School me on the ADA MP-1

MKibanez

MKibanez

Member
I heard a lot of goods I shold say only goods about this unit used by almost everybody in the 80's. I never used one as I wasn't in that mood in the 80's with my guitar. Can you guys tell me how it was used mostly? Was it to boost the amp ex a JCM800, or used to get distortion on the clean chanel of an amp or whatever?

Thanks to you guys
 
Into a poweramp with a BBE in between, into an amp maybe into a tube amp effects return, not the front end for distortion or whatever...
 
It's a preamp, so you run it into a power amp unit or the effects return of an amp head. This bypasses the pre-amp section of your amp head, using only the power amp.

MP-1s are pretty awesome. Paul Gilbert used to use them in Racer X (Mr. Big too? I don't recall). Kirk Hammett used them for leads during the ...Justice and Black Album days.
 
Pickup a power amp and a good rack effects unit. Then you have the 80s rock tone on lock. I actually used one throughout most of the 90s. I kinda miss that thing. Sat perfectly in the mix.
 
Make sure it is a regular "MP-1" and not an MP-2 or MP-1 classic

Great programmable pre-amp

Get a power amp or run into the effects return of a decent tube amp
 
I've had one since they came out - and I'll never get rid of it.

Though I've only ever had mine hooked up to an older Alesis 100W SS power amp (blah), but more recently a Mesa 20/20. Sounded so much better through the Mesa.
I'd love to see how it sounds through the 50 or 90 W rack power amps.
 
I had one for many years and sold it a couple years back. I found the tone from my Marshall JMP-1 to be better and I no longer use that since the Friedman.
 
As others have said, use it with a power amp (preferably tube) or slave it into the effects return of a head. I've used it both ways. My favorite is the effects return of a Marshall or similar head. The MP1 is the better unit of the three. If you buy one, they have two preamp tubes on the inside of the case, they're pretty easy to swap after you remove the 10 screws on the case. You might want to consider doing that as a sound maintenance.

It is the 80's sound, Extreme-Pornagraphiti, White Lion-Big Game, Skid Row-Skid Row, all were recorded with the same ADA MP1. Granted Wagner had golden ears for 80's tones.

If you watch the first Paul Gilbert instructional, or the Jason Becker instructional, those are both recorded using an MP1. That is the sound that you get. You can get a little more chug out of them, as referenced by the bands above, but buy and large they are hot rodded Marshall, slanted towards the upper mid range.
 
There are mods for the MP-1 out there too. If you're looking to buy, make sure you're getting what you want, either modded or stock. The Recto mod, the 3TM mod, noise mod, 3.666, a bunch more. Here's a link with some info.

http://adadepot.com/index.php?topic=148.0

Voodoo Amps does a nice MP-1 mod. Been a long time since I've heard it, but I remember it being pretty badass. Trace does good work. Looks like Voodoo doesn't do the mod anymore, but you can find them out there on the used market.

The biggest issue with the MP-1 is finding replacement parts. They tend to break down, and the parts can be hard to come by. Not impossible, but a bit annoying. If I recall correctly, the jacks on it tend to crap out pretty easily. I'm no MP-1 expert...trying to recall info I picked up 10 years ago.

I remember a guy from the Metboards way back in the day who got great tones out of a 3.666 modded MP-1. Turns it into more of a Recto feel than the stock Marshall tones.

You can get a lot done with an MP-1 and a parametric EQ in the loop. Empress makes a nice and simple ParaEQ pedal. The EQ can really help sculpt the sound and get more versatility out of it. It's a very cool rig. ADA made a rackmount graphic EQ themselves, the MQ-1. It's MIDI controllable, which is really cool. A graphic would do the job too. The MP-2 had a graphic EQ on board, if I recall correctly.

Most of the time you hear people running MP-1s into Marshall style power sections for the obvious reason. I wonder what it would sound like with other power amp tubes. 6L6s, KT88s and the like. That could make for an interesting sound!

The clean sounds are pretty great too. Spanky, chimey 80s cleans. It can be set to be squeaky almost-direct guitar clean (think early Dream Theater), or you can get a bit of grit out of it. Should work well as a pedal platform in theory.

Another suggestion, try some different tube types in it. 12AU7s perhaps.
 
Still have mine from 1989 (the B200S poweramp & MC1 MIDI controller too).

Unmodded... only thing I did was load a couple "Chinese Silver Special" 12AX7s in there.

Those were the days...
 
emperor_black":kvl5fqdo said:
Never knew that there is a ADA MP-1 pedal as well now. :)

http://www.adaamps.com/Products/ada-MP1/MP1.htm
Click to expand...
I don't think I would trust those to have the same toanz. Plus a pedal that goes for more than the programmable three channel rack unit with built-in chorus does on the used market? The MP-1's SS clean channel was solid gold in addition to the Marshall modded goodness on the tube channels.
 
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