MXR Distortion II

It's easy enough to get a good sound out of it, but if you spend some time tweaking the knobs you can get a much better sound. The The manual says the Resonance control is for an overdriven speaker sound, but it's kinda lame. The Filter doesn't do much either.

For most of the settings, you get a very synthetic tone, similar to the MXR Distortion +. But if you crank up the Output control, you get a very raucous sound, like the classic Hendrix tone, but with more balls! Very little noise.

It's an MXR.

Unfortunately Jim Dunlop never reissued this one, so you're on your own!

It blows away the Distortion +. Great for lead tones. But rhythm playing gets kinda raspy sounding. Still, it's one of the best solid state distortion pedals ever made. Probably not worth the price though. And good luck on finding it!

Quite easy. Certainly it is not very difficult to dial a good sound with this pedal.

The sound of this pedal is awesome. I use it together with a Boss Cs3 modified by Pedaldoc (probably the best compressor I have ever used) and I can get the sound of Tommi Iommi very easily.

Impossible to break? Yeah...I would say so

No problems with the pedal yet and let??s hope I never have to contact the customer support guys.

Amazing pedal. Good distortion and very dependable. I would buy another one it if got stolen.

Easy enough, though the active bass boost is has a vague name-resonance.
I???m hard to please and when I find something I like, I stick with it and stay happy for a very long time. I play what I call ???rock-metal???, basically old school Van Halen sounding stuff and some lighter pop metal and occasional heavy blues type stuff. I like a tone that I can set and forget and just play wherever inspiration takes me. My rig is this pedal, phase 90 script logo (worth every penny), heavily modded DOD 308, all run out a loop master passive switcher into Marshall 1987x with post phase inverter master volume, an old Hush and Eventide H-3000D/SX in the loop into vintage Marshall 412. With this rig I could play in a Van Halen tribute band one night, an Yngwie tribute band the next and a Larry Carlton band the next.

I stumbled onto this little sleeper in a local used music store, plugged it into a little combo amp with a junk guitar and knew right away I found my perfect distortion pedal. No, it didn???t turn that combo amp into a roaring, growling, singing, barking Marshall, but it turned my Marshall 1987 into a roaring, growling, singing, barking Marshall! There are lots of great sounding boutique pedals these days, but compared to this, most sound like they are trying too hard to get noticed. Tonally, this one is practically invisible, it just sounds like my amp with a very well voiced and versatile gain mod. It???s a bit more raw and blistering than a tube screamer but not a buzz box either and much more full from top to bottom. It sounds great with single coils or humbuckers. There is NO honky midrange, NO sucked out midrange or weird notched tones, NO disappearing low e string and NO synthetic plastic sizzle in the highs. I would have paid an amp mod guru a thousand dollars and been thrilled to have had my Marshall come back sounding like it does with this pedal. I kid you not. The distortion has just the right balance of smooth sustain and stinging grit. Inside, you???ll find all the vintage op amps the pedal gurus rave about and for good reason. With the output on 10, you get what seems to be a very modest boost, enough to slip into my Marshall and set off a sex bomb but without sounding like WW3. With my EVH equipped Charvel and playing like I mean it, I get very, very close to early Van Halen tones. With my Strat, I can get very convincing Yyngwie approved singing sustain, though I tend to use my 308 more for the latter because the HS-3???s are very cold sounding pick ups that match up better with the more midrange forward tone of my 308. The resonance knob was very smartly conceived because unlike other pedals that sneak in an active bass boost, this one is strictly additive only. Turn it all the way down and you just have flat response, not sucked out bass. Thus you are not stuck with an active bass circuit in the signal path unless you want it. I keep the drive at 11:00, tone about the same and get a wonderfully uncompressed rock-metal tone with perfect sustain, not too much, not too little.

They don't build them like this anymore. The box feels like solid steel and the knobs work perfect without a trace of scratch...26 years later.

The old MXR is long gone, unfortunately for all of us.

The shear neutrality of this pedal will not please all players, and I???m not calling it a ???Marshall in a box??? because it isn???t. If you want the sound I describe, you have to play it into a properly tuned up old Marshall with appropriate guitar, pickups and cab. The usual disclaimer applies: It???s no magic wand for bad sounding guitars, bad sounding amps or bad players who use their gear for scape goats. Snap one up before they get discovered and you???ll thank me. It stays right with me under my fingers, never steps on my toes and never lags behind.

