MXR M77 Custom Badass Modified Overdrive Pedal Reviews

I run this little thing in front of a 5150 Stealth. While that amp is magnificent on its own, the M77 really gives the amp a little extra chew. I've tried several different overdrives and modified tube screamers and this one really just can't be beat.

Have you ever wanted a tube screamer with actual bass control and more gain? Then this may be the product for you. I love my ts808, and this took it's spot on my board. Gives me wonderful tones from my peavey classic 20

This thing SCREAMS!

The bump switch and 100hz pot make this pedal so versatile. Lots of different tone in a single pedal.

Love it!

I like this modified tube screamer so much I have 2 of them.

This thins rips. The 100hz sweep is basically magic. Using this as a boost for high gain tones and and it is an amazing value.

I got one of these back in 2012 and haven't actually bought another overdrive sense. Funnily enough, I started out hating this pedal; I'm much more of a tube overdrive person myself, total sucker for the dirt, dynamics, and slight squishy compression it brings to the table. So when I heard the very transparent sound of the Modified O.D. I was pretty turned off. Fast-Forward a few years, I dig the thing out of a box and plug it in out of curiosity and found that even though my preferences hadn't changed, my mindset had. There's simply so many ways to use this stompbox, I'm utterly convinced everyone can get something of value out of it. The 100Hz sweep paired with the tone knob allows you to seemingly change the very voicing of the effect. The drive clarity is outstanding and makes it incredibly usable as a boost and tone changer, just tons and tons of character. One of my favorite things to do is setting my les paul to the middle position, rolling off the tone, decreasing the neck volume slightly, and cranking this baby's gain to 10; produces this woman tone that's all-together delicate and articulate, yet powerful and imposing. And the soloing potential when running it through a good clean channel...my GAWD don't even get me started.

But no doubt, my favorite thing about it is the MXR company itself. They offer the sort of premium customer service that other premium brands simply leave by the wayside. The fact is, when I initially dug this pedal out of the box, it was no longer working. It was rusty, our cat had peed on it, a years old battery was left inside...think of whatever you're not supposed to do to a pedal, I probably did it. So I called MXR to see if they had any sort of warranty program, explained the situation honestly, and within 10 minutes I was set to send it over and have it fixed for free (only payed to ship it their way). Got it back within two weeks, and it now functioned perfectly again. Because of this, I just wanna say...the Modified O.D. may or may not be the pedal for you, either way it's fine. But do yourself a favor and give other MXR products a look. You'll find something you like and once you do you'll never regret it. I know I didn't.

Runnin into a marshall plexi style, class 5 or studio vintage 20, these machine sounds like the bells of heaven, i use it with a variety of strats, music man, and les Pauls and with every one works incredible, one of my favoryte od stomboxes

I use this with a HSS Strat into Fender valve amps. It sounds great and with the HSS Strat bridge pickup can easily launch from smooth neck sounds to dirty rock. The ability to trim or scoop the sound with the boost and 100khz knob works a treat. Only thing I found was a need to adjust pretty much all the settings when changing guitars (I.e. from Strat to LP). At that price if you changing between a few guitars Onstage, you might need two, one set for low output guitars and one for high output? I love this pedal and it will stay on my pedalboard.

Not sure how this works with humbuckers (I’m assuming great as well), I have 2 guitars, Strat with single coils, and a Les Paul Jr with P90. This pedal works like a charm with both. The 100hz dial and tone knob allow you to sculpt and play with tons of tone options. Throw in the bump button and you have even more. It’s great from crush to mild screaming, and still keeps note definition. Pushes my little Tube Bugera V5 to new heights of playing pleasure. I love this pedal with a passion, Sweetwater quick, good updates and follow up too.

As with all MXR pedals I"ve ever owned or tried its perfect. I play strictly Marshall amps so that could be the match made in heaven.
This does what it says and really fattens up my lead tones or can be used as a slight O.D. . Any use works great.

This pedal is such a cool little monster. And it's very loud too!

I bought the Custom Badass Modified O.D. because I've been searching for a pedal that can give me cleans at the verge of breakup at very low volumes. This pedal gets close to what I listen in my head, but I'm going to keep looking for what I know I can achieve. Meanwhile, this awesome box pushes my cleanish Supro Dual Tone into classic rock goodness.

It doesn't have crazy gain, and this is the exact reason why the gain knob is so useful for me. You can really dial in that sound in your head. The volume knob is great, and really powerful. You can get great thick tones at medium gain levels with the volume low.

