The MTG: LA is one of Fender’s new tube-driven pedals! Yep, there’s a tube in there, an NOS 6205 preamp tube.
As far as the character of this distortion pedal goes, it’s a high-gain, RAT-like distortion circuit, but it’s all original in design. If you’re looking for that ’80s LA rock tone, this is it.
With Fender’s unique (and handsome, IMO) enclosure, optional light-up LEDs, and jewel indicator, it’s an attractive pedal. But let’s talk controls.
- TONE control: turn to the left for less treble, right for more.
- TREBLE: Controls high frequency boost/cut
- BASS: Controls low-frequency boost/cut
- TIGHT: Helps control low-end tonal characteristics that can make higher-gain settings sound muddy or unclear.
- GAIN: Amount of distortio nadded to the circuit
- LEVEL: Output volume
It also boasts its own boost circuit, with controls for the output level (it doesn’t say how much it can boost volume-wise) and a boost/gain control that controls the saturation of the circuit.
- Guitar is Squier Paranormal Series Super-Sonic
- Baritone is Eastwood Sidejack DLX
- Bass is Fender Player Series Mustang PJ Bass
- Guitar amp is Strymon Iridium, Round, B
Video Transcript
Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below.
Fender MTG LA Tube Distortion on Guitar Baritone and Bass
Hey, my name’s Emily and you’re watching get offset. And today I have the MTG LA tube distortion from fender. Yup. There is a tube in there. If you care a lot about types of tubes and stuff, check out the link description. Well, check out the description of the video. I’ll talk about it more. but this is like every fender pedal and this really sleek kind of brush metal enclosure.
[00:00:28] The LEDs that you can turn on or off. I like them on. Sometimes you don’t really know where, especially in these demos, sometimes it’s hard to tell where, where something is, but, yeah, it has a boost. You can control the lane, the level and, there’s this now that we’ll get into. And, this is kind of based loosely on like high gain LA eighties distortion.
[00:00:53] It’s supposed to be RAT-esque. but let’s talk about the controls. We have level that’s volume. We have tone that’s darker and brighter, and we also have separate controls to cut or boost treble and bass frequencies. Pretty neat. And then of course we have the gain and then we have the tight here. So what the tight does is it kind of tightens up that, that, that low, and that can get kind of muddy sometimes.
[00:01:29] So I think I’m going to see how this plays with a six string guitar and a baritone, and maybe we’ll get to base no promises on that. but yeah. So, let’s just go ahead and let’s go ahead and start playing. Alright. See the second. Welcome back. I have my Squire supersonic with my Loller Imperial pickups.
[00:01:54] I’m going to do them both split coil and humbuckers. So I’m just going to kind of toggle between those without talking too much. And, what else? Strymon Iridium round B gain at, nine o’clock ish for now. Let’s get a little bit of room sound. So.
[00:02:18] Turn that down a little bit.
[00:02:42] Yeah,
[00:03:00] Let’s start with messing around with the gain and leaving everything else around about noon.
[00:03:36] I still really love the single coils split on this. Alright.
[00:05:50] So that was just the game and that was pretty
[00:05:59] All right. Let’s have a play with the tone.
[00:07:00] all right. Let’s play with the tight, tight all the way down.
[00:08:07] yeah, that’s a subtle difference, but I can definitely hear it.
[00:08:58] That’s nice. I’m going to leave that there.
[00:09:25] on. even with the, what’s it called? Yeah. Even on the next pickup, even on the bridge pickup. I think that, I like, I like having the tone up a little bit. That’s a do the treble and the bass
[00:13:31] So we all know anything that’s based on a rat can sound kind of flubby on low gain and the tight really. Unplug is that all right. Let’s look at the boost. has its own indicator light.
[00:14:07] Oh counterintuitive, but that is how that works.
[00:15:39] Kind of made it an anti boost there.
[00:16:07] So the boots only works if you run into distortion circuit. So you can’t really run the boost as its own separately, it’s boosting it’s specific to the solution. So that’s about a 15 minute look at this. don’t worry too much about the pushing and the polling that I was doing, but I just want to think he, that you can hear it differently on single coils versus humbuckers.
[00:16:29]so yeah, I’m going to plug in my bear town. And we’re going to get the party going lower. I don’t know. Keep it going is what I meant to say. And didn’t so yeah,
[00:20:36]I forgot to mention that the baritone last video. Was the, Eastwood sidetrack, deluxe baritone. And this is the thunder player series Mustang bass.
[00:21:03] Okay.
[00:23:46] all right. That was a look at the fender and TG. To distortion. yeah, I mean, I don’t know. It sounds like a rat. I think it probably sounds a little bit more, it’s more tweakable than a rat, which is really, really nice. And, has these nice LEDs, maybe I’ll do an AB test with this later versus a rat.
[00:24:14]I’ve done a couple of rat videos before. So I’ll, I’ll link to that in the, in the show notes, in the video description, this is the podcast. yeah, but that’s it. I think it’s really a nice take on, on kind of that rat sound with some added features. I didn’t feel like I was getting a ton from this, this boost sweep here.
[00:24:38] And, the boosts definitely did add some character. when you tweak the levels, it also gets it into sort of this feedback you territory, which I know a lot of people like, I kinda like, I kinda like having feedback at like the end of a show. I think it’s fun. yeah. And I like that it has a tone knob and the booth cut of the frequencies here.
[00:24:58] You can really get, you can shape your sound in a way that you’re probably not used to doing with a rat. So, I mean, that’s fantastic. I’m I’m way into it. And again, there’s a real tube in there, so that’s fun. Alright, cool. Well, that’s all I have to say about the MTG LA high gain distortion pedal from fender.
[00:25:18] I hope, I really hope you play some metal with it. All right. Hair metal, hair metal. It wasn’t the worst thing. We still sing those songs. All right. Have a great day. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding. My name is Emily, and until next time, goodbye.