A Look at the MythFX Minotaur Distortion Pedal
By: Ryan Coe
Let me preface this review by saying that ultimately, opinions of guitar pedals vary by personal taste, and the preference within. Over my years of playing, I have been recommended pedals that I think have sounded terrible. I have also found myself loving pedals that have gotten terrible reviews. I honestly think that half of the problem in reading reviews by everyday people on the internet is their inability to set the pedal how it is supposed to be used within a rig. Some people prefer to have a pedal that destroys other sounds that are trying to be put through your guitar. Personally, I cannot stand this. To me, guitar pedals should be looked at as building blocks and should be used to build additions on top of one another, as opposed to cancelling each other out, and even worse, interfering with the natural sound of your guitar.
With that being said, I want to give some background to my taste of music and my preference of sound within. I am a big fan of the blues, and all styles of music that incorporate its basic principles (most music). I love the simplicity and creativity of the music on the surface, but even more so, I love the complex train of thought that rests within, and this is where guitar tone becomes pivotal. Typically, I use low output pickups to let my amp (and pedals) maximize their tone. When it comes to distortion pedals, the common misconception is to maximize your gain. People like SRV, and bands like Led Zeppelin played so hard and heavy, that it led people to believe that gain in distortion is what was creating that sound. Truth be told, it was getting natural sound out of your amp, playing thick strings, playing hard, and putting the gain no further than 50%. The last step made it possible for every note to ring out clearly in their recordings. This misconception eventually became a style of its own when the evolution of hard rock created bands like Metallica and so-on. I say this because the MythFX Minotaur can play into both trains of thought for distortion pedals.
When I first plugged this guy into my rig, I set the 3-Way clip to their “soft” setting. This setting had a nice tone, and this was what I was most impressed with. The grind was mellow and not forced, and I could still hear my guitar’s natural tone within the sound being produced. Just a great “clean” sounding distortion and the sustain on it was practically non-existent, which I love in a distortion pedal. Although sustain will happen when it comes to distortion.
Their “hard” setting on the pedal was not within my taste of pedal at all, but all bias aside, it sounded great. This setting is for the likes of players who love to play into their gain, and love to double up distortion with maybe a tube screamer to get that naturally “loud” sound. I was also impressed by the lack of clipping between these settings, which is a great quality for the sake of live show. Just for the hell of it, I doubled up the “hard” setting with my Tube Screamer, and the Minotaur very much overwhelmed the sound of my Tube Screamer, leaving it only to pretty much serve as a boost/sustain. If this is your preference of sound, than this is the pedal for you.
Bill used the Minotaur with his band, a very Southern, heavy Marshall and humbucker, loud, rock band. In this capacity, it was perfect for leads or any time Bill had to create a large wall of sound within the rhythm section. Typically, Bill uses a TS-9 Tube Screamer to step up his sound for solos and leads but he was substituting the Minotaur and it filled the void nicely. Although a completely different tone than the TS-9, it served the purpose well.
Like almost all pedals, I have a few complaints about the pedal as a whole. Cosmetically, I believe it is too small. On the MythFX website, they seem to pride themselves in the size of this pedal, and I understand their angle. Some people enjoy small pedals so they have more room on their board. I however, am a huge fan of not having to worry about actually hitting the pedal or not. I am not the most coordinated person in the world, so by preference, I prefer a wide switch on the front just so I don’t have to think twice about it as I hit the pedal, which effects my play. Different strokes for different folks, Bill really liked the small compact size of the MythFX pedals.
Also, the gain on the pedal did not have as much range as I had thought. The 3-Way Clip was fantastic in terms of diversity of sound, so maybe that is how I became disappointed in the lack of range in the gain. Overall, I felt like the gain did not cater to either side of the push all too well, and I definitely expected bigger outcomes as I adjusted the pedal. There was no light gain, or really heavy gain, but the middle range was great.
