Hand-built in the UK, the Muir Audio Design Morphtone EQ is a peculiar and powerful take on the dual parametric equalizer pedal designed for guitar and bass players.
The basic approach here is to have two very different parametric EQ stages that operate in parallel on a wide range of frequencies and that are built to complement each other by doing different things.
The Blue channel at the bottom is the simpler of the two, only featuring a Tone and Depth control. Tone operates mostly on mid to low frequencies, selecting the frequency to boost (there’s no cutting on this side), while Depth sets the amount of boost to be applied to that frequency, using a rather wide Q (aka EQ curve).
The Red channel is a lot more tweakable, thanks to its two knobs (Freq and Width) and two toggle switches that do the following:
- lo|mid|hi toggle: selects the range of the frequency to be boosted or cut (lows, mids, or highs).
- notch|peak toggle: selects whether the selected frequency is getting boosted or attenuated.
The two channels are followed by a Morph control, which allows you to blend them to taste.
We were a little confused about how the amount of boost or attenuation is applied to the Red channel, so we reached out to company owner/designer Colin, who explained it this way:
The amount of each EQ is set by a combination of both the ‘morph’ control and the lower blue EQ ‘depth’ control. The morph control does indeed blend between all upper / red EQ and all lower / blue EQ and all shades in-between – and given that the depth of the lower EQ is also adjustable right down to zero/flat, the EQ can be morphed / mixed / blended to adjust the amount of both the upper and the lower EQ stages with just those two controls. It is probably more intuitive to mess around with than describe, but the upper red EQ stage does not require a separate level control for this reason.
A useful benefit of this control approach is that once you have each side of the EQ set up to work in a frequency areas of interest, morphing between the two EQ curves allows potential fine tuning of desired EQ balance with just a single knob.
The pedal has a host of other features including not one but two FX loops (one pre EQ Insert and the other is post EQ) and a -10|0|+10 pad at the input stage that allows compatibility with all sorts of inputs.
We added it to our article about the best EQ pedals.
Muir Audio Design Morphtone, Builder’s Notes
Morphtone EQ is a unique high performance dual parametric equaliser pedal designed for guitarists and bass players. The intuitive Morph control offers a quick and effective way to dial in a great instrument tone.
Morphing EQ
Morphtone has two parametric EQ stages, each with an individual character, designed to complement each other perfectly. The Morph control allows quick precision dialling in of a perfect blend of each EQ stage.Pre & Post Effect Loop
Morphtone EQ can be used with overdrive/distortion /fuzz pedals in the pre and/or post send and return loop to make unique ‘Meta Pedal’ coombinations for shape tone in ways that your pedal alone could not achieve. Check out some of our demo videos to see how this works.Clean Boost
WIth the Morph control and depth control fully counter clockwise, Morph EQ offers up to +28dB of clean boost – and you can also sprinkle some magic morphtone EQ on the booster cake and discover the perfect treble or mid focus boost tone for your amplifier.Hand Built in U.K.
Morphtone EQ is custom designed and hand built in the UK and is available for order directly from Muir Audio Design
Product Specifications:
- Operating Voltage : 9-18V DC mains adaptor (> 50mA d.c. rating)
- or 9V PP3 Battery (not included)
- Current Consumption: 28 mA typical
- Battery Life: 25 hours typical (alkaline PP3)
- Power Connector: Standard 2.1mm centre + pin barrel (Boss/Ibanez style)
- Design: 100% analog signal path
- Control Knobs: freq, width, tone, depth, morph, level
- Control Switches: freq range, notch/peak, input pad
- LED status Indicator: Effect On / Effect Bypassed
- Bypass Type: True Bypass (unbuffered)
- Input Impedance: 1.1 Meg Ohms
- Output Impedance: 100 Ohms
- Inputs/Outputs: signal in, out, pre send, pre ret, post send, post ret (all 1/4″ Mono Jack)
- Noise (EQ flat, 0dB gain): -104 dB
- Distortion: 0.02%
- Frequency Response : +/- 1dB 20Hz – 20kHz (EQ Flat)
- Max Gain : +28dB (EQ Flat)
- Input Headroom : 6-12V pk-pk
- Upper EQ Width Max Q: 32
- Upper EQ LO centre freq range: 33 Hz – 410 Hz
- Upper EQ MID centre freq range: 200 Hz – 2.3 kHz
- Upper EQ HI centre freq range: 1.85 kHz – 22 kHz
- Lower Wide EQ max tone depth: -20dB
- Dimensions (Max): 154mm x 126mm x 59mm
- Dimensions (Enclosure Only): 146mm x 122mm x 40mm
- Weight: 0.61Kg
- Accessories Included: product leaflet, rubber foot x 4
