Matchless HotBox Tube Preamp Pedal

This pedal is easy to use. I only wish they had put the tone controls in the clean side of the pedal. Eq is somewhat tricky for me.
Este pedal es muy facil de usar. Solo quisiera que pusieran los controles de tono tambi??n en el lado limpio. La ecualizaci??n es un poco dif??cil para mi.

I use this pedal as a preamp and it still sounds nice. In fact it is a good preamp. It sounds very nice clean and dirty, and I can use it without amplifier. It is a portable option for me. It fits in my pedalboard. The best sound you can get thanks to its tubes. No solid state comes close.
Uso este pedal como preamplificador y suena bien solo asi. Es un excelente preamplificador. Suena genial limpio y sucio., y se puede usar sin amplficador. Es una opci??n port??til para mi que cabe en mi pedalera.El mejor sonido que se pueda conseguir gracias a sus bulbos. Nada de estado solido se le acerca.

Its components are hospital grade, for audiophile, in a reliable construction. But, to make sure, I ordered it along its transformer, just in case. The output jack was a little loose, but it was easy to fix. My concern was that the chromed surface was not neat at all; it had some tiny marks on it.
Los componentes son de una gran calidad. Para audiofilos, de construcci??n muy confiable. Aun asi, lo ordene con el transformador de repuesto, por si acaso. El conector de salida estaba un poco falso, pero eso es f??cil de arreglar. Mi principal pega es que el cromado exterior no estaba del todo pulido; tenia unas ligeras marcas.

I bought mine from Matchless. Great service. Thanks to Christine Yoo!
Compre el mio directo de Matchless gran servicio a clientes, gracias a Christine Yoo!

I had been looking for the best overdrive dist pedal ever. I thin I found it.I want to buy another just in case. Indispensable.
Habia estado buscando el mejor pedal de ganancia del mundo. Creo que lo encontre.Voy a comprar otro por si acaso. Indispensable

Easy of use... The only controls on this thing that behave oddly are the bass and treble controls. These two are very interactive. The treble works by thinning out the bass. This give you some cool tools to shape your sound, but as fun as they might be, that's a slight minus.

The controls are divided into colour-coded channels like on a real matchless head. Red channel, the distortion channel, has the following controls: Gain, Bass, Treble, Channel 2 volume - so that's fairly simple.

The clean channel only has clean volume however. This channel does not offer EQ either. The clean channel should really be thought of as a bypass (since this pedal doesn't have a bypass), except it still adds that tube touch to your tone. The volume control can then be used to level the volumes between the two channels. So I guess if you absolutely want that bypass without adding tube tone to it, and you want eq on the clean channel too, then that's a minus. I don't see it that way though.

So to sum up, here are the things that can be thought of as bad from a usability perspective: EQ-controls are different (though they are very interactive.) Clean channel does not have EQ. Pedal does not have true bypass. I don't think it's that bad though, so I give it a 9.

My biggest complaint is I would have liked a little bit more gain. Solution: add a slight booster in front of it. You can also experiment with adding your other distortion pedals in front of it. It has seriously enhanced my big muff pi.

It does have a frightening output though, so if I wasn't playing this on a solid-state amp it would be just fine (and believe me, now that I have this I'll have to get one). Cause the thing is, it still sounds great on a solid state amp, but I've heard it on tube amps, and it's euphoric.

I've heard people complain about the treble control. I play it through a 65 watt fender princeton 650 dsp and I think all effects are trebly except when I'm on the dark timbre-filter (Might have something to do with me playing it on a relatively low volume though. Dunno.). So that's where it's always on, and even here the matchless can be set so that it's too trebly, but that doesn't mean there's only one useful setting like another reviewer said.

Noise level: zero, even at highest gain.

Overall I think this is a very versatile and good sounding unit, but I'll give it minus one because the sound you get with treble all the way up deploys super trebleness.

I've had it for two days. Eventhough when I got it it was broken. Two caps had failed. It's built very sturdy though. The casing is crome plated steel. But it IS a tube unit, so of course you'll have to be careful. I would use it without backup though, because it is a matchless, and the insides look it.

I wrote matchless about my problems, and we solved it. He even sent me schematics. I asked him about the manual, and he didn't recall ever having a manual for the hotbox, but I've seen a manual in pictures, so that's a minus. Phil is very kind though!

I play rock. Especially queens of the stone age. Josh Homme uses one of these which is the reason I wanted to try it. I'm not the kind of fanboy who accepts it with no critique though. But it is a matchless.

If this was lost or stolen, I'd definitely get a new one, but unfortunately they're hard to find.

