Mad Professor Super Black

The Mad Professor Super Black is an overdrive pedal from Mad Professor that puts a 1960s Fender Blackface amp, preamp and all, on a pedalboard. Announced in December 2019, it is an amp-in-a-box design: Mad Professor says the "whole amp signal path is replicated" inside the unit, aiming to recreate the tone of the 1960s Fender Blackface, the punchy, mid-scooped, sparkling, chimey clean tone those amplifiers are known for¹. On top of the preamp section it carries a second overdrive, inherited from Mad Professor's Sweet Honey Overdrive, on its own footswitch²³.

A Fender Blackface preamp in a pedal

The Super Black recreates the valve circuitry of the Black Face Fender amps from the '60s and their classic mid-scooped tone³. Where a typical overdrive pedal clips the signal somewhere along the way, Mad Professor's approach here is to model the whole amplifier signal path, so the pedal behaves like the front end of a vintage combo rather than a stompbox bolted onto one¹.

Delicious Audio describes the result as the punchy, mid-scooped and sparkling chimey clean tone that Fender Blackface amplifiers are known and famous for³. Guitar World's Alex Lynham, reviewing the later Mini version, found it has a punchy, vintage voicing and can be used as a preamp as well as a standalone boost, pre or drive pedal⁵.

Two footswitches: Blackface preamp and Sweet Honey drive

The original Super Black is a two-footswitch pedal. The main switch engages the Blackface preamp section; a secondary footswitch accesses a switchable overdrive that runs in front of the main effect¹. That overdrive is inherited from Mad Professor's Sweet Honey OD, so a player gets two of the company's circuits in one box, with the drive stage stackable on top of the preamp³.

Guitar World's review notes the Mini is a stripped-down version of this original, which also contained the Sweet Honey drive on its own footswitch⁵.

Controls and the bass cut and compression switches

The Super Black carries eight tone-shaping controls: Bass, Middle, Treble, Gain, Volume and Presence knobs, plus two mini toggle switches for Bass Cut and Compression⁴.

The two mini switches, one for bass and one for compression, are designed to account for the variation in amounts of low end and compression present in variously sized original Blackface amps². Delicious Audio reports they add tone variations found in some Black Face models³, which lets a player nudge the pedal toward the specific vintage amp character they are after.

Using it as a preamp into an effects loop

The pedal can function either as a standard drive pedal in front of an amplifier or as a preamp that runs straight into the return of an amp's effects loop¹. That second mode is the point of replicating the whole amp signal path: into a loop return, or into a cabinet or amp simulation, the Super Black stands in for the entire front end of a Blackface combo¹.

Guitar World's Alex Lynham reported that, like with the real amps, the Mini works well as a pre, and that he mainly ran it into a full Mesa stack emulation⁵.

The Super Black Mini

In 2026 Mad Professor released the Super Black Mini, a compact version of the original mid-sized unit. The Mini drops the Sweet Honey overdrive section but keeps all eight essential tone-shaping controls, including the Bass Cut and Compression switches⁶. It was redesigned with increased headroom and a higher output level compared to the original, which Delicious Audio says lets the signature sparkly, percussive cleans come through at higher levels⁶.

The Mini is part of Mad Professor's factory series manufactured in Taiwan⁷, in a black hammered metal casing with an off-white typeface color scheme that Guitar World called simple and classic⁵. It launched at a US street price of $219, with a suggested retail price of €219⁷; Guitar World lists the launch price as $219 / £174 / €219⁵.

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