Line 6 M9 Stombox Modeler Guitar Multi Effects Pedal  

I love this unit! I've been a stompbox guy my entire career (45+ years) and have been hesitant to upgrade my set up. This unit was everything it claimed to be, great sounds, easy to operate, and reliable (so far). I took it to my gig the night I purchased it, spent about 20 minutes getting some decent sounds, and have been using every night since (5 nights a week). It's very easy to dial in the sounds you want and they stay there without having to jump through 5 menus and push 18 buttons. I am now using 5 scenes of 6 sounds each, that would be 30 pedals on the floor and a spaghetti mess of wires. One drawback, you can only combine 3 sounds at a time so if you want distortion, echo, reverb and chorus together you're out of luck (get the bigger M13 unit). I have a friend who's an alchemist of sound..his board has probably 2 dozen pedals and he conjures up crazy stuff that sound from out of this world. He would hate this unit because of the 3 sound limit, but it works great for me! It really is bonehead simple like they say on the box. The sound board operater in the show I'm in (I'ma theater musician) loves the signal I'm sending her. Always a plus.

Lots of features and tweaking ability, its like having a hundred pedals & you can use 3 at once.

Feels solid to me with its metal case and good quality sounds.

Great value becuase it truly has the sound.

Here is the scoop on this jewel. I own two limited editon tube fender amps and lots of botique pedals from makers like Wren & Cuff, Black Arts & Lovepedal etc and while the botique pedals are great, I compared them directly to the M9 and began to wonder why I spent all that money on those pedals. Sure they look cool and there is alot of hype surrounding them and their sound but seriously the M9 really sounds smoother and doesn't have that mushy bassy sound in the overdrive & distortion sounds. I also compared the spring reverb sounds to my limited edition Fender '65 Deluxe Reverb & it really had the same sound and character. Now if I only had a time machine to just buy this and the amp and not all those cool looking pedals that are all back in their boxes now, ha.

Don't forget you can combine overdrive's and distortion's to create new distortions sounds. Add in some delay or whatever and rock out. If you need more than 3 effects at a time then get the M13. Also the fuzz preset called "Fuzz Pi" sounds just like my Catlinbread Merkin Fuzz pedal.

Tons of tones with tons of tweakability.

So far so good. Only had it a few weeks

    Great sounds that you would pay tons more to get the real thing.

     It takes some tweaking but it really does have some great filters, modulation, delays ,and reverbs. The drive section is a little dry but not bad if you enhance it in the studio or when using with a tube amp (push the power section not the preamp).

     For the price I would say that this is a great little piece of equipment and definitely better than hauling a huge pedal board around. I still use other analog drive pedals but now I can use this for everything else. Just take your time and dial in your sound, you can't just plug in and expect to hit it dead on from the start.

     I love that it saves the effect where you left it. I usually use multiple settings on each pedal for different songs so I have papers with that info all over the place. Now I just use a different scene and I'm set. Nice job.

     If you hate Line 6 or fear being laughed at by your "pure tone" friends then don't buy this, but if what you want is some great sounds worth a lot more than what you pay then get it.

     I gave it a less than perfect rating because some of the sounds are too digital for me but not the majority.

Yes, the unit sounds good.  But I don't use effects all that often, and one of the footswitches broke.  A visit to Google, and I find out there are LOTS of problems with broken footswitches.  It's off warranty, and my local 'authorized repair center' has a $90 per hour bench charge.  So basically, it will cost me a lot to get it fixed.

For the amount I use the unit, a broken footswitch is pretty bad.

Tons of features.  That's why your looking.

Built Well nice and tough.  Sound Quality is good for special effects, Distortions are ok.  But will get the job done.

Tones of sounds for a great price.

This is a nice pedal.  If you don't mind digital sounding distortion this can be a all in one.  If your more into an organic tone for your distortion you'll want to use better pedals.  Reverb is ok and delay ok.  The rest are pretty close to the real deal.  I do recomend it.  If you are looking for multiple sounds.  Get a few good distortion pedals and use this for all your special effects and you won't be dissapointed.  Can you get better sounding effects?  Yes but you will pay for just 2 sounds what you pay for all of the sounds this gives.