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  • 5 months ago
When a stompbox has Jack White’s Third Man Hardware logo emblazoned on its front, you know you’re in for a treat. Ditto storied effect pedal brand MXR. Now, the two companies have teamed up to produce a truly novel effect – the Double Down.
The new pedal, explains Guitar World Tech Editor Paul Riario, is “an inspired take on the original MXR Micro Amp, which incidentally is an absolute favorite of White‘s and is also an essential part of his guitar rig.”

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Transcript
00:00What's up? Paul here from Guitar World and today we're going to be checking out a novel
00:23booster pedal made in partnership with the MXR Custom Shop and Jack White's Third Man
00:29hardware company, the Double Down. Let's check it out. What is the Double Down you ask? Well quite simply
00:39it's an inspired take on the original MXR microamp pedal which incidentally is an absolute favorite
00:45of White's and was also an essential part of his guitar rig. But now the Double Down has replaced
00:51that and it is the mainstay of his sound. But let's get to the point. The Double Down is effectively
00:56two microamp pedals in an eye-catching stomp box with two outputs allowing you to use it as a one
01:03into two signal splitter. And since the Double Down is loaded with a pair of microamp circuits
01:08you get two independent channels of classic MXR preamp gain boost. This was sort of our first step
01:15of wanting to split between two amplifiers. I've always been using you know two amps and usually
01:21now and for less like decade or more it was like the VibroVerb, the 64 VibroVerb and a hundred watt
01:28Silvertone. And the ability to in the studio or live to go to two different places with it. A true stereo output.
01:36And so this was the collaboration, the Double Down, the ability to send that signal to two different
01:43places and control the volume for each one. Very simple. But coming in very useful in the studio and
01:49on stage. I love it because it's sort of very clean for a while then you get up here it gets dirty and
01:54overcharged and it's kind of great. You could almost just only, I could imagine just doing gigs with only that.
02:01The Double Down pedal's single input jack splits your signal into two separate outputs,
02:06each with its own gain control, where you can balance the volumes of two amps or where you can
02:11push up to 26 dB of signal boosting power. You'll notice on the left side of the pedal is a phase
02:18switch that adds a pronounced stereophonic effect by inverting the phase of the second output signal.
02:24And on the right side is a buffer switch so that you can choose between true bypass and buffered bypass
02:29switching. So for my setup I have two super amps. One which is a 1x15 speaker and the other combo
02:36over here which is a 1x12. So let's hear both of these dual amps right now without engaging the Double Down.
02:44Here's what it sounds like.
03:01So let's have some fun with the Double Down. In one amp going through the Double Down I have a fuzz and a chorus and in the other amp I have a reverb.
03:08So when I engage both you get to hear like this myriad of great tone.
03:16Thank you
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