Marshall Blues Breaker

Takes a bit of tweaking before the right sounds are coming out of your amp though it has only three knobs. The tone and drive settings have to be in balance.

Sounds pretty good with my Marshall Jubilee 2553. This is a very mild overdrive unit. It brings out the pinch harmonics and when used right it can be good ad to your sound. I could get pretty damn good results with the TS-7 and this huge black thing together.

It's like a goddamn tank. You could drive a truck over it and fry it with a flamethrower and it would still be in working condition.

Can't say anything about that...

I play mostly metal but I like this pedal very much. With the TS-7 I Could get some smooth lead sounds. Tubescreamers tend to eat the bass out of your sound but this baby can bring it back. If you want gobs of gain in one pedal then this isn't it.

this is not a distortion...it is an overdrive. with that being said this is an awesome overdrive. when you set the gain on max you get a real nice creamy overdrive. it goes perfect with my amp, b/c i have a 70's push pull master volume Fender TWin REverb. it has an incredible clean sound but the overdrive is shotty at best. the blues breaker is the perfect fit for the amp. this pedal i have found has awesome compression in it. it is a real full creamy pedal. the tone knob is highly reactive (i love that). and you can get real good crunchy overdrive if you turn up the volume. i use this pedal in unison with the fulldrive 2 and or big muff to get my distortion which ever i feel the song needs. this pedal accentuates other overdrive or fuzz pedals incredibly well.

it looks to be built like a tank. i really like the ascthetics of boxy pedals like these (Electro harmonix looking pedals)

have never ever had to deal with any customer support for any of the goods i have bought.

incredible value here. if you are looking for a distortion pedal, this pedal will not cut it, but if you are looking for an honest overdrive, wow, you will not be disappointed. for its price range it blows the od-2, and danelectro daddy-o, away. this pedal does not take any of you guitars tone away, it adds to it. incredible sound for an incredible price. if it were stolen, i would replace it immediately. when i play, i find myself with this pedal on at all times.

I compare this pedal to a boss O/D i have been using for the past few years. you can get a similar sound out of most good O/D units, if you try. alongside the boss, which is also a good pedal, i believe this pedal to be smoother and a bit more transparent- to my ears anyway. it doesnt have an overabundance of gain available, but it has enough for an O/D unit, it produces a good quality sound IMO. it will probably stay in the chain from now on. it gives a pleasing result in all my pickup settings also

havent had it long but its at least several years old and looks sturdy

its just right for the blues that i play mostly, as you would expect, and also rock. its a top pedal really, and even better,its made in England.theres nothing about it to dislike cos its a simple unit that does its job well.

Well first off this is a review of the older, 80's version of this pedal. The big black one.

It's only got three knobs: gain, tone and volume. Easy.

First off this is a very subtle overdrive pedal. The gain knob does essentially nothing until it is turned up about 3/4's. Then it blends some fairly tubey-sounding overdrive into the signal. It also adds a touch of compression when up this high. The tone knob, as someone else pointed out, almost seems to work by taking treble away rather than adding it. What I mean is that when on "10" the treble is at "unity" and when you turn it down it kills some treble. So if you want to preserve your present amount of treble when engaging this pedal keep the tone knob all the way up. The volume knob adds volume of course but it doesn't add much. You really have to have it nearly all the way up to get any usable volume out of this pedal. This is not a pedal that would work well as a clean boost since it doesn't do much boosting.

The overdrive is fairly natural sounding and pretty decent though not mind-blowingly amazing. It is not transparent but I don't think that was the point of this pedal. It adds some mids and some lows (a fairly dark sounding pedal overall) and a touch, maybe more than a touch, of compression. But the point of this pedal is to emulate the old JTM45 and in that sense it does seem amp-like (crank a tube amp up and you get compression and some boosted mids). I've never played through a cranked up JTM45 so I can't really make that comparison but the pedal sounds good.

For the price these are going for on ebay I think they are worth it. Not the greatest OD pedal in the world but certainly up there with Tubescreamers and even high-priced boutiques. It does it's own thing and offers a different flavor of overdrive from most of the TS-clones out there. Definitely worth checking out if you're sick of Tubescreamers and want something slightly different.

Nothing to add here

It's the best overdrive pedal I've ever had. It gives the most natural, clear, just breaking up sound I've ever had. It's punchy and clear and doesn't cut the bass. Works with all guitars. Blends perfectly with a tube amp.

