MXR Duke of Tone Overdrive Pedal Reviews

Never played a King of Tone or Prince of Tone, so I can't compare, but this is a fantastic boost pedal. If you throw in the volume knob and amp settings this one pedal provides a huge range of sound. I bought it for the boost, but the OD and DIST settings are really good to. For the price (especially given the availability of the KoT, etc.) you can't really go wrong.

What a great transparent-like pedal to break up your amp giving it a nice natural tone! For me, it is a great pedal to get into the overdrive realm of tone without being too dirty. The tone nob is magical allowing you to dial in the amount of brightness or warm sound you prefer. The OD & Boost settings are my two personal favorites depending on the context. Stacks nicely with other pedals especially if you have a heavier overdrive or distortion you'd like pair with it.

I bought this when it first came out. My first forever love for a pedal was MXR Distortion+ in the late 1970s. I now own the Dunlop version of that and several other desirable classic MXR. I pre-ordered this based on the material I'd read and content here on Sweetwater. I didn't buy it for any single feature. I liked the combination of options making it relevant in a number of tone adventures. My expectations were high and I worried it wouldn't live up. On my first few sessions I was unsure how necessary this pedal was, but what pedal is really necessary in all cases? So I began using it to explore what different roles it could play. The fact it covers three different circuits (Boost, OD, Dist) allows me to use a stripped down pedal board with a tiny 8" combo tube amp I keep in the room I hang out in (not the home studio where more amps and pedals are). Often if I want a lean chain with 5 or less pedals, I'll use this to cover basic "distortion-related" jobs, a tuner, a delay, a modulation device, and my MXR Distortion+ (need that in every pedal chain).

Let me be clear though. The use I described above is not going to deliver all the boost, OD, and distortion you might want. It has good tones in all. I use the distorition least because I favor the Distortion+. 5 stars because this is a good value, seemingly high build quality, MXR/AnalogMan pedal.

This Duke of King pedal sound very good and it scoops the sound of my guitar making it cut through the mix when playing live gig. The people of Sweetwater are the best when you need your items shipped and delivered on time!

A very useful pedal with unlimited amounts of various tones. I have it stacked with my Timmy which opens up the endless possibilities. As with all my MXR pedals. I absolutely love them.

Like many, I took a deep dive into overdrive pedals. I never owned any Analogman product because of their limited availability and after market price increases. I was building a second, more compact, pedal board so I was looking for pedals that have multiple options and I landed on this. This pedal is great. You get great diversity between channels. If you love you guitar and amp tone, like I do, it stay withing that sound without dramatically changing your sound. I like to pair a Boost pedal with a OD pedal (with lots of head room) so that I get a bit of compression. This pedal alone provides me with that. Options and Tone, this pedal beats our many of the "boutique" pedals out there. I would say skip the unreliable clones and overpriced fanboy products and go with this.

It's great having three options to choose from and it's hard to choose your favorite one.

I've owned many boost and overdrive panels through the years. I've got other Analogman gear, but never could bring myself to get on the waiting list for a KoT. So I knew the moment I heard about the Duke of Tone that I would have to try it out. What an amazing thing for Mike P. to do to hook up with MXR to produce a great pedal that is affordable, available, and an absolute winner.

Like most people, I didn't buy this for distortion. I'm not a high gain player. The boost and overdrive modes are incredible, though and most important they don't suck the tone out of my guitar or my rig. My Tele still sounds like a Tele, which doesn't always happen with other OD pedals. The boost setting is so good that I'm tempted to leave it on all the time. So I may get another Duke to stack for the overdrive when I make changes from song to song. If you're still thinking this over, don't hesitate. This pedal is very low noise, small footprint, and amazing sound.

Many thanks to Chris Goldbach at SW for all his help as always, and getting my pedal out the door same day.

Finally gave in to the hype of this POT clone. Although I do not own either the POT or the KOT pedals I am happy with this purchase. Easy to dial in an array of colorful and pleasing tones. Will probably be on my board for the foreseeable future. Definitely worth the price.

