Many consider this the poor man's Big Muff and we tend to agree. These discontinued orange boxes can be had for around $20-30.00 on the used market and pack a wallop for the price. While the FX-52 isn't as warm and wooly as the Electro-Harmonix it can pull off a convincing imitation in the moderate to harsh ranges. It's a flexible unit that can pull off standard power chord crunch along with all manner of trashy lead work without the traditional fuzz splatter. The tone knob delivers a healthy range of valvey bass to nasal treble and has no problem calling up all kinds of nastiness. We never been fans of the DOD footswitches but these older models seem to take a beating better than the newer ones. As with most DOD's of this time period try duct taping the battery door shut as they tend to disappear mysteriously.