Mu-Tron III

I use either an early 70s hot rodded silver face twin or my 90's era red knob evil twin and the mutron just sings through either.  It can be a little noisy but with a chain of about 10 pedals I can't expect it to be noiseless.  I generally play either a Custom Tele with Lace Sensors or my wonderful Modulus Genesis 2 with 3 single coil hotrails. My rig is typically guitar > Proco Rat2> TC Electronics Sustainer/EQ > Morley Wah > Digitech Whammy 4 > TC Electronics Chorus (+Ring modulator, Flanger)> Dan Electro Pepperoni Phaser > Dan Electro Grilled Cheese Octave Divider> Mutron III > Ibanez Autofilter> Alesis Nanoverb set to Hall 2 reverb> Amp. Easily renders the Garcia thing and it sounds greatest with some octave or whammy 2 thrown in the mix.

Once I had it fully tweaked and set up with an external power supply it has worked wonderfully and is indispensible.  It could benefit from a true bypass footswitch but I generally turn my volume pot down before kicking this in. I have and use simultaneously my back-up: the very good Ibanez Autofilter.

It takes a bit of tweaking but you can really get a thick vowelly sound with this device.  I bought mine in Vienna, Austria sometime around 1989 and had it tweeked by a famous (not to be named) amp tech in Northern California.   He made it usable for a cost larger than what I paid for this unit - but the thing still chowed batteries like a hog eats slop so I stopped using it and began to use my old Ibanez Auto-Filter which is suspiciously similar to the Mutron circuit.  The tones of the Ibanez are close but lack the creamy, overwhelming embrace of the Mutron.  Eventually I found myself a neighborhood electronic genius who was able to devise a handbuilt power supply so I am once again warping minds with the Mutron.  I acutally use it in the same loop as the Auto Filter so I have two options.  The weird thing is, though the Mutron takes 2 9 volt batteries, yet it is not an 18 volt device.  Oddly, it takes positive juice from one battery and negative from the other so you need a very hard to find positive/negative 9 volt transformer to craft usable DC power supply.  Other than this you'll be shelling out big coin for batteries if you can't find an original PS-2 power supply with it's funky 3 pin adapter... 

OUT a luck here... The company that reissued this device changed the arcane power supply circuit to AC and doesn't support the old 9v+/9v- problem of the vintage unit. I have a Viet Nam Era Radio engineer in my neighborhood who can fix anything and he's done wonders with this unit.

I play psychedelic era blues, jamband, hippy music + country, funk, reggae, that Dead/Phish/Floyd/Neil Young/ Dylan / The Band / Hot Tuna / kinda stuff plus many derivative originals and this unit is the bomb.  I've been playing more than 25 years and my collection of outboard effects has gotten larger than I can use.  It would suck to lose this after all I've put into it - but the Electro Harmonics and Lovetone filters seem worthy of investigation.  I like this unit when it's tweaked just right and provides that perfectly smooth, creamy vowel like tonality to my sound.  It can however sound too derivative and hackneyed if employed too often.

Well, mine is around 25 years old and it's pretty solid. I wouldn't worry about it. If it ever does crap out, Lsound or CAE sound can rebuild it for ya. 

Fairly easy to use. Just start turning knobs until you hear something you like. :-) For your classic filter sound, start with the "mode" set to "LP" (low pass), set your peak and gain to 4 o'clock, range to low, and drive to up. tweak from there

You can usually get these for around 200-250 off of ebay, which is a lot of money. But, considering I've been through: Qtron, Maxon AF9, Boss Twah, DOD Filter And none of them did it for me. I could have bought two Mutrons for the money I've spent on all of these copies! If you're considering getting one, just do it. worst case scenario, you'll find one for 200 and have to drop another 100 or so into it to refurb. But, at least you *know* you've got the lord king god of all filters. What else is close to it? Probably the Qtron or the Maxon AF9. I really dig the AF9. It's really close to the Mutron, maybe a bit gnarlier. But, then again, why pay 200 bucks for a Maxon copy of a Mutron when you can get the real deal for the same price. I dig it.

First let me tell you that this pedal is almost 30 years old and this the blueprint of funky envelope filters. I also have an original Mutron lll+ reissue and the vintage pedal is more complex, wet , greasy , funky etc. Some reviewers say that the original is a bit noisier than the original, Not mine. I guess it depends on what the vintage pedal has been through.I play various Fender basses thru a Eden Highwayman rig. It sounds great in the guitar input but you can also run the effect wet/dry thru the effects loop. either way you still have great bottom end.

Like I said it is 30 years old and still funky working!

Let me start by saying this is a very interactive organic envelope filter, so you have to tweak the controls for the sounds that you like and the type of instrument that you play. The filter is touch sensitive to your playing dynamics, this is what makes it the ultimate FUNK Machine.

IF you want to have a great funky tone and alot of fun do yourself a favour and find yourself a vintage Mutron.