No product is perfect, which is why I never gave a 10 above.

very easy to use.

amazing. ive only had it one day and i love it. i've already got the qotsa sound down. great pedal.

only had it one day but looks well built

n/a

The overdive is great but i have one problem. a previous owner decided to disconect a lead off the clean volume pot, now the pot doesn't do anything. if some one can help me out with a photo of where the wires go from the clean vol pot it would be a great help. my email is bigmuff47@hotmail.com

thanks

matt

I own a HOtbox of the first setting.. Advantage into other Hotboxes is that you have got a 1 valve for your clean sound, when you turn the level up you can get a sound like TS9..

By using the other chanel, the sound goes to valve 1 and then to valve 2. You can play with this so you can get a sound like QOTSA distortion. (Deep low overdrive sound) till FooFighters High gain sound. And the best is, when you are in the mood for bleus that this is also possible!!

Main thing is that you send a perfect clean sound into it. I use it most of the times in combination with a 50w silverface Bassman top. Sometimes I use a 150w Kustom Tuck & Roll top also nice vintage clean of his own. I use 3 total differant guitars, a Gibson ES335 solid body with "57 humbuckers, a Fender tele custom and a Fender strat with a Semour duncan Hotrail pickup. So I can get every sound I want.

The cab is in my opinion also a crucial thing. I normally use an old mesa 4*12 cab with EVM12L 300w each. I like the low clean, even if you use this stack for Bass its blowing you away. For the high gain, my Silverface is giving me troubles and I have to be sharp with the settings.. Sometimes the valves are working against eachother or something. For Hi gain I prefer greenbacks.

This is an old pedal and I had a problem with it ones.. One of the bolts of the knobs turned loose and gave a problem.. But my Peugeot 206 of 2002 has giving me allready more troubles so I do trust my Hotbox.

A friend of me also has a Hotbox and he had a problem with his power supply.. But although Matchless is not doing to much with Hotbox any more he got a brand new power supply with in two weeks!!

I play from Radiohead clean to QOTSA overdrive and I can get my sound each time I use it.

soooooo easy to use and knobs are so sensitive turn it an 1/16 turn and the sound changes immediatly. Nice distortion kinda like an old marshall but you can dial an old fender bassman sound if you want. That balsy AC-DC sound is is easy to get

I've used it with very guitar I own all 21 of them, with a strat you can get that clean twang almost like Stevie, with a les paul balls balls balls is all i can say. I have tried it on eevery amp I own, I have an old sears silvertone from the 50's I found in a trash can......incredible sound. Live I use a musicman 65 head and a 4 12 cab with 120 watt celestians(kinda backwards) but talk about bottom and the sondgarden sound with a subwoofer talk about punch. Tonight I put it in front of my line 6 amp and tried a bunch of different models, I think I found the key to making a dig amp sound good. Cleean cahnnel into the dirty models aand overdrive into the clean models I was blown away. I have also done lots of recording line in using a speaker emulator, Iput a boss compressor in front of it for lead solos or long sustained chords and the sound is unmatched(matchless)buttery smooth Carlos Santana boogie sound. This thing has such versatality,I even use it to warm up bass,drums and vocals on digital recordings. The real cool thing live is it works with your volume control, turn it down and it cleans up,turn it up and it has balls and it really responds to your soft or hard picking and feedback is infinitly coontrllable.

I have a studio and there is no on/off switch, I have gone on vacation and left it on for two weeks at a time on accident. The only thing I have eencountered is the in/out jacks have loosened up. I have taken it apart too loook at it and it looks like it was hand built in the 50's. its built better like a tank, I have a mesa vtwin too andd its built better. Ive heared some problems with them but mine must have been made before the assemblers goot stoned.

well matchless went out of business but i think they are back last I checked, I never had to deal with them

I love heavy metal, i love fusion,i loveJazz,Classic rock. I have been playing for 30+yrs and never taken a lesson, I am a great engineer and when it comes to guitar tones I have a gifted ear,many famous engineers have aked me "howd you do that?" I'm great with line in studio stuff,on my recordings you wouldn't know it wasn't a jcm900 up full bore. I have 12 amps,Randall,marshall,markley,fenders,musicman,silvertone,line6,johnson,traynor,lab series(like Ronnie Montrose) One of my best recordings was with a solid state Dean markley amp at low volume. The hot box is one of the best things I ever bought. I wish it had use of thee tone controls on the clean channel. i have just about every "box" there is and the Tube screemer is not even close. if it were lost or stolen I would get another in a heartbeat.

VERY easy to get a great tone out of it. I bought mine in '96, not long after they came out. I sat in the music store with a Strat and a Twin and played around for about a half hour... the sound was amazing. I had no intentions whatsoever of buying anything when i walked in that day, but after playing with the Hotbox, I found I couldn't leave without it.

