Majik Box Filthy Lucre

The Majik Box Filthy Lucre is a distortion pedal built around the sound of a modified amp. Majik Box describes it as a "modified amp inspired distortion pedal," meant to be placed in front of the clean setting of any amp to produce what the company calls "highly articulate, modified amp distortion tones heard on many legendary records"¹. It sits in the same family as the company's distortion pedals, alongside the earlier Majik Box Krush, the Munky signature design.

The pedal began shipping on May 1, 2013, at a street price of $239.99¹. A prototype had already drawn attention that winter: Majik Box says a prototype Filthy Lucre "proved to be the hit of the Majik Box NAMM show booth in January," where it was demonstrated by Doug Aldrich and Vic Johnson¹.

The circuit and its lineage

The Filthy Lucre's inspiration is the amp modification culture of the late seventies and early eighties. Majik Box says the pedal is "inspired by the modification work of legendary amp mod gurus from the seventies and early eighties," the players and techs who hot-rodded stock amps into the higher-gain, more articulate designs that shaped hard rock and heavy records of that era¹. Rather than modifying an amp itself, the pedal aims to put that kind of circuit change in a box you can carry to any gig.

The intended use is straightforward: set your amp clean, put the Filthy Lucre in front of it, and use the pedal for the gain. Majik Box describes the result as "highly articulate, modified amp distortion tones heard on many legendary records"¹.

Controls and construction

Majik Box gives the pedal what it calls "a full complement of controls providing amp-like manipulation of gain and tone"¹. Vintage Guitar's news item, covering the pedal at the same time, describes the controls the same way: "Its controls provide amp-like manipulation of gain and tone"². In practice that means the gain and tone shaping are laid out the way the knobs on a modified amp head would be, rather than as a single distortion knob with a tone filter tacked on.

The build is part of the pitch. Vintage Guitar described the Filthy Lucre among "hand-wired/hand-built" distortion pedals², and Majik Box states it is "hand-wired and hand-built in Torrance, CA"¹. True bypass operation is part of the specification as announced¹, so the pedal stays out of the signal path when switched off.

Where it sits among Majik Box pedals

The Filthy Lucre is a distortion pedal, but it is not built around one player's tone: its reference point is modified amps. Majik Box describes it as having "a full complement of controls providing amp-like manipulation of gain and tone"¹, and its controls are intended to give amp-like manipulation of gain and tone². For a player comparing it with other Majik Box distortion pedals, the Filthy Lucre is the company's take on the modded-amp formula rather than a signature design.

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