I'm having a great experience with the Duke of Tone currently. For my purposes, I am using it in OD mode as the last pedal in a 3 gain stage set up; EP Booster>Greer Lightspeed>Duke of Tone. Also takes well to FuzzFace in front. In this configuration it's delivered exactly what I hoped for. Relatively transparent low to medium gain drive with exceptional clarity and note separation along with great touch sensitivity.
Be sure to play around with the internal trim pot to set the presence to your liking.
I did not find the Distortion setting as pleasing or as transparent. Boost setting works very well in front or after other drives. I tried 18v and headroom increased, but I think for now I like the extra little bit of compression in 9v operation.

I cannot compare to other Analogman pedals, but I can say this is one pedal that does what it claims, stays out of the way and one you notice when it's off.

I would recommend and buy another.

I bought this on a recommendation ,and it does just what it was intended to do..

This replaced my bluesbreaker clone and I can see the similarities and the differences. The DOT is transparent enough that, as I best can describe it, does not take over your tone. The boost and the OD mode are good, the distortion mode is not my cup of tea.

This stacks well with other drives in my board and is first on the drive stage pushing a TS or a Sugar Drive. It is very touch sensitive that compliments your overall tone.

Demand for this pedal extended the usual wait period. Definitely worth the wait. Upon breaking it in at rehearsal and at a recent gig, it has more than met my expectations. Great tone and feel with amazing clarity with chords as well as single note passages. Plenty of versatility lies within the toggle switch and controls. Also sounds great with another boost/gain pedal in front of it (in my case an Archer). Glad I waited and didn't settle for something else. Shout out to my Sweetwater Engineer, Pat Walsh, for keeping me updated on order status and following up afterwards. Which is the standard with Pat and why Sweetwater is my preferred online music supplier.

My first impressions of the pedal were not good. I instantly thought, "oh crap I fell for marketing on a crappy pedal!" The DoT sounded thin w/ too much treble out of the box for my taste. Setting the internal trim pot to 3:00 fixed everything for me, and now I'm loving it. Yes, I'm still in the honeymoon phase, but this tweak made the pedal go from unusable to exactly what I was hoping it would be. Maybe this will help others. Cheers,

I just received my DoT after a 3 month wait (a lot better than the 4-5 year wait for a KoT) and I'm absolutely loving it. I'm using it as the first of 3 gain stages along with 2 tubescreamer type overdrives and it does such a good job of adding some low-mid grit while remaining pretty transparent in the OD and Boost modes.

These mass produced versions of hard to find boutique pedals are awesome because they allow so many more of us to get an opportunity to experience amazing circuits at a fraction of the cost. I've never played an original KoT/PoT but from what I've gathered, the DoT is extremely close.

It's so good! So so so good. I also have the Browne Protein and it's excellent, but never had everything I wanted in the low mids. Turns out the blue side of the protein plus the Duke of Tone is THE BIZNESS. Fender style amp, es330, those drives = THIS MAGIC MOMENT. Buy it, don't look back.

The type of pedal you never thought you'd have and now you can not only have it but you will be recommending it to everyone because its frequency is right on the money. I'd say very even eq and it goes from Low to lots of gain. I'm loving MXR these days. Works well withy JCM800 and my Fender DRRI. Keep up the great work MCR!!

Pairs well with a Vemuram Shanks ODS-1 and Mad Professor Sweet Honey

When I use this with my Fender DRRI (2017 model year) it's the best OD pedal for the amp. Out of my 5 other OD's I have which are the usual suspects…

When the amp is clean say on 3-4 this pedal can go from clean boost to making the amp sound like it's cranking in the best way a DR could. Run the amp from 4-7 and it just continues to be a mastery of a pedal. Never over saturates the amp and provides gorgeous "transparent" overdrive for rocking tones fenders.

I'm a Marshall guy but always wanted to have a cranked DRRI in my room. It's simply a beautiful sound with this pedal.

