SD-9 Review

One of Maxon's most esoteric models, the SD-9 has gained a huge cult following since its initial release in the early 1980s. The SD-9 has long been prized for its ability to provide an immense range of distorted tones, from punchy overdrive to blistering fuzz, all with full-frequency response and minimal tonal coloration.

Ease of Use:	10
Sound:	10
Reliability:	9
Impression:	9
Overall rating:	8.3
Reviewer rating:	9.5
Users rating:	7
Votes:	3

overall: 9.5

Reviewed by: dorteater, on august 09, 2008

Price paid: C$ 170

Ease of Use: The Maxon Sonic Distortion is possibly the easiest pedal I've ever used, you have your tone nob your distortion nob and your volume nob. It runs on batteries or you can buy the cable that goes with it either way it's still pretty basic. The manual came with every guitar effects pedal that Maxon makes in it and the instructions for them but every product only has around 2-3 pages not that you would really even need to read it in order to figure out this pedal. // 10

Sound: I use a Jackson DKMG dinky with EMG Pick ups and a 100 watt marshal solid state amp. I usually play funk, rock, some metal but not really and allot of prog rock which this pedal is amazing for as well as jam band style music. The pedal itself is not really that noisy at all it doesn't add any fuzz really unless you have shitty pickups and it comes out noisy. The distortion always sounds amazing from the lowest distortion to the highest tone it is definitely always consistent in it's sound. You can't get the sound of every artist out there but the true by pass helps with the clean channel if your just using the pedal as your only distortion because it pretty much just turns off the distortiona dn sends your sound through untouched. // 10

Reliability & Durability: I could probably count on this pedal to take me anywhere how ever I would need to have extra batteries or cables since the cables aren't always reliable but that is the same with any pedal's cable I guess. I definitely use it in gigs with out any backups at all because it just sounds way better then any other distortion pedal I've ever tried before and is a lot heavier then the over Drive version of the pedal. // 9

Impression: I usually play rock and jam style music with this pedal because it has that great classic crunchy noise with the sick hot distortion to it. If you don't want high gain I suggest not using it with a Marshall amp because they add distortion to everything pretty much. I've been playing for 6 years now and I own a few DigiTech pedals but I don't even use those any more since they sound sooo electrically altered and don't give you real guitar sound. I really love the sound of the settings, you can change the sound soo easily by just turning up the tone or turning down the distortion it's actually amazing how many different sounds you can generate with just 2 knobs. I wish it had 2 types of distortion one that was less intense because it's kind of right in the middle of heavy and light and one that was more intense but I still lvoe it for what it is. // 9