All in all, it’s a good little pedal to have. Personally, I would only use the first soft setting, and part of me almost wishes they had created two separate distortion pedals so as to tweak the gain according to each Clip. I think that would be the best route, but I understand that people love combo pedals these days, so as to (mildly) diversify their sound. As far as the hard setting is concerned, this pedal absolutely dominates, which like I said, if that is your preference, you will not be disappointed.
A Look at the MythFX Midas Boost Pedal
By: Bill Bush
When I first held the MythFX Midas Boost pedal in my hands, the only thought that crossed my mind was “you can’t be serious.” How can anyone make a pedal so small and how can anyone possibly use a pedal this size? As everyone has heard since childhood, never judge a book by its cover.
Typically, a boost pedal is a boost pedal and that’s the end. They are notoriously unexciting pedals and there is nothing all that complex about them by nature. When trying out various boost pedals, it was important to me that there was minimal (if any) effect on my overall tone. The obvious goal is, you guessed it, to boost your tone. As simple as this sounds, this is a very difficult set of attributes to find in a boost pedal and I managed to only come across two pedals that accomplished this.
I put the MythFX Midas Boost pedal up against a Carl Martin Hydra Boost in my rig. Each pedal was used to try boosting my signal at the start of my effects chain as well as at the end of my chain to boost my tone for leads and thicker tones. Both pedals added absolutely zero coloring to my tone, which is exactly what I was looking for. The difference came in the power of each pedal. The Hydra Boost started to crunch up around 7 on its single boost knob and though this is fairly high up in its range, the boost only adds about 15 dB total so the added crunch is kicking into the tone at pretty low levels overall. On the Midas boost, there was absolute no overdrive whatsoever until I turned the single boost knob up to about 8. This would appear to only be “one higher” than the Hydra Boost but the difference is that the Midas has a range of 32 dB. The Midas gave me many more decibels of increase before any overdrive kicked in, thus giving me more clean and clear power.
I ended up trying the Carl Martin boost at the start of the chain just to give a very light boost to my overall signal. I had the boost turned to about 3 or 4 and just left it on the whole time. The Carl Martin simply did not provide the power/boost that Midas was able to give me so the Midas was the best option as a “step up” pedal. My main benchmark test was using the boost pedal to step my sound up slightly over the rest of an already loud Southern Rock band. I was able to set the pedal to either put me just slightly louder to make what I was playing stand out just a little bit, or crank the boost to completely jump on top of the sound for solos. I ended up completely removing the Carl Martin boost from my rig as I did not feel it was really serving enough of a purpose to take up valuable space and power on my pedalboard.
The construction of the MythFX Midas Boost pedal is not at all what I’d expect from a one-man company making the pedals out of their house. The pedal is extremely small and comes with the total fear of breaking it with the lightest step to hit the switch. After overcoming the intimidation, I quickly realized this pedal is plenty sturdy and would hold up just fine. The pedals are solidly constructed and do not waste any space. The input/output jacks are staggered so that there is just enough room for each cable to be plugged in.
Another space cutting measure, and possibly the only negative I have for this pedal, is the lack of a battery. These pedals do not take batteries and can only be used when a 9V power supply is available to you. This works fine for me because I use the VooDoo Lab Pedal Power 2 power supply, but many guitar players out there still just run their effects off of 9V batteries. Not having the ability the use a battery for this pedal immediately cuts out a rather large portion of the guitar playing market, however, if you have a power supply to use with this pedal, you will not be disappointed. I have ended up keeping the pedal in my rig and couldn’t be happier with it.
Overall, I find the Midas Boost by MythFX to be a wonderful, basic little (and I mean little) pedal. My original intention was to try out the pedal, review it, and then figure out a way to offer it up to the Bill’s Guitar Blog readers to get the word out about the blog as well as MythFX, but after all the use I’ve gotten out of it, I simply can’t part with it.
If you’re interested in checking out a little more about MythFX, and possibly acquiring their gear, head over www.MythFX.com. Tell them you heard of them from our site!
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