Mooer Black Secret 3-stars Reviews

Very good value for money

Even though I'm not an avid user of distortion pedals, I needed to buy one for the odd function gig. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it as I won't be using it lot, so I wasn't expecting much from this pedal.

I was pleasantly surprised with the overall quality of the pedal, considering how much it costed. It serves me well for what I use it for and I'm planning on keeping it on the board.

Pros:

-very cheap

-the distortion knob provides an impressive ammount of gain if turned all the way up

-sounds really close to Proco Rat, most people probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference

-very small pedal and doesn't take up too much space in the pedalboard

Cons:

-not a very professional sound, and wouldn't recommend it for recording scenarios, as it can sound a bit muddy at times

-the filter knob doesn't do that much

-distortion knob is really big and it can sometimes be tricky to turn on the pedal without messing up your settings

Overall I recommend this pedal if your looking for something cheap or temporary as it has a good performance, but if youre looking for a legit distortion pedal, then I'd personally spend some more money in something better.

Is compact worth the compromise?

Overall sound is quite good, but:

- level and filter controls are not very linear in their response, so it's sometimes difficult to find the good spot; I have never used an original RAT, so I cannot tell for sure it is the same, but I'd bet it's because of the mini pots on this Mooer clone.

- the Turbo mode sounds good, but when engaged there is a huge increase in volume. It could have been coupled with a simple volume drop, in order to allow comparing the two sounds.

If I come back, I'd rater buy an original ProCo RAT 2.