Great sounding pedal in all modes so it's Uber versatile. The only thing it doesn't do is high gain so if that's your intended use you may be disappointed

I have a KOT and POT - both great pedals to be sure - but this little DOT is so close there is almost no difference to my ears. It's nice and small, and like other reviewers mentioned, it cleans up with a lighter attack better than any other pedal I've tried. Almost no change in tone at all when it's engaged, and the boost/od/distortion it has sounds very natural. I'll be getting another one or two for different pedal boards once they're available. Way to go MXR and Analogman!

I have a KoT and an original BluesBreaker as well (and several other BB style drives). This one is amazing and really nails it. I'm tempted to get two just to play the KoT game but one is enough honestly since it stacks well.

If you like this for probably 25% the price you could try out the Nux Morning Star (Morning Glory style with great tones). I'm an OD pedal fanboy in my recovering metalhead years, this one really nails it, but so does so many other pedals by MXR. Sugar Drive is a better Klon (I have a KTR as well). This is 95% the Prince of Tone (KoT being 2x these).

Worth the price and lack of a 4-5 year wait. Luckily I got mine when it was only a 1.5 year wait!

I'm really becoming an MXR fanboy now too with all these great releases.

Great pedal. I have a KOT and I favor this for stacking with other OD's, as the KOT is alittle much if you dont need both sides. Most of the fun of, if not all, of the prince of tone, but in a nice little package that is perfect for smaller profile boards. I stack with a Blue Collar Mini and the Duke gives me a huge variety with the three drive options onboard. A major win!

If you made it this far then you just need to stop fooling around or kidding yourself. This is a pedal you need to experience. Every demo won't tell you a thing. You'll just start to think that all the praise is to specifically sell you on a pedal, when the pedal actually warrants the praise. If you don't like it, just return it or resell it, but don't be a "bag of @icks" like the winners on Reverb.com and sell it for higher than retail when the pedal is still being manufactured and sold.

There are plenty of BB Type pedals out there with more gain on tap. If you are looking for a gainy BB, this is not it. Probably better off looking at an M.G. with two channels. I have never played nor owed a POT or KOT, just a few BB style pedals and that is were my opinion of this pedal is predicated upon.

The one knock I will give this DOT is; for my taste there could be more volume on tap. I run mine between 2-3 o'clock. That knock however is not enough to let me sell this pedal or downgrade it's rating. This is definitely a keeper sleeper pedal for sure! I play an LP and a Strat through a Vox AC10 and I absolutely love the DOT with my Strat.

The clean up is like nothing I have ever experienced before! I roll my Strat volume down to about 7 on the neck pickup and it is soo clean with a little jangle that it almost sounds like I am running a compressor. I primarily run the DOT in the OD setting but if I plug the in LP, I have been flipping it to the Distortion and Boost settings over the OD.

I currently run a Wampler Moxie in front of the DOT for a Twisted American Version of a Duellist. The DOT stacks brilliantly with the Moxie. It leads me to believe that I will be just as satisfied plugging other drives into the DOT or vice-versa.

This opinion is purely subjective considering your ears will never be like my ears. The best piece of advice I can give is, what are you waiting for? Seriously you look at $300 Fuzz pedals with less knob tweaking capabilities but your wallet thins up faster than your sound when your 9v dies. Do your sound a favor and buy a DOT.

Knowing about the the kind od tone pedal, but as crazy is the waiting list is, I personally didn't see the need for a pedal like that. When the news about MXR joining forces with analog Mike came and this beauty was coming out, I had to check it out, and wow! I am beyond amazed, the 3 different colors and textures are super amazing. It sounds great, truly tonal bliss. Thank you MXR!! truly you guys created a masterpiece...

I have never had a chance to try the Prince or King so I have no idea how close the Duke comes to those, but what I can say is that after using the Duke for a week I am very impressed. It has already kicked the ODR-1 off my board for light drive which I was not expecting since I've been using the ODR for years and had never found anything that matched or surpassed it until now. I've tried other bluesbreaker style pedals in the past that I never really clicked with, but that definitely is not the case for the Duke!