Always works. Built like a tank.

Superb for blues. Very musical. Don't expect much gain. It sounds like a clean amp which is fattening up as all its bits and pieces start to saturate. And that's very hard to emulate. This pedal does just that very very well.

Simple as it gets. Three knobs Gain, Tone, Volume. Most activity starts at about 2 o'clock on the dials.

This is the original black box model. Made to sound like an overdriven tube amp. Does it's job perfectly. Best clean sound I have found out of a pedal. No decernable change in tone when in bypass which is just what you want. Depending on the type of guitar used you get great response and this shapes or boost your tone in front of the amp. Get a great early Clapton tone with strats, good ZZ-Top, George Thorogood with LP or 335.

Solid construction, sholud hold up better than most.

One of the best ways to push the amp a little on the front end. Adds realistic overdriven tube sound to solid state amps and when playing at low volume with tube amps. You don't have to use a power soak, brake ect. to get overdriven sound at low volume. It is not the most elaborate pedal you can find but it works as designed.

Fine and simple, just three knobs, gain, tone and volume. None of these go to any extreme and work quite smoothly so it's no problem.

I use it to get some overdrive at relatively low volumes on a solid state battery powered amp. Mostly I use it for wilder blues stuff. It's great for that. It doesn't get fuzzy or sound too much like a distortion box but stays true to it's name and sounds very much like an overdriven amp. I like it because it goes from no overdrive at all to a good overdriven sound and everything in between (which is the area I usually listen for). It's pretty subtle if you compare it to many pedals out there so if you want lots of distortion this is not for you unless you use it as some have suggested to boost an already overdriven amp. All in all it's a great pedal and the only thing I don't like about it is that it says Marshall on it and the dumb name of a band I don't like but I can live with that.

It's a rugged stomp box. What could possibly happen to it?

What can I say. I play blues and when I need a little overdrive I use this and it works great. Nothing exciting happening but just what you want when you need it.

It's a pedal. Pedals are easy.

The moment you turn it on, you get the blues! Responds very well to the different mics on just about any guitar.
I'm currently using it with a standard Ibanez RG570 and a very old Peavey Classic (tube, of course).
Sounds great all the time, no particular noise on ANY setup I've tried.
I'm not trying to sound like anyone else, hence...

This pedal is very ROBUST and RELIABLE. I've had it for quite some time now, it's starting to look the worse but there's nuthin wrong at all.
You won't need a backup, unless you're on low battery!

If you need a new pedal, go for BluesBreaker 2. If you're buying used, know that this is a fantastic blues pedal with lots of different sounds. Just change your mic and notice.

This pedal is very easy to use, 3 knobs can't be hard to figure out. A good sound sound can be achieved on all settings, 1st match the volume to the guitar, 2nd match the tone, 3rd set the gain to whatever level of grit you need. Simple.

I use a Roland J-120 (jazz chorus) amp, and a Washburn MG-30 guitar.

The effect isn't noisy, apart from the obvious noise created using an overdrive pedal of any kind! The effect is that of old Marshall amps and that's just the sound it makes. The effect is very sutble and produces a rather natural sounding overdrive, this is exactly what it is meant to do. People often compare this effect to other overdrive units and say that it is too subtle, but this is not what it was made for. It's a natural amp overdrive.

Built like a Tank, (the army borrowed the design to help build a new prototype war machine).

n/a: Bought 2nd hand.

I play many types of music but rock is my stable diet.

I haven't long been playing guitar. I'm a bassist but I do know what I'm talking about.

I think I would buy another one if it got nabbed. It's something that you could take for granted. By that I mean it's very simple and might be in the frame of mind that it doesn't contribute to your sound much but if it were gone you would certainly notice a gap in your sound.

Update to previous post.

If you read my previous post I was using Strat Vox setup with this pedal and was not impressed. I have bought a Tubescreamer which is far more suitable. I lent the BB to a friend who uses PRS GT5 JTM60
setup. He tried it front end of the multi fx and the sound engineer said thats brilliant, whats that? I havent got it back yet.
My opinion-if you are using single coils try the guvnor.

Used with a PRS this better is much better. There is a real break up to the sound. Whatever program is selected on the Boss the bb can provide more edge. Top stuff.