| Sound |
My MP-1 is the centerpiece of my rack setup. I use it for everything, with a variety of different guitars and effects. I'm generally playing, rock, hard rock, metal, shred and other types of music that require great distortion sounds.
The MP-1 has a unique flavor and sound of its own, but it mostly compares to hot rodded, modded Marshall type tones. The final tone is going to depend a lot on what power amp, cabinet and effects you pair it with. For examples of the MP-1's tone, you can check out countless classic albums like Extreme's Pornograffiti, White Lion Big Game, Mr. Big's debut album and second album, countless others as well.
I'm mainly using the MP-1 for distorted tone, since that's its primary forte, and does it extremely well at any volume. The overdrive on the MP-1 is dialed in via two paramters, OD1 and OD2, think boost pedal, and amp distortion. OD1 is kind of like the boost pedal, and OD2 is the overall distortion dialed up on the amp. The two controls work in harmony together to dial in your desired tone. OD1 is more of thick, less fuzzy kind of distortion control, and OD2 is deeper, fuzzier and cutting. Using the two controls you can dial in anything from classic rock mild levels of distortion, to screaming metal sounds.
Other available controls are your typical EQ controls, bass, mid, treble, and "presents" (Inside joke for Paul Gilbert fans.) The EQ controls offer a wide range of boost/cut to dial in whatever tone your looking for.
So far, I've been mainly speaking of the Tube Distortion voicing. The MP-1 contains three distinct voicings; tube distortion, tube clean and solid state clean.
Using the tube clean setting you're given a milder overdrive tone that can be dialed into a decent tube clean sound given the right guitar/pickup combination. My guitars tend to have hotter pickups so I can never get a great clean tone here, but it is nice if you like a little "hair" on your clean sounds. The OD1, and OD2 controls still affect the drive, and are dialed in similarly, only they're not as dirty.
The last voicing is solid state clean. This one is designed to bypass the tubes in the unit, and deliver a crystal clear solid state clean. It does this in spades. OD1 and OD2 still come into play, except in solid state voicing, the OD1 is acts as a compressor and OD2 is your gain. All the other controls work as expected. A great example of this tone is "Just Take My Heart" from Mr. Big - Lean Into It.
Those are the three voicings, the beauty with the MP-1 is that you can dial in a sound you like on any voicing, store it in one of the 128 memory locations and it can be recalled instantly via the control panel, or any midi switching unit.
There is, of course, a master gain control available on each patch, and for every voice that allows you to balance levels between patches, and there is also an output level knob on the front panel for tweaking the output of the unit to whatever amp or effects unit you send it to.
But wait, there's more. ;) The MP-1 also has a stereo analog chorus built in, which sounds great and can be dialed in on any patch and any voicing. To bypass the chorus, you simply dial the depth and speed controls both to zero, which turns it off. If you don't want a chorus sound, but would like a bit of a filter sound, you can leave the speed parameter at zero, and use the depth to adjust to a filter sound. Some cool tones can be had using this as well.
Finally the MP-1 has a decent effects loop that can be dialed in or out on a per patch basis, so if you want a particular effect after your preamp, and you want it in the loop before the power amp, you put it here. Patches can be set to have the loop in or out. The loop also has an adjustable output level.
What else, there is a headphone out jack, a front and rear input jack, and stereo outputs.
In short this is a ridiculously versatile, great sounding unit with a ton of features that can be had for a very low price.
If you're looking for a hot rodded Marshall-esque tone in a preamp this is a fantastic unit. Mine is 100% stock, but there is also a huge modding community built around this little gem. Some of the mods are very basic, such as noise reduction, and some are as sophisticated as adding a new tube board to install another tube for increased gain. There's a bunch of them at ADADepot.com.
I love mine.
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| Reliability |
Mine has apparently been in use since the early 90's. I got mine used obviously, and have never had a problem with it. I think it's a fairly well built and reliable device considering how many are still in use today. There are a few things you need to be aware of, there is a battery on board that keeps your patch data saved in memory when the unit is turned off, this can and will wear out every few years and would need to be replaced. Also, there are tubes in this thing, 12AX7's that will eventually wear down and might need swapping. Nothing major though if you look after it.
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| Customer Support |
Unfortunately ADA closed its doors sometime in the 1990's and no longer make this or any of its other famous preamps or effects. However, there is a very helpful bunch of people at ADADepot.com who can assist you in almost everything related to ADA gear.
Who knows, recently ADA has announced that they will resume making some effects starting with their classic Flanger pedal, maybe someday soon they'll start making amps, preamps and power amps too.
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| Liked about it |
Versatility is great, I can dial in anything I think of with this unit. The tone is great, it is simple to use and has pretty much everything I want in a preamp, and nothing I don't want.
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| Didn't like |
As these aren't in production anymore, prices fluctuate, parts might be hard to find if needed, limited support options. It's a great unit, but if something major happened to go wrong it might be tricky to get it fixed.
The stock unit can be noisy when the gains are at high levels, though what high gain amp isn't noisier when the gains are cranked?
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| Overall satisfaction: |
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5.0 |
By blackspy Feb 21, 2010
Last updated: March 02, 2010
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