9

Drive,Resonance (bass ma non solo),Filter (tono),Output (volume)
Con facilita ottieni dei suoni molto versatili

Uso una testata Peavey MX-130 degli anni '80 ed una cassa 4x12" Fender Roc-Pro
Come chitarre ho una Jazzmaster Japan ed una Telecaster Squier custom con texas special.
Pedalame: Boss TU-2,Ibanez GE-601 (equlizzatore),MXR BlueBox vintage,MXR Distortion II,Sovtek Big Muff (green),Ibanez AD-80 (vintage) ed EHX Stereo Slap Back Echo

Questo e il miglior distorsore che abbia mai avuto!!! Non lo scambierei con nulla...
Una dinamica pazzesca.. Solo col tocco puoi passare da un suono morbido ad uno aggressivo.

Per me questo e il miglior distorsore che sia mai stato costruito!!!!

Nessun problema,anzi,il mio e usato ed un precedente propietario ha fatto un lavoro sull'alimentazioni a regola d'arte stabilizzandolo perfettamente evitando i rischi dell'alimentazione continua.

Suono IndieRockNoise ecc...
Ce l'ho da quasi un anno ed e sempre stato sulla mia pedaliera come titolare fisso senza mai rischiare il posto :-)
Ogni tanto penso di prendermene uno di scorta perche senza sarei rovinato...

L'unica pecca e che ha un volume d'uscita non altissimo...ma una volta abituatisi e una meraviglia
Nessun pedale distorsore si puo paragonare a questo MXR

Very easy to use; two knobs for drive and output(volume), one for resonance and one for filter. About first two I've nothing to report, they are like the other pedals, about filter I can say that I don't understand the utility of this: if it's at the list is unlistenable, so I think max is the best. About resonance I can say it's very very intresting knob. it turn on not only basses but also the power of that.
I bought it used so I haven't any manual.
The years of building of it is 1982.

It's FANTASTIC.

I use it with: Gibson Les Paul Gold Top 1979, Orange ad30 with cabinet 4x12.

Sound:

Fuzz: is better than the other fuzz I tryed (like coloursound,vox, etc.) because is warm like them but much much more controllable. It's not noisy.

Distortion\overdrive: very DEEP, strong and clear. Treble with a lot of substein (very long sound), basses very very strong, middle not so clear like treble but it's a feature of all the pedals of that period.

I don't know about others pedals to compare it I can say that sometimes the sound seems to be similar for esemple to Jimmy pages's guitar in Communication breackdown, but it is opinable!

At the end I repeat: IT'S FANTASTIC

Mxr doesn't exsist more.
Jim Dunlop produce some pedals that once was produce by Mxr but NOT DISTORTION II.

I play Hard Rock and Blues, in Led Zeppelin Style.
I play since 1996, with mxr dist II since 2003.
Mxr dist II is better than: all Boss box, coloursond tone bender, electro harmonix big muff, ibanez ts9, and vox fuzz.
I choosed it becouse I listened it from a friend of mines.
I love: all
I hate: nothing
Best feature: SOUND

SORRY FOR MY ORRIBLE ENGLISH, BUT I'M ITALIAN

Very easy to get a good sound from it. The knobs allow for treble and bass control along with drive and output. Manual is easy to read and offers some basic setups for different types of tones.

Very bassy with enough low end for anyone. If your amp doesnt have the thunder than this will surely help. Also can be used as an input gain control. Crank the output and lower the gain. Very warm and an all analog signal is what distinguishes these pedals from the digital gear of today. I even use it for the blues. What a great SRV and Hendrix sound I get from it. Use the neck pickups for this. I dont know of any piece of gear thats a perfect 10. Well maybe...

Built like a brickhouse. This is all steel construction not plastic or aluminum. If you drop this on your foot you will know it! Thick power chord too. I think this can never break. Its bomb proof!

Not sure because pedals from MXR usually dont breakdown.

Great for all types of hard rock and blues. Its very flexible and sounds terrific. I can get sounds from the 60's through the 90's with this thing. Its very natural sounding. Warm highs not brittle.All you need is a good tube, Marshall amp. Forget the Mesa and the boutique amps (except for Soldano) at least for hard rock styles. Would always want one on my pedalboard. Wish it had a mid shift button but thats what my MXR eq is for anyway. Blows away the doubleshot distortion! If you find one, buy it and ask questions later. Very easy to get rid of because it has been used by Eddie V, Randy Rhoads, and Billy Corgan to name a few.

Pretty easy to use. This is not my one knob MXR Phase 90, which would get a 10 for ease of use. This pedal has four knobs: drive, resonance, filter, output. I haven't found the resonance or filter controls to be particularly senstivie, but you can get dial in a great tone with this pedal with a bit of patience.

My purpose for writing this review is narrow: If you have a JCM 900 and are unhappy with the tone (like I was for about 12 years) try this pedal in front of the amp.