I played a Strat back when I first got my Hotbox. I ran the Hotbox into an old 60s Gibson Explorer GA-5T 1-10 combo, and the sound was INCREDIBLE. I also had a '68 Fender Super Reverb, and it sounded great with that as well, although not as good as with the Gibson (but to be fair, the Super was developing problems at that time).

BUT THEN... I traded the Strat and the Super for a Gretsch DuoJet and bought my dream amp, a Vox AC-30. The Hotbox and the AC-30 did NOT play well together. I guess that the Hotbox is based on the pre-amp circuitry from the AC-30, and so there was a conflict. Irreconcilable differences, you could say. There was a horrible 60 cycle hum that I could never get rid of, so I never used those two pieces together unless I was playing very loudly. I continued to play the Hotbox in front of my Gibson, though, using the Gretsch, and also a Les Paul. The sound was always outstanding with that set-up.

I play a lot of slide, and the Hotbox through the Gibson amp produced a great Duane Allman tone. The Gibson amp is VERY bright (bordering on tinny), but the tone controls on the Hotbox had enough range for me to be able to fatten up the bottom end without having to roll too much tone off the amp, so the sound I got was very alive, very rich, very sweet and full. Even the clean channel was useful-- I could fatten up the bottom while using the amp's natural overdrive to get a beautiful and full-sounding Mike Campbell/Tom Petty rhythm tone.

So the sound was great, but I have to take a couple of points off for the incompatibility with my AC-30 and for the lack of a by-pass.

Here's where the problem lies-- this unit, despite its beefy and well-armored appearance, is completely unreliable. Mine is an older one, with the infamous crummy power transformer. It died on me TWICE, the first time about 2.5 years after I bought it. Of course, it waited until after Matchless went bankrupt, so I had to track down the transformer I needed. It was very difficult to find one, and without some great luck, I probably never would have gotten my hands on one at all (a friend of a friend turned out to know a tech from Matchless that had struck out on his own with a new company, and he just happened to have the part). I had to shell out $75 for the transformer, although putting it in was very simple and only took about 20 minutes (on the inside, the Hotbox is like a 55 Ford-- VERY easy to work on, lots of space, very easy to understand what goes where and what does what).

But then it blew up again, about a year later. This time I had no luck finding the part I needed, and so the thing has been sitting in a box in the garage for about four years now. I don't really play much lead anymore, so I haven't been motivated to even look into fixing it for quite some time.

For this category, I wish I could give a rating of zero. It looks like Matchless has started back up, and the transformer problem has apparently been solved. They've even added in a true by-pass, I hear. So now I have the option of sending my unit to them, and they'll fix it right up for me for $100. Except part of the reason I was willing to pay almost $400 for a distortion unit was that it had a LIFETIME GUARANTEE. So Matchless is back in business now, but they're not honoring the warranties from when they were in business before. As far as I'm concerned, any company that does business like that is lower than dirt. I already PAID for my repair when I bought the Hotbox with the lifetime warranty. Then I paid for it AGAIN when I had to buy a replacement transformer. I'm certainly not going to pay for it a third time.

I don't really know what to do with my Hotbox. I suppose I'll put it on ebay, or hang onto it until I can find the transformer I need at a nice cheap price. I'll definitely never do business with Matchless again, now that I see the despicable way they conduct their business.

To reiterate, I truly do wish I could give a score lower than 1 for this category.

At the time I was using my Hotbox a lot, I was listening to the Allman Bros a lot and playing more lead stuff and bluesy slide. The Hotbox was great for that style of music. Since then I've moved away from the heavy guitar and more towards the nice ringing Beatles/Petty tones that I can get playing straight into my AC-30. I've been playing guitar for about 18 years, and like everybody else, my style has gone through periodic changes. Right now I do more recording than playing out, and my Les Paul or DuoJet direct into the AC-30 with the channels jumped gives me all the tone I need (although I am interested in picking up one of those Zinky True Grit pedals).

As for replacing the Hotbox, obviously the answer is no, since it's been dead for four years and I haven't replaced it yet. I would never buy another one, just because the only two choices would be to either buy an unreliable used one or to do business with a dishonorable company.

What do (did) I love? What do I hate? I love the tone it produced. I hate the fact that it blows up at the drop of a hat. The three things I wish it had are 1) reliability, 2) a true by-pass, and 3) a company standing behind it that honored their word and treated their customers with respect instead of playing them for chumps.