At full gain, full volume, this takes my amp well into gig volumes, so I would advise caution. I actually had to turn the pedal off, crank my amp all the way, and I swear the amp (volume at 10 o'clock) with the pedal was louder than the amp cranked on it's own.

The best two controls on the pedal are the 100Hz knob, and the Bump button. This is what made me buy this instead of an Emerson Paramount. With them you can really shape your tone. You can make a Strat sound fat and smooth, or an SG sound clear and defined. And because this is such a transparent overdrive, you can almost use it as an EQ/Boost.

In conclusion, this is an awesome pedal for low/medium gain and classic rock tones. It gives me something I have been looking for quite a while. At the price, I highly recommend you going into your local store and giving a try.

Perfect for a boost. Also sounds great on its own. Transparent and helps with standing out in a mix so well. Underrated. I came across this by accident. Chose it over 8 different OD/boosters. It"s even better than the Horizon precision drive. Just by a Hair.

Had this pedal for 4 years. Never let me down. Easy to dial in. A message to the reviewer who gave this pedal an "I guess..." review. This is a modded Tube Screamer pedal. You cannot expect ANY tube screamer both cheap or boutique to make a solid-state amp sound great. You need a tube amp to get the best results from an overdrive pedal.

i play with american strat though hughes & kettner tubemeister 18.
while it's a great amp, with amazing clean channel, it gets very noisy with most overdrive pedals.
not with this one. with this poedal i get great smooth sound, and the eq's buttons are great, really helps shaping your tone.

Was very impressed! I own many boutique overdrive/distortion pedals. This pedal sounds great! For the price it definitely compares to a few top quality hand built ones. Excellent boost function. I would highly recommend this pedal!

Needless to say, the four knobs and one button this pedal has to offer gives you all of the tone control you will ever need for whatever the situation. The "Bump" button gives a great boost to the low end of your signal and takes your guitar from rockin the house to shaking the house. In addition, this pedal also works well with MXR's Custom Badass '78 Distortion pedal.

I have tried many OD pedals and this one is by far the best I have used. You can dial in many amazing tones. I can't say enough good about it. Buy one! It looks great too!

I bought this because my current OD (Boss SD-1) pedal always had a "thin" sound and I didn't find it very useful for much of anything. Based on the demo videos of this MXR pedal, I thought it might maintain significant low end response while provided the required boost when needed, and I was correct.

The sound of the pedal is simply amazing, and has loads of both volume and gain on tap, so you can use it for a clean volume boost, or make some real aggressive tones by dialing in some gain. The 100Hz knob makes it really easy to dial in the low end, and the bump button provides a huge boost to low end frequencies.

1. It's very transparent and allows your amp's tone to shine through.
2. Extremely flexible. Between the "Bump" switch and 100Hz knob, you will get where you need to go.
3. Nice small form factor. Built like a tank. Very cool color.
4. Lots of output (volume, not to be confused with gain).

On my two channel, "smaller gig" combo, I use it as a 1.5 channel, in between clean and high gain. On my 3 channel head (clean, OD, high gain), I use it as a volume/gain boost for solos.

Rarely am I able to purchase something and be 100% happy with it. This got me there. I was easily able to get the tone in my head. It's a smoother than a TS-9, but still has plenty of bite to compete.

BEST BANG FOR BUCK, HAS EXTRA SPECIAL edge that tubscreamer doesn't have. Don't get me wrong, I own both and love both. Get it if you want a different flavor and harmonic bliss and sparkle sauce. Reminds me of a OCD on steroids with a fantastic thump at 100hz for fine tuning and marrying your pedal to amp and cab.

I needed an OD for my B board. I go straight to the PA with that board, so I needed great mid presence. I tried it head to head against a stock Blues Drive... The MXR won hands down! The mid knob and the boost switch make the pedal able to go from transparent to full bodied as needed. It will help me switch guitars from strat to neck-throughs and be able to tweak the pedal response to the inherent brightness or lack thereof of each guitar.

For what it is worth, my main rig's drive section consists of Wampler and Suhr pedals. This MXR can hang with those IMO

This pedal sounded really good on my Blackstar HT5r. Well, even though the HT5r already has a blistering OD but, I'm still looking for an OD that is creamy sounding and has plenty of bite and this MXR M77 is the one I'm looking for. I choose this over the Maxon OD808 because of its true bypass circuitry and has more versatility to dial in classic OD tones. About the BUMP button? well, I seldom use it.. actually, I don't need it.

