MusicRadar Verdict

A tube-equipped distortion pedal that's great at high-gain, but not as refined as its boutique rivals.

Pros

+
Great high-gain sounds
+
Boost footswitch
+
Three-band EQ

Cons

-
Struggles to compete at this price

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Many drive pedals claim to be ‘tube like’, whereas the MTG has a real tube, in this case a NOS 6205 preamp tube, at its heart.

With a three-band EQ and a tight control, there’s plenty of scope for tone shaping, too. The higher-gain settings shine, but we also found usable blues tones with the gain and tight control pulled back, on the neck pickup of a Les Paul.

Though it sounds good, at this price, Fender is competing with the likes of Amptweaker pedals - which the ‘tight’ control alludes to - and boutique offerings like the Hamstead Odyssey, and against these the MTG doesn’t hold its own quite so well.

Alex Lynham is a gear obsessive who's been collecting and building modern and vintage equipment since he got his first Saturday job. Besides reviewing countless pedals for Total Guitar, he's written guides on how to build your first pedal, how to build a tube amp from a kit, and briefly went viral when he released a glitch delay pedal, the Atom Smasher.

Matteo Mancuso wears a white T-shirt and plays his Yamaha Revstar in Tobacco Burst live onstage during a soundcheck before his festival appearance at at Casa del Jazz, Rome.

“Imagine not knowing Eric Johnson, Vai and Satriani and seeing this for the first time? It literally blows your mind”: Matteo Mancuso – 10 albums that changed my life