ModTone Guitar Effects MT-CD Classic Valve Distortion Pedal

This is a four star pedal, but the price point makes me give it a five. This is a very impressive distortion pedal for the price. Modtone was shooting for a "big British stack" type sound and they succeeded very well. To my ears it reminds me of a refined, smoother ProCo Rat, which in my opinion is high praise indeed. The distortion can get very saturated but unlike the Rat which can get kinda hairy and wild, the Modtone is a tad smoother. Tone-wise its similar too, being a tad warmer and fuller. If it is a Rat based circuit (I have no actual idea, just guessing based on the sound) they did a good job at warming it up.That said, as much as I liked it, I ended up returning mine. Two reasons, mainly. One, I have a Keeley Stahlhammer, which is Keeley's take on the venerable ProCo Rat, that includes a three band EQ and a switch for different clipping diodes. Every awesome sound I could get out of the Modtone (and there were many awesome sounds to be found) I could also dial in easily with the Keeley. Second, my Modtone had an oddly scratchy tone pot. Nothing should be scratchy on a brand new pedal. I may have just gotten the one bad one, and if I hadn't already been in possession of my excellent Stahlhammer, I would have simply returned my scratchy Modtone for a replacement instead of a refund. That said, it was well built in general, I just happened to get one with a bad pot.But here's the thing that makes it a 5 star pedal even if you may have to send back a defective one. If you want a really good distortion pedal for under $50 what are your choices? A Boss DS-1, which sounds awful? Something by Behringer, which will sound lousy AND break at random? Or one of those cheap Joyo or Bi-Yang clones that have good tones but very suspect quality control? You see my point? This thing is a pretty great distortion pedal on its own. It's downright fantastic for its price. If you want good cranked stack tones, this is your best shot for under $50. Nothing else really comes close. Give it a shot, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Very nice sounding distortion, with a lot of tonal options using the EQ section. However, this is NOT as heavy sounding as their Extreme Metal pedal. If you're looking for real high gain, get the Extreme instead. This pedal achieves a solid level of gain for hard rock; biting, yet warm. Dial the gain down, and you have a high gain, bluesy sound. Overall, it's worth the minimal cash purchase. But again, it's really not a high gain pedal.

Great pedal...

Excellently made pedal and perfect valve distortion that sounds good no matter where the you dial the knobs. My advice is, if you are reading this, get it!

The ModTone MT-CR in my opinion is a great addition to OD pedal collection and is wrongly marketed as a compressor, which it hardly is. I thought that it will do what a "normal" compressor does and initially was frustrated that it did not. But after playing a little longer with a linear booster in the front, I have discovered that it actually acts as an OD in a special way. Somehow it crunches high notes w/o effecting much the low ones and creates a pleasantly mild OD tones. I have read reviews that Vertex Steel String can do something similar at x4 or higher price tag, although has not played it myself yet. Anyway, give this one a try and you may find that the pedal actually worth to be added to your board.

To be clear, I purchased this directly through the Compass website, so Amazon may not show me as a verified purchaser. I wanted to put up a review here, though, in the hopes that more people would see it. This pedal is fantastic and to say that $30 is a great price is very much an understatement. To my ear, the distortion itself is similar in nature to the DS-1, but there's more bass to this one. It's not like an overbearing "mega bass" kind of thing, though; It just sounds warmer and better. If you're looking for some yummy crunch, go for this Modtone pedal. I might check out some of their other ones, based on how much I'm liking this one. Also, the warranty is 5 years, for something that you stomp on. That's pretty good in my book.