Menatone Dirty Blonde

at first i was slightly disappointed..it was quite tricky to dial in a useable tone that i was after...but after about half an hour of twiddling i found the sweet spot..and boy is it sweet

when i found how to make this sing, it was like nothing i'd ever played before..it is THE tone.
it saturates *wonderfully*..i know what people mean when they say 'spongey'..it is soo responsive..i plugged my tele straight into my fender bassman 4x10 reissue via the dirty blonde..once it was all set right - heaven. sounding like my speakers were actually alive and breathing..a joy to play. there is nothing really 'harsh' or 'spikey' about it..it never grates on your ears..on the bridge SC its just sings..blows my cream fulltone fulldrive2 out of the water (even though i love the boost switch option on the FD), and sounds just as gainy as my shredmaster, but so much more musical and pleasing to your ears. makes you want to play all through the night.
my tele has a humbucker in the neck..and this too sounds very cool..kind like a very nice dirty fuzz, but still well rounded and musical..think QOTSA/stoner stuff. backs off perfectly as you roll down the guitars vol/play lighter. can't wait to try it thru my AC30!

i have it set with bass rolled off a fair bit (this pedal can be very bassy)..say set around 9oclock. treble set at about 2oclock, presence set slightly over 12o'clock, and the gain and volume wherever they need to be. the gain on full sounds perfect..rolling it back does its job perfectly and still sounds spot on. mine is the version without the mid control. running it off a 9v battery. i've now taped over the tone controls..ive found my sweet spot..and EQing that needs to be done will now be done by the tele/amp.

looks solid to me. im sure it will stand the test of time

got it for $150 and paid another $40 to get it shipped out here to the UK..so i ended up paying about $190/??95 total..which is worth it anyways especially considering it is now discontinued. that may seem quite expensive to people in the US i don't know, but i get quite a bit of gear from states, as the pound is quite strong against the dollar, it usually works out cheaper even after shipping and import tax.
ive said most of what needs to be said in the other sections. for sound this gets top marks, but overall it gets a 9 as finding that sound can be quite tricky..if you need to, just sit down with it and use your ears/have patience..its worth it!

This pedal doesn't come with a manual. It has 5 knobs: Level, Gain, Bass, Treble, Presence. This pedal is easier to get a good sound out of than other Menatone pedals I've used (TBIAC, KOB) but the knobs have similar function and are very interactive. The Presence knob doesn't do much until the top 10% of its range at which point it makes the pedal much brighter, though not at the same frequency as the treble knob. The treble and bass knobs have a lot of range in contrast. Although this pedal isn't necessarily the easiest to dial in, it can produce a good sound fairly quickly.

This pedal colors the sound of a guitar quite drastically, but I believe that is the intention of the manufacturer. I have compared it to the TBIAC (5 knob) and while these two pedals have a similarly aggressive sound with a lot of growl, the Dirty Blonde shifts its frequencies of emphasis down towards the bass and has much more available bass response. It can sound farty at high bass knob settings while the TBIAC has noticibly less bass and a high midrange emphasis that cannot be dialed out. Neither of these pedals sound anything like a tube screamer and unlike a tube screamer there is no evidence of a clean guitar sound underneath the overdrive produced by the pedal. That's a good thing, I'm sick of that.

What this pedal sounds like is a tube amp that is turned up and beginning to sweat hard. I have a Marshall JTM312 with 6L6s that starts to get really compressed, bouncy and aggressive when turned up on the clean channel. This pedal makes this amp sound like its louder at a much quieter volume. The TBIAC does this also, but its frequencies of emphasis are such that my amp doesn't sound as much like itself anymore. I like how the Dirty Blonde takes my Marshall's sound and somehow makes it seem in distress.

I used to own a Fender Champ (6V6 of course). When it was overdriven it had a unique mid-bass heavy growl that sounds a lot like this pedal. If old Fender amplifiers are what this pedal is intended to emulate than I would love to own such an amplifier, as this pedal makes my Telecaster sound thick, raunchy and rude. The Dirty Blonde sounds like it's about to beat up a tube screamer. :)

I don't have a choice but to depend on it. However, the inside of all 4 Menatone pedals I have experience with have all been constructed neatly and strongly. These pedals are works of art. It must take the builder a while to assemble them because every wire is perfectly cut to length and bent at right angles and every circuit board is an unprinted one-off. I would be surprised if I were able to break this pedal even if I were trying.

I emailed the company once and received a response within a day. I'm not worried.

This pedal is a very good overdrive pedal. When I first got my TBIAC pedal I wasn't sure I could find anything better, but I have. This pedal truly sounds like an amp beginning to work really hard. It sounds incredible. If I could afford it I'd replace it. Nice job Menatone.

