MusicRadar Verdict
A versatile tone-building dirt box with two distinct M-style flavours.
Pros
- +
Great tone.
Cons
- -
Very few.
MusicRadar's got your back Our team of expert musicians and producers spends hours testing products to help you choose the best music-making gear for you. Find out more about how we test.
One of the Portland, Oregon-based company's most popular pedals, the Dirty Little Secret is now in its third incarnation and delivers Marshall-like tone, whatever amp you're using.
An internal switch sets the pedal to either Super Lead or Super Bass mode: the first, based on a later 'plexi' model having more gain and a different tonestack with more upper mids; the second more akin to early Marshalls or the Bassman it was based on, with less prominent midrange and lower gain.
Internally, a presence pot dials in the top end to suit your rig. The tone knobs offer the sort of organic control you'dget with an amp and both modes sound excellent, providing a range of drive with familiar British tonal signature.
The Super Lead mode offers enough gain to take you into JCM territory, while the Super Bass takes a fuzz pedal really well for some classic 60s rock sounds.
"There’s plenty for us guitarists to learn – and ‘less is more’ is the overriding lesson": how to play like George Harrison on The Beatles' Abbey Road
“They didn’t like Prince’s bikini underwear”: Prince’s support sets for the The Rolling Stones in 1981 are remembered as disastrous, but guitarist Dez Dickerson says that the the crowd reaction wasn’t as bad as people think
“We are so unencumbered and unbothered by these externally imposed rules or other people’s ideas for what music should be”: Blood Incantation on the making of Absolute Elsewhere and how “Data from Star Trek” saved the album – and the studio