I'm trying it out using the pedal with a Fender '65 Blackface Twin Reverb and a Fender Baja Tele. It sounds fantastic. What I'm most impressed with is how well the volume, gain and tone controls enables you to craft the boost, OD and mild distortion to suit different pickups and amp combinations. The controls feel smooth and high quality. My favorite toggle settings are boost and OD. Boost - volume at 2:00 and gain at 11:00 sounds great with the bridge pickup on the Tele. Dial up the gain to get great OD sounds. Switch to OD and dial up the volume for unity because there is a volume decrease, then dial the gain up to get sweet amp-like OD. Switch to Dist dial up the gain to 3:00+ and your into mild distortion. Certainly not for metal but of course you wouldn't expect that level of distortion from a KOT clone.I own a KOT and I must say this little guy (or girl) serves up wonderful tones. Even the tone control has a wide sweep to my ears. This is a home run. I can't say enough about this pedal. I own many OD pedals and this is right up there with all of them. For the price! You cannot beat it. I'm really impressed. Grab one if you have considered getting a KOT. I have to close this review by praising the Fender Twin. I own a number of amps and have owned many more in the past. I am so in love with the Twin that I bought a second one to run in stereo. I wouldn't consider gigging with it for obvious reasons. But for home studio, this amp is killer. Phenomenal clean and awesome with pedals!

Best pedal I've ever bought

I got it for a boost, then it ended up replacing my Dirty Little Secret. I get what makes Analogman great now. Way to go MXR.

I bought this pedal at the recommendation of my sales rep, Evan Mehre. I have never played any of the AnalogMan pedals and I don't get too excited about mythical unicorn pedal lore. That being said, I played with it for about ten minutes right after I got it. My initial impression was that it sounded okay, nothing stellar. Last night, I plugged it into my '57 Tweed Twin and started playing around 6:30pm. I literally played for almost four hours straight with this pedal. I only made a few adjustments throughout the night. All of my LPs, Strats and Teles sound great through it and the feel and responsiveness of this pedal is pretty incredible. It's definitely worth all of the hype and the reasonable price. Get one!

Pedal sounds good with my Amp love it

What an amazing pedal, I think they nailed it with this one! Dont think to hard about it..if you need an overdrive and a small footprint the Duke is your king!

Never played the King of Tone but this thing sounds awesome. It is EXTREMELY low gain which is good because you can fine tune exactly how over the edge you want any tone to be. I've tried it over clean, light crunch and full on high gain metal on a Mark V 90w and it works well no matter what. It has definitely replaced my go-to Morning Glory. Two of these together would be perfect for gain stacking. You will not regret it just don't expect too much gain. Build quality feels great as well.

With the addition of the Duke, I'm done. I don't need any more pedals.
The Duke, Sugar Drive, Timmy and Classic 108 fuzz, along with JHS Red Solo Boost.....my life is complete. Thank you MXR and Sweetwater (and Nate, my salesperson) it's been fun.

First off, a special shout out to my Sweetwater rep. Nathan Kelch for keeping me informed all the way through the pre-order process and month long wait, lol.

I received the MXR DOT pedal yesterday. The box is..., well an oversized box, this pedal is small. It was rattling around loose, a lot of waisted space in the box. No packing fluff to hold secure like JHS pedals. Also no matter what Dunlop product you buy, CryBaby, Way Huge, or MXR you get the same lame manual. That's fine, after all I bought a pedal, right? And about that....

First off its very unique looking. aNaLoG.MaN and MXR have made it a work of art. A "home run hit" right out of the park. Easy to add to any crowded board. The light is perfect. You can see it from where you stand, not from outer space.

I play a single coil tele. I ran though modes and settings. Right away I felt connected to this thing from my fingers all the way to my ears. I did not feel this with the Klon or TS style circuits. I personally found the "always on" boost setting into a Tumnus mini my thing for now. With just the DOT on I could not find an unpleasant sound out of it anywhere.

I got caught up in the experience and knock my lamp over. The bulb was toast. Standing in a dark room I looked down to see if my pedalboard was OK. Out of all my pedals the Duke of Tone was the only one greeting me with glowing knob marks. Well done aNaLoG.MaN and MXR.