P.S.
I use this as a BOOST pedal too!

Solid build, flexible tone shaping controls, very expressive.
The 78' distortion is a great pedal and there is a fundamental
tonal difference between it and the Modified O.D., as there should be,
so with both you have the full spectrum of amazing lead and rhythm
tones. Makes every other overdrive pedal I've owned sound tiny.

To start, i was very disappointed when i first received the M77. The dreaded MXR tone suck was an issue...in this case in the lower mid range frequencies....not a good place to have that issue with a hot OD pedal. I attribute the problem to high capacitance at the input even though the pedal is True Bypass. It was killing my OD tone so it was about to go back when i decided to try a couple of things first....i moved the pedal to right after my Boss Angry Charlie pedal...buffered output...and a really good one. That did the trick! no more tone suck...the boss output overpowered the loss of signal at the input of the M77. Now for the good stuff...the tone of the M77 with the mid-bump engaged and the 100hz knob turned to about 3:00, is very hot and sweet....full and smooth, it gives you that smokin JCM800 tone, but only after you tighten up the bass frequencies...i do that by kicking on my Strymon Sunset Treble OD channel after the M77....now the sound is truly fantastic...full range tone and tight bass...progressive rock lead / rhythm heaven...or metal, or any other hot OD genre you might want to play. Unfortunately it takes some effort to get there, therefore the 4 star rating...but really worth it once you do.

I"ve landed on this pedal as a lead boost for the dirty channels on Hughes and Kettner TM36. I use each channel for rhythm depending on what we"re playing but I like a different character for solos.


I run it with pretty standard settings, gain barely there, volume at 1:00. Tone between 10:00 and 11:00, 100 Hz about 2:00. Bump Engaged. Does the trick.

I really like the bump button. I think it really helps with cutting through and sweet sounding feedback lurks under sustained notes. Pretty bad*** indeed.

Enjoy the sound of the BA O.D., even though I'm still experimenting with different levels. The three combinations that are outlined help tremendously. You can set to one of these positions and then tweak from there which makes things easy. The sound is tremendous and the bite is very crunchy when you select the over drive. The only concern that I have with the pedal is that it has created a high pitch frequency, more so than the other pedal that I was using. I am using the berringer pedal board and I do have a lot of pedals hooked up and I'm currently re-arranging the positions as well as trying to isolate one pedal by providing single power instead of powering in the daisy chain power. That would be my only reason for rating this pedal a 4.0 instead of 5.0. Customer service is still outstanding and everyone that I speak with are truly customer oriented and seem concerned when something isn't right. Keep up the good work.

Exactly what I wanted at a great price. Classic tone, helpful salesman...couldn't ask for more....Thank you Sweetwater!

Well...the YouTube demos sounded great to me and i decided to try the M77 in my front of amp signal chain as an OD option. I really liked the TS808 on steroids design pitch to provide a more modern version of the original... Alas....the dreaded MXR tone suck reared it's ugly head in the low mid range frequency where you least want it on this pedal...dropped my overall gain by about 3db...(yes i measured it). Unfortunately it will not have a home on my pedal board. I even noticed some signal loss in bypass mode....true bypass...hmmmm. I replaced a real true bypass pedal to drop this one in so the signal chain should not have seen much of a difference....i would go for an EH Soul Food and make the Germanium diode upgrade...muuuuuch better and no tone suck....on the other hand...if you are only using one drive pedal, and not stacking them, this could work fine for you...the overdrive tone and bump are nice features.

I bought this pedal second-hand from a guy on Craigslist. It was sort of an impulse decision since I was originally buying a Carbon Copy (amazing pedal by the way) from him and he offered to throw in the Custom Badass for about half price. I figured why not and bought it since I needed a solid overdrive. It's a well-built overdrive, but not for me at all. I simply can't find a setting I like on it at all. I'm running an Epiphone Les Paul into an Orange Crush 35RT so I'll admit I don't have the BEST gear, but I tried for hours and hours for months adjusting the pedal settings, adjusting my amp settings, looking up setting suggestions on youtube and forums, yet I still can't find the overdrive tone I'm looking for. Thinking about getting a One Control Strawberry Red Overdrive, Fulltone OCD, or an Earthquaker Devices Speaker Cranker. Hopefully I'll have better luck with one of those...