My setup is simple: Peavey Wolfgang or a late 80's Steinberger with Trans-Trem into MXR II direct into JCM 900 on the B channel. I add a wee bit of reverb from the amp head. My tone controls on the Marshall are basically mid-scooped, no mids, treble at about 1:00 o'clock, bass to taste (usually around 2:00 o'clock but this has to be watched due to the amount of bottom end added by the MXR) and a small amount of presence. I run the preamp knob to about 12:00 o'clock, much past that and the tone gets muddy with the MXR Distortion II in place. On the amp head, I pulled the 2 inside tubes, placed in some JJ EL-34s, cut the output switch to low, switched the speaker output to 8 ohms, and then turned that shit up! I wanted to keep this rig as tonally pure as possible, so I don't use any other effects or amp attenuation devices -- translation, even with two power tubes in the low setting this set-up is LOUD. My cab is a 1960A.

The Sound? To my ears, great. The tone is distinctive, but versatile enough to cover rock and metal. The MXR Distortion II makes this amp thick and adds a lot of bottom. Sustain and harmonics are vastly improved over the stock amp. The tone is not fuzz and it is not exactly metallic souding like a Boss metal zone. It is a very full, gutsy distortion. With judicious use of the master volume (meaning cranked past 2 o'clock) the pedal interacts with the amp such that sustained notes slide gently into a very musical feedback. Wow.

I can't say that this set-up sounds like (insert name of favorite guitarist) because it really doens't. I can best describe the tone by saying it is a mix of old Metallica / Van Halen / Scorpions. I imagine if I had a serious EQ pre-distortion and post-distortion, I could get really zero in on a particular tone.

I should also add that I do not run the drive on the pedal all the way up. It is set at about 10:00 o'clock. Much past that and in comes the mud. My output on the pedal is wide open and the resonance and filter are about 2:00 o'clock. I have not found that this pedal introduces any significant degree of noise to the signal.

I did not give this pedal a 10 because I was unable to find a good tone through the Marshall clean channel. I also ran it through a Peavey Classic 50 (which has many similar tonal characteristics to the 900). The sound in those instances was too fuzzy and dark for my tastes.

The pedal is a 1982 and is still in great condition. The previous owners took care of it. Although it has some minor dents and dings, none of the pots are scratchy. I compared this pedal to a new MXR chorus pedal that I have. Night and day. The Distortion II is as solid as a pedal could be. The knobs are large and the foot switch feels unbreakable. The drive and output knobs still have the original sleeve on them -- I have read these are there so you can adjust these switches with your feet during a gig! I haven't tried that but it is a cool feature nonetheless. If you are in the market for one of these pedals, make sure it has both sleeves. The output jack on my pedal is a bit worn -- but it is 22 years old, so no big deal. In contrast, my new MXR chorus pedal (Jim Dunlop) feels cheap. The knobs are small and the jacks and footswitch feel brittle.

If you are buying this pedal sight unseen, beware that its power source is a heavy duty three prong power cord. No 9 volts or wall warts here.

I do not know if Jim Dunlop will service these old pedals, but I have a Rockman X100 that I sent back to the factory for repair quite some time ago. So far, althogh they agreed to fix it, they do not seem particularly concerned about actually repairing it or returning my emails. If this pedal needs repair, it is going elsewhere.

For my particular application, this pedal gets a 10. My JCM 900 has a new lease on life. This was not a plug and play match, though. There is a definite sweet spot that required precise adjusting of the pedal in conjunction with the amp. I would expect that this pedal could be used with other high gain tube amps that need more punch.

4 Knobs-Gain, Resonance (Bass), Filter (A Hybrid Midrange/Presence Control), and Output.

This is a fairly easy device to use, particularly after you get a feeling for the filter control. It is very unique and cool.

The lack of battery operation can be a pain, but it has its purpose. It also becomes annoying to deal with another wall wart and cable when setting up, but its not big deal.

I would say that ease of use is just above average. 7

My rig relies only on the MXR distortion for signal coloration. I have run it through a plethora of tube amps, but I feel that the direct rig I describe below gets me the best tone.

Stratocaster w/ Dimarzio PAF Pro in Bridge
MXR Distortion II
Hughes and Kettner Red Box Pro for Speaker Cabinet Emulation
Mixing Board

The tone is fantastic. Incredible Clarity. Very smooth and organic with lots of chunk, crunch, and additude. Very much like a Vintage Marshall or orange amp.



With the gain set higher, I was able to achieve a tone that I would describe as a higher quality sex pistols tone. Very brown and tasty with a great midrange and bite. Lots of additude! Fat and smooth with clarity! It compresses just right so that some squish is available when you pick right correctly. Artificial harmonics are very cool with the gain set high. There is a noticeable lack of buzz and fizz even on the highest gain settings. Interestingly, I recently came across a magazine article in which a picture very clearly showed the MXR Distortion II on Eddie Van Halen's pedal board. Truthfully, I could care less about Eddie's rig, but I am in the minority. Email me for the pic if you want it.

