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Broughton Audio Messenger or MXR M81

C

Cat-o-matic

Oct 1, 2015
15
9
35
#1
Hello everybody!

I will say things straight: I am not a particularly good player, nor do I look for a really nuanced tone. I play a passive PJ bass, I like its natural tone, and when I play through an amp, I ususally push the mids a bit and that's it.

I now need to play ampless, and I need a DI box that is relatively transparent and has mids control, preferably with selectable frequency. I would like to dial a tone for a place where I am playing today and forget about that.

My other pedals are Coda Effects Black Hole (emulates preamp section of Sunn Model T) as an always-on for some grit and also harder drive at times + DOD Carcosa for fuzz tones.

I have used MXR M81 for some time (had to sell it during a harder financial period in my life) and I quite liked it - a good workhorse. Now, when I need to buy me a Preamp/DI again, I was thinking to just buy it. Then I heard about Broughton Audio Messenger, which seems a more advanced version of M81 - transparent clean preamp with good mids control, XLR output, but also boasting a HPF, LPF, and headphone output (which is a plus for me when practising at home). Messenger also costs twice as much.

What do you think? Are those pedals comparible, and if so, are those additions worth paying more?

Thank you in advance!
 
#2
Cat-o-matic said:
Hello everybody!

I will say things straight: I am not a particularly good player, nor do I look for a really nuanced tone. I play a passive PJ bass, I like its natural tone, and when I play through an amp, I ususally push the mids a bit and that's it.

I now need to play ampless, and I need a DI box that is relatively transparent and has mids control, preferably with selectable frequency. I would like to dial a tone for a place where I am playing today and forget about that.

My other pedals are Coda Effects Black Hole (emulates preamp section of Sunn Model T) as an always-on for some grit and also harder drive at times + DOD Carcosa for fuzz tones.

I have used MXR M81 for some time (had to sell it during a harder financial period in my life) and I quite liked it - a good workhorse. Now, when I need to buy me a Preamp/DI again, I was thinking to just buy it. Then I heard about Broughton Audio Messenger, which seems a more advanced version of M81 - transparent clean preamp with good mids control, XLR output, but also boasting a HPF, LPF, and headphone output (which is a plus for me when practising at home). Messenger also costs twice as much.

What do you think? Are those pedals comparible, and if so, are those additions worth paying more?

Thank you in advance!
Click to expand...
Messenger is really hard not to love of you are looking for a clean preamp/di, and super flexible tone shaping.

HPF and LPF are game changers if you’ve never used them.
 
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#3
The messenger is great. I didn’t care for how clean it was but it was very well built and the controls were intuitive and worked like a charm. The filters are really useful live. But they can be hard to come by and depending on the person selling, ridiculously overpriced. I think either would serve you well. The Darkglass Element has a lot of cool tone shaping, impulse responses, DI, and dual headphone outs and an aux in via Bluetooth, which is my favorite feature. I really like mine and you can find them used pretty regularly and they upside is they aren’t price gouge-able like the Broughton can be sometimes. Good luck!
 
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#7
To my ear, the Messenger and M81 sound equally good. So it's just a question of, do you need the extra features of the Messenger (like the headphone amp and additional EQ)?

Oh yeah, and one perk of the M81 is that you can run it off a 9v battery, or 48v phantom power.
 
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#8
Love my Messenger and the filters and eq are great. Some here have mentioned (negatively: "painfully clean" - painfully clean...?) how clean it is - I used to use a BDDI which is anything but, but I get 'character' elsewhere now and the Messenger suits me perfectly.

As others have said though, it's not easy to come by, so rather than paying over the odds you might want to consider something that's easier to find.
 
#9
revd said:
Love my Messenger and the filters and eq are great. Some here have mentioned (negatively: "painfully clean" - painfully clean...?) how clean it is - I used to use a BDDI which is anything but, but I get 'character' elsewhere now and the Messenger suits me perfectly.

As others have said though, it's not easy to come by, so rather than paying over the odds you might want to consider something that's easier to find.
Click to expand...

I wrote “painfully clean” and I meant for better or worse (some people like pain) it’s clean. The EQ is powerful, but it’s clean…what goes in comes back out voice wise. Most gear imparts some level of flavor, messenger does not. The M81 is also clean, but it comes across (to me) as stale sounding with no life to it…the messenger is clean but has a pristine modern sound with lots of life…and the EQ and boosts shape the sound without altering the voices timbre.

sound is really hard to describe with words. If you heard the two side by side you would know what I mean (maybe).
 
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#10
cosmicevan said:
I wrote “painfully clean” and I meant for better or worse (some people like pain) it’s clean. The EQ is powerful, but it’s clean…what goes in comes back out voice wise. Most gear imparts some level of flavor, messenger does not. The M81 is also clean, but it comes across (to me) as stale sounding with no life to it…the messenger is clean but has a pristine modern sound with lots of life…and the EQ and boosts shape the sound without altering the voices timbre.

sound is really hard to describe with words. If you heard the two side by side you would know what I mean (maybe).
Click to expand...
Some people enjoying pain is an.......interesting justification, of course we use 'painfully' plus adjective in a negative way. Well on my side of the pond anyway.

Clean is clean for me but yes, I'd have to listen to both of them side by side to hear what you're hearing.
 

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