Ths MXR Custom Badass '78 Distortion recalls the thick, crunchy sonic smack of a vintage speaker stack. Yet, it packs it all into a compact pedal for your board. Awesome. If you've been looking for a way to get mega crunch, at a nice price, well... here she is. The MXR Custom Badass '78 Distortion. That is the MXR took a classic distortion circuit and hot-rodded it to deliver over-the-top, soaring leads and rich, saturated rhythms. With only three knobs, dialing in a badass tone is a cinch. Engage the CRUNCH button to boost the harmonic content of the distortion. Under the hood, this high-performance machine features top-notch circuitry and hardware meant for a lifetime of use. This is the first that is in a line from the MXR Custom Badass design team, the MXR Custom Badass ’78 Distortion is a factory-modded pedal that roars with huge amp stack tones and old school tube amp-like distortion. A classic distortion circuit and hot-rodded it to the next level for over-the-top soaring leads and rich, saturated rhythms. With only three knobs, dialing in Badass tone is a cinch. The CRUNCH button allows you to choose between two different modes of diode and LED clipping, boosting the harmonic content of the distortion. '78 Distortion's wide open amp-like sound sounds great whether it's in front of a clean amp, a slightly dirty amp, or a full on overdriven amp. Under the hood, this high performance machine features top notch circuitry and hardware meant for a lifetime of use. While the Looking a little like a compact muscle car, the ’78 is housed in the classic MXR casing and finished in a deep metallic jewel red. The most obvious controls are fairly standard—Output, Tone and Distortion. But there’s also a Crunch button (lit with a blindingly bright blue LED) that’s one the keys to the Badass in this pedal’s name. it is the best key ingredient to a killer distortion pedal is a balance between providing a hefty bottom end that isn’t too squashed, mids that sit in warm rather spiky zones, and highs that don’t cut your head off. The ’78 absolutely nails that balance. And the results are thick and defined distortion. While hearing the ’78 in a setting that is very familiar to my ears I set up my ’71 Marshall Superbass through a Basketweave 4x12 with an X-pair of original G12H30s and Vintage 30s and a ’74 Les Paul Custom with stock pickups. With the Marshall up clean and fairly quiet, I kicked in the ’78 with the controls set to noon and I was transported to the muscularly overdriven realms of Bad Company and Thin Lizzy. That is the ’78 has a pretty aggressive voice even at those even levels. So I brought down the distortion slightly and backed off the output. Here, the ’78 opened up in a very natural way that reacted beautifully to guitar dynamics without getting too saturated—an even better match for the Lizzy-tones already spinning in my head. The highest settings, the Distortion control is pretty hairy and fun—fostering a musical feedback that was a blast to control with the Les Paul’s volume knob. As howling as the ’78 could be this wide open, the sustain was still controllable and rich with harmonic texture. Backing the Distortion down to around 2 o’clock and engaging the Crunch switch thickened everything without getting muddy. In fact, it offered a hair more clarity and definition to lower notes and single note passages at higher volumes.