Overall I give the Hotbox a rating of 4... The tone is unbeatable for the price (I had $3000 tone for $510-- $360 for the Hotbox, $150 for the amp), but that beautiful, heavenly sound is short-lived, because the thing is unreliable, and the company is a bunch of crooks. I tend to get kind of philosophical about my Hotbox. Nothing truly beautiful is meant to last forever-- like a sunset or a rose in bloom, the fact that it only exists for a short while is part of what makes it special. Like Nabokov said, the greatest beauty always has an element of sadness to it. By that standard, the Hotbox is truly beautiful.

I still wouldn't recommend buying one, though...

Sounded too crunchy (metal).
I replaced both 12AX7 tubes with 12AU7 tubes.
It sounds much creamier, better!
Now it's a great pedal for blues.
It does add hum to a set up. I'm going to pay attention to where all the various power cords for my set up are plugged in to try to isolate items and reduce hum

Covered in reviews below:
Clean Channel & Gain Channel
No "off" (bypass)

No problem yet.

Great.
especially if you don't have a Matchless combo amp.

I love that it has no digital anything. That's the point of it. I am bewildered by digital amps that promise to model the sound of a point to point vintage tube amp. Do they mean "model" like an airplane model is 1/25 the size of the real thing?

This thing has real tubes and sounds exactly like an over-driven tube amp - at any volume.

I used to hang out with Roger Mayer when he lived in New York. I guess I can say I have been steeped in distortion for many years. I have heard about as many kinds and variations of distortion as it's possible to hear. Almost every time I'd go to Roger's place, he'd have some new fuzz box or distortion unit he wanted me to check out.

But I never liked stomp boxes. The best distortion was always straight out of a tube amp. Until I heard the HotBox. It's better than an amp because it's SO controlable. And you can get huge sound at very low levels.

I built mine from a schematic on the Web. So as long as I am around, it will be very reliable. :-)

I have a back-up - a complete back-up set of tubes.

I play loud, psychedelic rock, but there's not too many places to play really loud anymore. Even in big venues, the stage level ain't that high.

The HotBox is the only thing that gives me that bullet-proof feeling that no matter what weird acoustics or restrictions get thrown at me (Like, "Turn that damned thing down!") I will always sound like a huge raging stack of fat tube distortion.

BUT...like I said, I built this thing off a schematic. I am not reviewing a factory built model. I used the highest grade components available both new and NOS, like Sprague Orange Drops, EI tubes, etc. I also built it with four tubes instead of two. It has an absolutely huge sound. It can go from fat and clean to as over-the-top fuzz as any box. It does do a weird whistling thing if the gain is real high and you switch to the clean setting, but I never use the clean setting.

I used the hotbox with a 90's LP into a 66' fender twin BF. Unfortunately I sold the unit before i got to try it out with another amp, but the pedal really didn't agree with my amp. It produced a really really hot scooped fizzy distortion that is characteristic of 80's marshalls. It was not at all what i was expecting from matchless but hey...i'm guessing it just works well with other amps. Maybe switching to 12AT7's would have done it.

You know what it's got...if not read below.

I had the usual transformer problem

The guys at matchless were quick to help me with the transformer

I sold the unit because it didn't go well with my amp, but it seems like it would be a nice fit for someone running EL84's in their amp

Gibson 91 SG original pickups (great guitar to use with this pedal)
Style of music Hard rock/metal sounds rich & superb suits me to a tee
when gain is on full a bit overpowering
clean channel sounds great never had to take it over 1 o clock

Simple in design and easy to use
2 channels
very powerful
looks good & satnds out on stage with the lights

I havent had this pedal for long but it needed tweeking when I first bought it & had to get it fixed 1 time since then.(second hand)
a backup would be wise when gigging
Built like a tank & looks easy to repair

n/a

used this pedal for aprox 3 mths.Use it with a 4 x 80watt Celestion quad (self built), Holden 50 watt Valve head (equiv to a Marshall highend one during early 70s) Gibson SG (awesome pickups) with afew other Boss pedals.
If it was stolen I would cry then look for another if I had the money or if they where available ( very rare in this country) I wouldnt choose anything else.
What I love about it - how its made, the size, the sound, the ease of use how it looks onstage and how it suits my music.
Dislikes - Another channel would be handy and how about a metal case to carry it around. That would top it off.
Compared it to mesa pedals but they werent available when I had the money to get the gears. So I settled for this since I trusted the shops recomendation. They said it was much better then the mesas. I hadnt heard of Matchless at the time so I was unsure, however when it was getting fixed I told people from other guitar shops what I had bought and their eyes lit up and said SWEEEEEEEEEET!!!!! so what I thought was expensive at the time was truely worth it and I feel very fortunate to have one. From the first time I used it till now i get numerous compliments on how good my guitar sounds. nice