MXR Torino Overdrive

The MXR Torino is an overdrive pedal from MXR that pairs a gain-and-volume overdrive circuit with a three-band EQ, so you can shape the pedal's voice to sit with your own rig rather than just layer a fixed tone on top of it. It began life as the MXR Custom Shop Il Torino Overdrive, designed by Italian boutique builder Carlo Sorasio, and was later revived as the limited-edition Gran Torino Boost Overdrive, which MXR describes as amplifying and enriching the natural sound of your rig¹.

What it does

The Torino family sits in the overdrive-and-boost territory: it can push an amp with a clean boost that carries rich sustain, or add smooth, mellow overdrive on top. Guitar World, quoting MXR's own description of the Gran Torino, says it "amplifies and enriches the natural sound of your rig with the warm, organic sound of classic tube amps"⁵. RockBoard's PedalPedia lists it simply as an "OVERDRIVE BOOSTER"⁶.

The three-band EQ is the pedal's defining feature. Delicious Audio's Paolo De Gregorio noted that designer Carlo Sorasio "added a 3-band EQ section" to the original Custom Shop design⁷, and Guitar World's review of the Il Torino described it as "a three-band EQ section so you can finely shape the sound of the overdrive"⁸. That makes the Torino more flexible than a one- or two-knob overdrive: instead of living with the pedal's fixed midrange character, you can cut or boost lows, mids and highs to match your guitar and amp.

History: from Custom Shop to Gran Torino

The pedal started as the MXR CSP033 Custom Shop Il Torino Overdrive, announced in November 2014 as "the MXR Custom Shop showroom's latest addition"³⁹. Vintage Guitar magazine covered the launch as a Custom Shop overdrive release², and Guitar Interactive Magazine reported it shipping with "smooth, organic grit" in a "sturdy MXR box with all the high quality jacks and switches to make it last on the road"¹⁰.

On the JHS Pedals YouTube channel, Josh Scott traced the pedal's background in a 2022 review video: the Torino and its sibling the Il Diavolo Overdrive date to 2015, the design came from Carlo Sarasio, and the project was started by Jimmy Dunlop with lead engineer Sam McCrae⁴.

Controls

The Gran Torino's controls, per the MXR manual:

What reviewers said

Guitar World's review of the Il Torino found it "serves up smooth, organic grit with the controls you need to adapt its sound to your carefully constructed signal chain"⁸.

Premier Guitar's reviewer connected the pedal's character to its LED clipping:

That matters in practice: a pedal with extra headroom stays cleaner at a given gain setting and reacts well to playing dynamics, which suits players who want the pedal to respond to how hard they dig in rather than compress everything into a uniform grit.

Josh Scott's JHS Pedals video walks through the pedal's history and design background in detail⁴:

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Where it fits on a board

As an overdrive with a full three-band EQ and a boost character, the Torino covers ground that players often split across two pedals: it can act as a clean-ish boost into a cranked amp, or as a shaped mid-gain drive in front of or after other dirt. If you are comparing it within MXR's own range, the MXR GT-OD Overdrive, the MXR Sugar Drive and the MXR Timmy are other overdrive options from the same maker, and the Il Diavolo Overdrive is its Custom Shop sibling from the same era⁴. For a wider look at the category, see Overdrive Pedals.

Videos

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