With the gain set around 12:00, AC/DC tone is unavoidable. When direct it is not as organic as the Young brothers, but when I plugged my les paul with the Rio Grande BBQ Bucker (Used By Angus)into a Sovtek Mig with EL34's, I got shivers. By working the filter knob between 12:00 and 1:30, I could achieve any tone from any AC/DC album. The picking dynamics were incredible!

I have also used this pedal as a clean boost on tube amps, and it sounds fantastic. There is only a slight gain boost, but the way in which the pedal adds sustain and rearranges the equalization makes the amp sound very heavy, even when set fairly clean.

This pedal is exceptionally transparent and dynamic. It will really bring out the character of the guitar and player that plugs into it.
With the low output humbuckers that I use in my strat, I can very clearly hear the difference in small things such as string age or pick shape when I play throught the mxr d2. Conversely, My friend plugged in his EMG axe, and it sounded very compressed and sterile. This is not necessarily a bad thing! I do not care for it, but this tone has its place. The point is that this pedal augmented every aspect of the guitar and player that went through it.

There was also much more gain availible when playing guitars with high output pickups. Where I dime the gain on the D2 with the dimarzios, I set it considerably less than halfway with pickups that have alot of output.

I feel that this pedal deserves a 10, but I have never played a fulltone, menatone, chandler, klon, etc., so I would feel very ignorant to give it a superlative rating. I do know, however, that this has blown away every other pedal and amplifier that I have ever played.

I do not know the reliability, and I hope never to test it. It looks very solid however, and I would imagine that if you treat it reasonably well, it would be just fine. I would not take it on tour without a backup, unless I had a custom case for the mini-rig that I am using now. Just do not be stupid and take it apart.

Dunlop needs to make a GOOD reissue of this incredible pedal. You guys hear me! I would buy 3, no kidding!

Anyway, I doubt they would be of any help at all on a pedal that they have had nothing to do with.

I play a very original style that I spent about 2 years developing. The tone needs to be exceptionally clear, because I play many jazz chords that cannot be jumbled! However, it also needs to be crunchy enough to do chugga chugga "bark at the moon" style riffing at the same time, and it needs to sound very intense and cutting for my solos! This pedal does it for me. I would feel very ignorant to give this a 10 before putting it next to some of the great pedals that are hitting the market every day. There might be another pedal out there that defeats this, but I have yet to hear it! If you want clips of this doing device doing any number of things, feel free to shoot me an email!

Easy to find a good sound out of it. The resonance and filter options make it more personal than most distortion boxes that typically have just a volume, distortion, and tone knob. This pedal allows for a unique, less generic distortion

I play a 1978 Guild S-60 solidbody electric with a 70's super distortion pickup, run through either a late 60's Guild Thunder I (Practice) or early 70's Fender Super Reverb (Rehearsal/Gig) amp. This is the best distortion pedal I have owned, period. Like one reviewer said before, it really acts and sounds much more like an overdrive than a distortion pedal. Because both my tube amps have no built in overdrive, over the years I have owned a Z VEX Super Hard-On, Vintage RAT, Japanese Boss DS-1 and DS-2, Boss Blues Driver, Big Muff, Marshall Bluesbreaker II, Ibanez TS-9 and TS-10, and a few other dist/od boxes looking for a great dirty sound. I got this one on a whim for $20 with a vintage gear hook-up I have, and it kicks all those other pedals asses. VERY warm sounding, evem with the dirt maxed. It stays on at all times, and I use the guitar volume to clean things up when necessary. It's a keeper, and finally no need to try any other OD pedals.

At first I hated the notion that it worked off a plug and not a battery, but after a few months when I realized I wanted it on at all times and didn't need it in front of me, it just stays on top of the amp and plugs in with it. The plug makes it very reliable since there is no change in tone with a weakening battery. So far, switch and jacks have held up perfect. It's a solid stompbox.

Never had to deal with it.

I've played guitar for 15 years now, and I highly recommend this pedal for guitar players with good ears who play hard rock/blues. It's a GREAT overall rock and roll pedal that can give a good sounding tube amp balls. For a vintage clean amp that requires an OD/Distortion pedal for gain, this gives me the best dirty sound I have heard. Remember - it's all in your hands anyway, gear is an afterthought.

I tried & tried & I cant get a good sound from this box.

Ive tried just boosting my tube amp,Ive tried using the distortion,I think maybe there is something wrong with it cause mine sounds like shit.I see they are getting alot of good reveiws but mine sounds horrible,I think I'll have someone look at it.

If mine is working properly, I'll give it a thumbs down.