9 of the Best Mad Professor Pedals

This was released in the really fantastic window what was this year's Winter NAMM, and sort of got overshadowed by some rather impressively innovative pedals launched at the same time. I was in two minds here as to whether to go for this Analogue BBD Modulator or the Digital Kosmos 11-mode Reverb, and decided that the Double Moon was overall a more impressive engineering achievement. Of the 11 fully analogue modes you get 3 Choruses, 3 Dual Choruses, 2 Flangers, 1 Dual Flanger, a Flanger+Chorus, and a Vibrato. So 5 control dials - Speed | Mode | Depth | Tone | Control - the last of which controls waveshape, regen etc. depending on mode selected. I mostly view this as a really cool next level chorus pedal - which was somewhat unlucky to have been launched at Winter NAMM because of the incredible degree of innovation on display which kind of took focus away from what is an exceptionally capable pedal on its own merits.

Matt Schofield's now signature Dual Delay pedal came about as he used to use two Deep Blue Delay pedals - one for a short delay and one for long. Now you get 2-in-1 with less cables and less overall real-estate. The delay is a super clean analogue-voice digital delay designed to not interfere with or add colouration to the core tone, and be as elegant and unobtrusive as possible even with quite extreme distortion going through the pedals. The Dual Blue Delay has slightly extended range with the short site offering 315ms with a fatter tone, while the long-side has up to 810ms with more of a modern voicing. You get Level | Tone | Repeat | Delay per each of the two sides alongside a second Mode/Tap footswitch. There are so many players that largely just play with a short and long delay - and having something this compact and perfectly formed makes it the ideal delay for a lot of those players.

I believe this was my second ever Mad Professor pedal - a beautifully tuned smooth violin / cello - ish fuzzy-drive with the bias slightly more over in the fuzz-side vs overdrive. It sounds almost exactly as you would expect it to - and has that lovely singing sustain which further enhanced by the one-knob delay element on the pedal. Otherwise it's just the standard Volume | Drive | Tone - which is really all you need. I used to play this a whole lot back in the day - time I got it back into the rotation again!

This awesome 'Marshall in a box' with Boost/Fuzz is based on the vintage 4-input amps which helped define the sound of bands like AC/DC, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Free, Yngwie Malmsteen and others. You get a rather splendid 10 controls here - Bass | Middle | Treble | Gain | Volume | Presence | Fuzz Volume | Boost/Fuzz | Character - Compressed/Open | Fuzz/Boost Mode. You also of course get a second Boost/Fuzz footswitch for ramping things up to the next level - covering all varieties of Marshall through JTM, JPM, Plexi and pushing onto JCM even. This is most likely my next acquisition from the range - probably early next year though - it's not like I don't already have a score or more Marshal style pedals in my collection all ready - but this one is pretty special too.

I've listed both the Simble here and Twimble - which is the dual footswitch version with the PreAmp - more suitable for single-coil pickup guitars. For my maninly humbucker style guitars the Simble on its own is just near perfect for that Dumble ODS sound. It may not have as much variety to it as the Wampler Euphoria or Demon Pedals Kondo Shifuku, but it pretty well holds its own. This Lassi Ukkonen -designed circuit has just 4 controls - Level | Sensitifity | Contour | Accent - and it produces such a beautifully dynamic and even timbered Dumble-style overdrive - it was my favourite Dumble drive for the longest time - until the Kondo Shifuku rolled around. Still worth a look-in today.

Strangely or not - the Snow White Auto Wah has always been one of the best celebrated of the Mad Professor range - and in it's newest GB or GTR/BASS edition with central toggle-switch it is more potent than ever. It has 4 controls besides the mode switch - Sensitivity | Bias | Resonance | Decay. And I was on the cusp of buying of this one's predecessor's before the Mu-Tron Micro-Tron III captured my attention. There are a number of pretty great Auto Wah pedals out there, and the Snow White is definitely one of that number.

Where I believe the Sweet Honey Overdrive / Sweet Honey Deluxe used to be the flagship pedal for Mad Professor, I now feel that this brand new Matt Schofield special surely takes that crown. It combines 2 super-high headroom overdrives - with the Left-side based on a tweaked version of the Royal Blue Overdrive, and the Right-side a sort of evolved Simble/Twimble with much more headroom and very slightly different tonal character. There are 9 controls, two sets of Volume | Drive | Bass | Treble, then a A/B | A+B toggle-switch which allows you to play back either side or both stacked together. The dual footswitches either have the left footswitch on A/B mode duty or allow you to apply both switches independently per Channel. This pedal has already found tonnes of fans, and would be on my wishlist just slightly behind the Loud'n Proud - it's a fantastic sounding multi-drive pedal any which way you choose to use it in any case.

My final selection in the 9 is the former flagship - a derivative of the source classic BJFE Honey Bee Overdrive with a very slightly different tonality. In its 'Deluxe' version it sports more touch-sensitivity and control with 5-knobs - Volume | Drive | Bass | Treble | Focus (Feel & Dynamics). It's the most recent of my Mad Professor acquisitions and really well worth it. This is the perfect mid-gain overdrive - properly sweet and smooth with just the right degree of tonality and texture. This very much typifies the kind of overdrives that Mad Professor / Björn Juhl so excel at.