Pretty straightforward, but very interactive controls lead to immense tweakability. There is no "sweet spot": the pedal can be set for different types of tones. However, when changing one control you may have to change another.

I am playing a tele mostly into a princeton reverb or twin, both loaded with JBL D120Fs. Alt. country/roots/rock

This pedal is amazingly amp-like. I have a 1962 Brownface Vibrolux (this pedal is modeled after amps of this era) and it is uncanny how similar the tone of the dirty blonde is the the cranked vibrolux.

The DB is NOT transparent. It colors the tone a lot- it thickens and fattens the tone, but maintains clarity and dynamics. There is a lot of compression in this box, but it is different from most other overdrives. It is as if the compression is happening AFTER the overdrive. This means that even though the OD is very touch sensitive in regards to control the amount of overdrive, the overall level remains relatively constant.

The DB is very bassy, and the bass will mush out severely as you crank the gain or increase the bass control. This is very realistic. It simulates power tube overdrive and speaker overdrive and transformer compression amazingly well. The tone is very spongy, springy, bouncy. Very cool. HOWEVER, this characteristic can be a problem cutting through a dense mix with a band. In a sparser mix, all of the nuances can be appreciated, though.

Had it a couple years, and the switch is just starting to go south. This is a problem with menatones. They are built like tanks (impeccably handwired), but fitted with lousy switches. Easy and cheap repair, though.

Never dealt with

This pedal is great, but not for everyone. I tend to use it on bluesier songs, as the spongy tone is most suitable. It gets lost on the rockers or country spankers. It does record very well.

Definitely worth a try if you want that fat creamy blonde/brownface tone.

I didn't mean to imply in any way that Brian Mena gives bad customer support. I really was just stating that there is no contact info on his products. no website. nada... If my prior post sounded like a diss, than I sincerely apologize! Especially to brian Mena

I just want to comment about the post below saying the Brian Mena does not provide customer support. I have had great customer support from him. In one case, I dropped an amp on my Menatone Blue Collar and smashed one of the pots. Brian quickly fixed it for me for a nominal charge. I had a Howie go bad and he also quickly fixed that for no charge. He is a one man operation, but he has always been responsive to me when I had a problem. I got Brian's phone number from the dealer I bought the pedals from, and dealt with Brian directly.

Well someone had to finally review this thing!!!

It's a pro box. If you don't know what presence is, you might have some trouble, but otherwise I would think everyone would find it pretty straight forward. I'm giving it a nine though because there is no manual, and I would like to know in detail the freqeunciy and bandwidth of the eqs.

My set-up is Gretch/Jazzmaster->Foxx Tone Machine/Goodrich volume/Klon/DIRTY BLONDE/Teese Picture Wah/Small Stone/TU-2/Digital Echodrive->Fender Twin/Deluxe reverb.

This box was designed to simulate the distortion/overdrive characteristics of a Fender Bassman. I don't have a Bassman so I can't really say if it really does or not, but it does sound very convincingly like ones I can recall from memory or at least a nice Fender amp overdriving. A real winner for me, as I always wanted a mild OD that sounded like a second gain stage to my amp. Another positive, is that it doesn't overcompress, and it works very well with other pedals (no volume loss). I really like the way I can switch guitars and not have to re-eq the pedal. The Klon is the only other pedal I know of that has that nice trait. If your looking for smooth look somewhere else. The same goes if your after a 808 sound. If you want some nice fender grit (not clipping mind you) in the the mild to medium gain territory, than you should seriously consider trying one out. Oh... it also cleans up great with the volume knob. SOme may consider this pedal a little noisy, but for me it's a very smal price to pay for the tone.

For reference here's my opinion of some other OD's

Baby Blue-nice but I found the high end to be raspy after awhile

ToneBone Classic-great tone, but didn't clean up well with the volume knob also didn't like my wah

Blackstone-one of my most favorites, but it compresses too much for live playing

Varidrive- great tube sound, but the gain stage was funky in that it was very hard to get the sound I needed at the volume I needed it at.

Tubester-great screaming OD, but a bit too distorted for my need.

Hotcake-way too mid scooped for my fender amps

etc etc...

Menatones are built extremely well. couldn't think of a way to improve it.

none. This is a real problem. I don't think Brian Mena means any thing bad by this. But the fact of the matter is that of you are going to release a product to the public, you have to be there to support the product.

If you know what you want, and can find it in a Menatone product, then your in real luck. His products are extremely well designed and obviously have some real thought put into them. I play a dark twangy Americana thing, and have basically been screaming for this product to be made for a very long time now. Somehow, someway Menatone heard me, and delived!! Now if I could only get Rick from SIB to build me a Modulation delay, and Dave Fox to build me a Phaser!!!!