Its well built, sounds phenomenal, price is low, great foot print, and "Hello" the knob markers glow in the dark.

Josh Scott is right, this is a historical time for guitar pedals. I want another one to stack em both.

I have never tried a KoT or PoT before, so im not comparing the Duke of Tone to the original pedals, but this pedal sounds fantastic. Its saturation is very well balanced and warm, with great response to picking dynamics. I havent tried too many blues breaker style pedals, but i own the Kasleder Fx Toxic Twins and the 2022 King Tone The Duellist with external dip switches and the Duke of Tone is right up there in terms of touch dynamics as the Toxic Twins which is saying a lot cause the Toxic Twins is PHENOMENAL, especially its sensitivity to picking dynamics, and out of the 3 i would say the Duellist is my least favorite. Stacking the Duke of Tone into the left side of the Toxic Twins is just heavenly. Definitely will be keeping the Duke of Tone on my board until my name comes up on the waitlist for the KoT in like 4 years. Haha. Its an awesome pedal and for 150 bucks its a steal. I would highly recommend it to someone looking for a good low to medium gain drive pedal. Definitely not for someone looking for high gain sounds though, but if u know about the KoT then i would assume u already know that. Lol.

This pedal has a Clarity and crispness I just don't get with other pedals. I will be purchasing another one.

I tend to really like transparent overdrive. I was hoping this pedal would be different enough from my Tumnus, Red Dirt, and OCD and it is. As of today I tend to love the drive set at about 3 o'clock, everything else noon-ish. So I keep the toggle on the OD. I find the offering of boost and distortion frivolous, not adding any real value for me. Good gosh if someone can get these pedal makers to quit adding their vanity toggle switches you would be doing humanity a real service (keep it simple stupid). Hey, the overdrive sounds great and is certainly in that tone range that I consider special and sought after.

Unlike the other guy, I actually do own the pedal that I'm reviewing, LOL! It's just what I hoped it would be. Sounds more like a real Analogman King of Tone than the smaller Prince of Tone. It's cool that he partnered with MXR to bring us this Duke of Tone. The treble trimpot inside is really useful. Nice full transparent overdrive. Way easier to dial in a good sound than the MXR Timmy. I love it!

If you're here you know the story; this is MXR and Analog Mike working together to make a version of the PoT that you can get more easily than a PoT. It's a smaller factor and has side jacks that many prefer. Same controls as a PoT. Same lay out. A durable robust pedal that if you are stuck on "it has to be new" you can get new. A very good item.

I am digging this little pedal more and more I play it. I am half way through my time on the waiting list. Picked this one up for a preview. Very nice and versatile pedal. Can't beat the price either.

Great boost pedal, its focussed but doesn't kill all your low end like some other boosts.... I do find the Overdrive and Distortion modes to be a little too compressed for my liking but thankfully the boost mode has enough gain on tap to make a pushed amp get in to a really nice crunch

This is a very flexible little pedal. I didn't end up keeping it on my pedalboard however, it reminded me of why I love my OCD-GE and Way Huge Conspiracy Theory. Solid flexible pedal, and of course I had to buy it because of the hype.

Obviously I do not yet own this pedal but am very interested - especially after seeing the JHS YouTube video regarding this and the MXR Timmy.

While waiting for the pedal to become available, I did note the rather odd place for the LED light - especially while being activated by your foot. Besides change in tone, there will not be an immediate indication if the pedal engaged or disengaged. Curious why it wasn't placed elsewhere - maybe since being such a compact pedal this was their only choice.

I had high hopes for this pedal, but in reality it's just another "me too" overdrive. I have an older Tim that blows the Duke away for low and mid gain, and for higher gain I use a Fulltone OCD. I stack the Tim and the OCD (in that order), and they cover pretty much anything I want to do tone-wise. I do use the Duke, but only as a boost pedal. Don't get me wrong, the Duke of Tone doesn't suck, but it also doesn't live up to all the hype. I suppose for the price it's OK though.