New Pedal: Mu-FX Boostron 3

A power trio of pedals, the Boostron 3 from Mu-FX (owned by west coast designer Mike Beigel, founder of stompbox pioneer Mu-Tron) totes three classic circuit designs in a compact, pedalboard-friendly housing. This versatile standalone pedal includes circuits emulating the Alembic Stratoblaster clean boost (here named “Blaster”), the Dan Armstrong Squeezer compressor (here called “Squeezer”), and the  beloved ProCo Rat (here referred to as “Slacker”).

The guitar’s signal flows through the boost circuit first. While this is the only not footswitch-able effect of the three, there is a true bypass on/off toggle switch for it. Second in line is the compressor, with controls for amount of compression (Juice) and output level, always useful to get back the volume “stolen” by the taming of the tone’s dynamics. The last stage is the Rat-like distortion, complete with bass frequency switch and diode options for achieving different tones.

One of the coolest features of this stompbox is the on-board effects loop insert point after the boost and before the compression for integrating other pedals into the chain. The Boostron 3 has all basic guitar signal processing needs covered and is a solid choice for virtually any type of rock’n’roll guitarist. Check out the video below for some tones! –Brandon Stoner