Mooer Red Truck

The Unit comes with its own handy carry case. The switches and controls are fairly sturdy, with bright LED lights for dark stage environments. My only complaint is that the tuner is a little blurry and may be hard to see in certain stage conditions.

PROS:

Small all-in-one pedalboard solution

Affordable

Highly useable sounds

Versatile

CONS:

Very sensitive control parameters, might may be difficult to control when on stage and looking to tweak on the fly

Tuner LED a little blurry

Guitar Interactive star rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

MSRP £229 (UK)  $249 (US)

Mooer has been on the front line of the mini pedal takeover of the last few years, creating countless small and compact, versatile solutions for small pedalboards with considerations made for the practical use of the gigging guitar player. In this review, Sam Bell takes a look at an all-in-one compact solution for the traveling musician, the Mooer Red Truck.

Mooer Red Truck is fundamentally an entire pedalboard in one compact unit. Powered by one 9 volt power supply, this unit includes 5 foot-switchable pedals and a tuner, all based on Mooers own single pedals. The effect types themselves are the most common found effects that professional guitarists use in recording and gigging situations. These 5 pedals have many different options as well as we will look into here and on the video review making this unit very versatile. To be clear the unit is designed to be used as a pedalboard with an amp, not necessarily as an amp/fx/cab direct solution.

The Features:

The Red Truck features an input, output, headphones out and a very important FX Loop option where you can either put more pedals into the chain. Or you can run it straight through Input>Output>Amp. The first effect in the chain is the pure boost, this isn’t foot-switchable, but works on a toggle switch. This feature adds up to 20db of clean boost to your signal which you can EQ with a treble and bass control. The second effect and the first switchable pedal is the Drive pedal, this works just like a classic drive pedal, adding some gain and two more EQ options to the table. The next pedal is Distortion, which has a mid-boost toggle switch, 3 band EQ, level and gain controls.

Next up is the Modulation pedal which features 3/4 different styles of modulation: Phaser, Tremolo and Chorus/Flanger. This pedal has a rate, level and depth control and a subdivision selector for further control of the timing of the modulation effect. Following this pedal, we have a Delay pedal which can be switched between Digital, Analog, and Echo. There is a level, feedback and time control on this pedal and a subdivision selector for further tweaking of the delay. This pedal works in conjunction with the tuner pedal which functions as a tap tempo for the delay effect. (the tuner is engaged when holding down the tuner switch). The final pedal in the chain is a reverb pedal which features 6 controls that really help you shape the sound with even more modulation options. One of the unique reverb features in the shimmer control which creates a pitch shifted effect (of an octave) in the ambiance of the reverb, very cool! These pedals can be used in LIVE mode just like a real pedal board would be used, or in pre-set mode where you can save your settings for the chain of pedals and select whole different sounds with one footswitch.

The Build:

The pedal is fairly light and could easily be transported in a gig bag, but not so light that you could accidentally kick it around the stage. The Unit comes with its own handy carry case. The switches and controls are fairly sturdy, with bright LED lights for dark stage environments. My only complaint is that the tuner is a little blurry and may be hard to see in certain stage conditions.

The Sounds:

The reverb and delays sound great, very usable; you have to be very careful with how far you tweak the controls on certain parameters as it’s very sensitive. The distortion and drive is usable and quite versatile in terms of going from a vintage sound to a more 80s hard rock tone. I also loved the modulation; it has a very 80s edge to it in terms of the chorus/phase sounds, the tremolo has a modern feel to it also.

In Summary:

This is a very affordable pedal, with tons of great features, good value for money.  The sounds are not the best in the world however they are extremly usable and would make for good consideration for the semi-pro musician looking for a transportable and versatile solution for their pedal board tones.

SPECS

1/4’ signal input audio interface

44.1K sampling rate

370 mm (D) X 96 mm (W) X 51 mm (H)

1200g

For more information, please visit:

www.mooer.com