Mako Series M1 High-Fidelity Modulation Machine Pedal Review

With versatility comes complexity

Let's get this out of the way. I have a Walrus Audio ARP-87 that I dearly love! I am huge fan. When I got the M1, I read the manual cover to cover because there are a lot of features and some require press/hold a switch while you turn a certain knob to dial in the sound you want. It's not too difficult but I've learned tat after a while I no longer remember those details and I have… read more to dig out the manual again. Others might have better retention than I do. The Good: Tons of features and sounds in a single footprint pedal. That alone is amazing. the Chorus is exceptional. I never thought I'd be into a Phase shifter sound but it is awesome. The Tremolo was not as classic as I prefer. But you can dial in some cool harmonic tremolo variations that are ethereal and nice. Still, I found this setting the most challenging to get what I want (a classic bias tremolo). The Vibe is very cool and I LOVE the Rotary sound. It can be very 'Hammond organ-ish' which is very coo;. I didn't use the filter mode much. The Bad: I found switching between presets not terribly user friendly for live gigging. Sometimes I want to make change to a parameter. So when I press/hold to switch to the next preset, it saves the current changes and was not easy to press/hold both switches to go to the next preset. Very frustrating. I did a factory reset several times to get back to the factory settings. (Factory Reset = Press/hold both switches for 10 sec while powering up) I also found that when this pedal was on my pedal board, engaged or not, my dry base guitar tone was leaner and brighter. I placed a Buffer on the board after the M1 and that helped a little. But with the pedal off my board, my overall tone and sound was punchier with better tone. body and weight. I went back and forth several times to confirm this and used a number of guitars: Collings I-30LC w/P90's, Fender CS Teles, CS Wildwood 10 Strat and Gibson ES-335 64 Reissue Murphy Lab. All exceptional instruments. In short, I wanted to love the M1. No other single footprint pedal offers as many modulation sounds. I found it very frustrating and not intuitive to switch from one preset to the other ...especially when I changed any parameter for whichever setting mode I was in (Chorus, Phaser, Rotary etc). The kicker was I felt my guitar tone overall was degraded or changed in ways I didn't like. So I returned it. I still think it's a cool pedal and many people will love it and find great useful sounds. So I give it 3 stars. Others will give it 5 stars and I understand that. For me, it just isn't user friendly enough and the tonal shift was not acceptable.

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Lofi Monster!

I bought the m1 for the lofi knob and the vibrato. This thing is a lofi making monster! Controls are easy to learn and are all interconnected to each other. Your imagination is the only tonal restriction for this pedal.

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Extremely hard to use

I'm giving three stars because I've seen demos where they get great sounds out of this pedal, but after a week with it, I never found a setting I liked. Even aside from the depth and rate and engine knobs, you're setting 9 more parameters via three more knobs, and two three way switches,and holding down the bypass button in some cases. Be sure and read the manual, and read it again,… read more and read it again, and then interpret how the knobs and switches are labeled, because it makes no sense to me at all. I've got a board full of Strymon, so I'm used to turning knobs and deep editing and learning how to use an in depth pedal, but this one is so hard to use, even after a week, I never saved a patch I was hapoy with. It's the first pedal I've ever returned. I have a Walrus Fathom that I really like, I had high hopes for this one. I'm sure it's capable, but I'll never know.

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I'm am absolutely impressed

I'll admit, I didn't know what to expect from the Walrus M1. I made sure to keep my expectations down to not be let down. I'll tell you what though… I was VERY IMPRESSED when I started playing through it. It skipped the manual first and went straight in, since the pedal is pretty intuitive. I also have a D1 V2, so I understand the interface. That said, after a while, you definitely… read more need that manual. There are way more options on this than on the D1. It's extremely tweak-able. Chorus is great, even against my benchmark Maxon chorus. Same with the phaser. The Trem is extremely flexible and I was quickly able to dial in what I wanted. Vibe should have bee called "Vib" as it's actually vibrato, and not uni-vibe. The Univibe is actually hidden in the Phaser. But anyway, the vibrato is great too. I like how all 3 vibratos modes are distinct. Then, Rotary and Filter. Those were tricky. I needed the manual to dial in what I wanted, but it was all there. I actually played this thing for 6 hours in a row when I first got it. I really can't believe all this is packed into such a small box. Like a said, I have a D1 V2 and I love it. This M1 is even better. You can tell the designers learned a lot from the first Mako releases.

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