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MXR M294 Sugar Drive.
The Axe Palace take: This little pedal is entirely to cute for its own good. But under the facade of a light blue sparkly paintjob and a teeny tiny mini-housing, there is an incredibly versatile overdrive circuit. It works perfectly well for boosting hi-gain modern amps, without adding in the usual nasally midrange tones. But unlike most other boost type ODs, the Sugar Drive sounds great when used for its own gain into a clean amp. The drive knob blends in some of your clean signal until you get to about 20% which works great in either situation. Its absolute strongest suit is boosting early breakup sounds into a lead sound by adding a little extra grit and compression without oversaturating it.
(I know, I know. I basically said this thing does all of the things an overdrive pedal does. But I have yet to find another that does all of those jobs as well as this one. The only thing this review is missing is the word transparent. So ... TRANSPARENT. There. Now it is complete.)
The MXR Sugar Drive Pedal provides a diverse range of clear and transparent overdrive tones, from sauced up boosting to blown-tube distortion. It's based on a rare overdrive pedal that has acquired a mythical reputation among fanatical tone-seekers thanks to its unique circuit design.
Of course, we had to put the MXR touch on this circuit. If you're all about true bypass, then you're in luck—this pedal uses it by default. The original used buffered bypass, though, and we know there's a lot of players out there who don't want to fix something that isn't broken. They're in luck, too—just flick the Buffer switch on the side of the pedal to enable buffered bypassing.
With a simple three-knob setup and an MXR mini housing, this is the go-to overdrive to have on your pedalboard. It's versatile and it saves space, and unlike the original pedals it's based on, it won't cost you thousands of dollars.
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