Marshall Blues Breaker

The Marshall Blues Breaker is a low-gain overdrive pedal that Marshall released in the early 1990s, designed to inject a bit of a mid-60s Marshall amp vibe into your sound¹². It was not a hit at launch: the original English-made "black box" version was discontinued shortly after due to poor sales³. But over time word of its reputation spread⁴, and today it sits behind a whole family of popular overdrives, from the Analog Man King Of Tone to the JHS Morning Glory.

The pedal takes its name from the Marshall Blues Breaker amp, the combo version of the JTM45, which was given the name due to its use by Eric Clapton when he played with John Mayall & the Blues Breakers⁵. Like a Klon, the pedal is a low gain/boost design based on that Marshall Model 1962 "Bluesbreaker" amp⁴.

What it does to your sound

On That Pedal Show, Mick Taylor and Dan Steinhardt described the original pedal as low output and quite warm, with a chewy mid-range, and noted that it retains some bottom end clean so neck pickup low notes keep their definition⁷. Guitar.com's reviewer recalled the original 90s pedal's "sweet edge-of-breakup tones"⁸. Delicious Audio describes the early '90s circuit as a soft-clipping design with a broad midrange emphasis⁹.

The pedal is also physically chunky by modern standards: it has top mounted jacks and, as the That Pedal Show hosts put it, the pedal is fat and takes up more pedalboard real estate than a modern compact enclosure⁷.

The controls

The Blues Breaker keeps it to three knobs¹⁰:

One quirk drives much of the pedal's modding culture: the gain pot rolls off treble as it is turned down, which is why it gets modded and why clones appeared⁷. By modern pedal standards the useful settings can be extreme: on That Pedal Show the hosts ran volume at 10, gain at 2:00 and tone at 3:00 for a pushed clean sound⁷.

The reissue

Marshall reissued the Blues Breaker in 2023, alongside the Guv'nor, Drivemaster and Shredmaster². The reissue is sold as the Mk I Blues Breaker "Vintage Reissue", complete with box, manual and a detail shot of the internal circuit¹².

Reviewers who tried it were positive. MusicRadar's demo report concluded: "In short, it sounds like a Blues Breaker, giving a spanky Stratocaster single-coil that extra bounce and lo-gain juice"¹². Luca, quoted in the same piece, said "The pedal sounds amazing, and I hope everyone can get it soon!"¹²

What an original costs

Originals are no longer made, so prices come from the used market and vary with condition and year¹³⁶¹²:

• Guitar World: a vintage MkI costs about $600 or more (2023)¹⁴
• JHS Pedals' video: 700 bucks, a thousand dollars with the box (2022)⁶
• MusicRadar: 600 to 700 quid on the vintage market in excellent condition (2023)¹²
• That Pedal Show: British ones around 5 to 600 quid; the host paid 250 for a 1996 Korean one on reverb.com (2024)⁷

The same That Pedal Show episode noted you could have got a modern reissue, "which is exactly the same apparently", for about 129 pounds⁷.

The circuit's lineage

The Blues Breaker circuit has spawned many clones down the years, including the King of Tone, JHS Morning Glory and Wampler Pantheon, and pretty much all of the big manufacturers do a Blues Breaker evolution⁷. That Pedal Show calls the Marshall Blues Breaker the most important ancestor of the King Of Tone family¹⁵, and describes the King of Tone as "somewhat distantly born of the blues breaker"¹⁶. Vintage Guitar reported that Scott's idea behind the JHS Morning Glory was to tweak the original English-made "black box" Marshall Blues Breaker overdrive¹⁷, and Delicious Audio places the Morning Glory at the top of its roundup of Blues Breaker clones and variants¹⁸.

What reviewers said

The pedal was not immediately appreciated at launch, but over time word of its reputation spread⁴. Demand rocketed when John Mayer revealed his admiration for it⁴: Origin Effects notes that in 2005 Mayer was spotted using a Blues Breaker in his rig, and that the pedal was featured heavily on the album Continuum and the subsequent tour⁵.

In a head-to-head against the Boss BD-2w Blues Driver, That Pedal Show's Mick Taylor said he loves the Blues Breaker and would choose it over the BD-2 every day of the week, and by some margin⁷¹⁹.

Click to load

In that episode the hosts compared a '90s Marshall BluesBreaker with a Boss BD-2w Blues Driver, and went on to look at the latest evolutions of the BluesBreaker design from Keeley and Origin Effects¹⁹.

Josh Scott of JHS Pedals has covered the pedal's history on his channel, calling it "the amazing english made blues breaker" and discussing the prices originals now command⁶.

Click to load

Videos

Click to load

Click to load

Click to load

Questions