded great for like a day. Now it has gone micro phonic. I can hear myself tapping on it with my finger.

Great over the top distortion pedal with reverb.

No ac adapter included with the pedal. Battery depleted extremely fast. For the price, should have come with an ac adapter. Battery power is useless