MI Audio Crunch Box

The MI Audio Crunch Box is a Marshall-like distortion pedal, described by the independent circuit archive Aion FX as a tweaked hybrid of the Marshall Guv'nor and the Marshall Bluesbreaker. It was first released in 2006, and it set out to put British high-gain amplifier tones into a single stompbox. MI Effects themselves put it plainly when the later Super Crunch Box shipped: the original "immediately transformed the smallest of rigs into a JCM800 on steroids"¹².

What it does

The Crunch Box belongs to the "amp-in-a-box" family of distortion pedals: instead of a generic gain stage, it is voiced to sound like a particular style of British amplifier pushed hard. Aion FX describes it as "a tweaked hybrid of the [Marshall Guv'nor] and [Bluesbreaker]", two Marshall-branded pedals from the late 1980s and early 1990s that players have long used for that purpose². In practice that means saturated, mid-forward high-gain tones that respond to the guitar's volume control in the way a cranked stack does.

The original circuit uses red LED clipping, the same arrangement as the first version of the pedal⁴. MI Audio also fitted an internal presence control, which the maker says "was implemented to integrate easier with every user's amp setup", letting the player adjust the top-end balance inside the pedal rather than on the face of it⁴.

From Crunch Box to Super Crunch Box

The pedal has been through at least five major versions since 2006, with the fourth and fifth renamed the Super Crunch Box². The Super Crunch Box keeps the same brief but adds a clipping selector switch, which "selects between two different clipping structures", one of them still the stock red LEDs of the original⁴. RockBoard PedalPedia describes the Super Crunch Box as "an evolution of the classic British high-gain amplifier-in-a-box distortion circuit", delivering "saturated British stack tones ranging from low-gain crunch to searing modern leads", and notes that its internal charge-pump circuitry "automatically doubles internal voltage headroom when supplied with standard power"⁵.

The two clipping modes change the character noticeably. MusicRadar's reviewer, Mike Astley-Brown, found that "with silicon clipping selected, the pedal's response becomes more dynamic and Plexi-like, while retaining that character" of mid punch the pedal is known for³. The maker adds that "the softer clipping mode, coupled with the Lo Gain Mode really provides a sparkly, break-up sound", which puts the pedal into lower-gain territory than the original ever reached⁴. A lo/hi gain switch toggles between gain settings, as Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio noted in his review⁶.

What reviewers said

MusicRadar's verdict on the Super Crunch Box was that it is "more versatile than the original", with an "amp-like dynamic response", and the reviewer found little to avoid in it overall³. MI Effects, announcing the pedal through Premier Guitar, described its range as covering "the full range of the British, wall-of-amps tone spectrum, from classic 'Plexi' amps to a 'José' modded JCM"¹. Brett Kingman, demonstrating the pedal for MI Audio, said of the original that "the original Crunch Box has been a standard go-to since its inception when face-melting-Plexi-style-distortion tones are" what a player is after⁷.

Influence and availability

The Crunch Box has been influential well beyond MI Audio's own catalog. Aion FX notes that "the Crunch Box was the inspiration for another well-known high gain pedal, the Suhr Riot", and MI Audio acknowledged as early as 2012 that the pedal "has been around for quite a few years now, and has even inspired several clones and knock-offs"²⁴.

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