Mount Pleasant overdrive pedal: Vick Audio takes on the Marshall BluesBreaker
A new modern take on the classic Marshall BluesBreaker overdrive pedal
Vick Audio was created in 2012 by Mike Vickery and has gained a reputation for making some great Big Muff and overdrive pedals. This new Mount Pleasant overdrive is billed as a low-to-medium gain drive with a Marshall BluesBreaker flavour.
Mount Pleasant
The original Marshall BluesBreaker overdrive pedal circuit is now highly sought after being, of course, long discontinued. Used by everyone from Gary Moore to Joe Bonamassa to get those creamy, bluesy and rock overdrive tones, these boxes respond nicely to your playing dynamics.
Now Mike Vickery has taken that circuit and re-vamped it to modern-day specifications, fixed a few issues the originals suffered from and generally enhanced the design somewhat.
BluesBreaker
The Mount Pleasant pedals are all hand-wired in the USA, and Mike uses high-quality components throughout, mounting the pedals in a powder-coated aluminium chassis.
With pedal board friendly modern day true-bypass switching, unlike the original Marshall it is based on, this pedal will play nicely on your pedalboard. Where it differs from the original Marshall circuit is the addition of a three-way toggle switch which adds a high cut to the original tone stack, taming the shrill treble of the originals.
Vick Audio Mount Pleasant overdrive, a modern day BluesBreaker with less shrill highs. · Source: Vick Audio
High Cut
Each setting is labelled either NC, HC1 or HC2. NC stands for No Cut, meaning the original tone stack with no filter. HC 1 and HC 2 offer two new variations of High Cut, with each taming that top end somewhat to give a more rounded tone. HC 1 offers more of a cut than HC 2, so you have two options. Control-wise it is the standard Level, Gain and Tone control of the original Marshall pedal.
The brief demo video below does sound good and I must say that I think it is really well priced as it is only $129, which I feel for such a well-made boutique overdrive is very reasonable indeed.
I do like his Big Muff circuits and if this is anywhere as good as those, then this should be a good quality drive pedal. Especially, when you look at how much old original Marshall BluesBreakers change hands for on the second-hand market…
RRP – USD 129 plus shipping/taxes
Vick Audio Mount Pleasant product page
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