MXR M85 BASS DISTORTION

The MXR Bass Distortion dishes out big gnarly tones with all the low end your bottom-dwelling heart desires. Working closely with indie pedal phenom, bass dirt guru, and Fuzzrocious Pedals founder Ryan Ratajski, we took a famously nasty sounding distortion circuit and re-tooled it for the modern working bass player.

Back in the day, if you wanted to use a distortion pedal and keep your low end intact, you had to split your clean and dirty signals between two amps. With the MXR Bass Distortion, there’s no such need—this pedal puts control over the clean/dirty mix right at your feet with separate Dry and Wet level controls. The Tone control, which only affects the distortion signal, is a simple high cut filter for dialing back the top end, and the Distortion control sets the distortion signal’s intensity.

Finally, the MXR Bass Distortion’s raunchy sound comes in two flavors, selectable via the LED/SIL switch. The default SIL setting uses silicon clipping diodes for an aggressive, biting sound and a bit of compression, while the LED setting uses LED diodes for a more wide open sound and a nice gain bump.