Marshall 1959 Super Lead Pedal vs Friedman, Bogner, Ramble FX + Tone City | Plexi Pedal Shootout!

Today we’re comparing five Marshall In A Box Plexi-type overdrive pedals: the new Marshall 1959 Super Lead, the Bogner La Grange, the Tone City Golden Plexi V2, the Friedman Dirty Shirley, and the Ramble FX Marvel Drive V3!

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Get these pedals at Thomann (EU): https://thmn.to/thocf/9c0elp4kug
Or at Sweetwater (USA): https://sweetwater.sjv.io/dOVB9W
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The Marshall rock and roll sound is one of guitar music’s most iconic: thick, rich and powerful, it’s a tone prized among guitarists worldwide for good reason. That’s why so many pedal companies make their own take on the Marshall overdrive sound – even Marshall themselves!

The Marshall 1959 Super Lead pedal came out in early 2025. I bought one, and (spoilers!) love it. It’s a great take on the classic Plexi sound, and super fun, while also being well priced at around $149/€139. And the next natural step was to compare it to my other favorite Plexi pedals!

First up is my favorite, the Bogner La Grange. This – sadly now discontinued – beast of an overdrive pedal has so many different Marshall tones in it, and they’re all great. It goes from low gain crunch to high gain madness with ease, and the Variac control will even give you more of a modded Marshall Eddie Van Halen vibe. The La Grange has myriad other tone shaping controls too, and it also has an independent Boost, which you can run together with the drive side of the pedal, or on its own.

Next up is the baby of the bunch – both in terms of price and size. However, you should underestimate the $60/€60 Tone City Golden Plexi 2 at your peril, because it’s an absolute mini monster of a hot-rodded Plexi! It only has the three controls – Tone, Gain and Volume – but it’s surprisingly versatile and bags of fun for cheap.

Fourth on the list today is the Friedman Dirty Shirley, which is usually thought of as being a flavor of modded Plexi (although you’ll hear internet wisdom that it’s partly based on the JCM 800 and JTM45 amps too). The Dirty Shirley pedal is the stompbox version of the Dirty Shirley amp, and it also provides a massive range of thick rock tones thanks to its versatile control set.

The last pedal in the lineup today is another favorite of mine: it’s the Ramble FX Marvel Drive V3. Like the La Grange, this pedal is no more – Ramble FX closed down a few years ago following the untimely death of owner Tim Krueger – but it’s 100% worth seeking out on the used market if you love this flavor of overdrive. Very similar to the Marshall 1959 in terms of controls, the Marvel Drive V3 also lets you run it at either 9 volts, or 18 volts – for more headroom.

So, the big questions are: how well will the Marshall compare to these other Marshall In A Box pedals? Does it win in terms of tones and flexibility, or do the others beat it? And… is the best Marshall In A Box pedal actually a Marshall now?! That’s what we’re about to find out!

In the video, I run an AC/DC inspired classic rock loop through the pedals and into my Hughes & Kettner AmpMan Classic amp. This gives us the chance to really tweak the knobs on the five pedals and see how they stack up tonally.

Let me know which your favorite is in the comments, and also let me know if you have any other Marshall pedals that I should try next!

Here are some links to the various parts of the video:

00:00 Intro and what we’re doing today
01:07 Marshall 1959 Super Lead specs and info
01:32 Bogner La Grange specs and info
02:50 Tone City Golden Plexi 2 specs and info
03:24 Friedman Dirty Shirley pedal specs and info
04:18 Ramble FX Marvel Drive V3 specs and info
05:08 Today’s rig and plan
06:03 The Loop!

My setup was as follows: I ran the pedals into the front end of my Hughes & Kettner AmpMan Classic pedal amp, then went from the Red Box DI straight into my Focusrite Scarlett 2i4, which went into Logic Pro X. That’s it. No post-processing on the sounds was done. Oh, and I used my Boss RC-10R to record and play the loops. Here’s some links to those bits of gear:

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At Thomann: https://thmn.to/thocf/jkhog8l06m
At Sweetwater: https://sweetwater.sjv.io/LXqdE0
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Enjoy!

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Backing music from the YouTube Audio Library: Duck In The Alley – TrackTribe.

#Marshall #MarshallAmps #MarshallPedals #MarshallPlexi #Marshall1959 #MarshallSuperLead #OverdrivePedal #MarshallInABox #MIAB

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Видео Marshall 1959 Super Lead Pedal vs Friedman, Bogner, Ramble FX + Tone City | Plexi Pedal Shootout! канала Rich. Words. Music.