1989 ADA MP-1

Overview

I purchased this MP-1 from a local MusicGoRound store and began using it as an alternate to my Marshall TSL, by running it through that amp’s effects loop return. Despite the high noise floor, I loved the tones I was getting out of this, and I found the built-in chorus wonderful sounding especially when set to a low rate for a subtle thickening effect.

These came out in 1987 and went through quite a few board revisions, and were very well received and used on professional recordings at the time. For example, the entire Skid Row album (1989) was recorded using MP-1’s, except for a few lead sounds - that’s impressive. I’ve also seen settings notes and stage photos of them still in use by guys like Nuno Bettencourt as far as 1993, so they must’ve done something right. My unit has firmware 2.01 which is the most common, but some early recordings may have used 1.38.

Supposedly the Tube Dist voicing was modeled after a real-deal modded Marshall Plexi owned by one of the designers, and you can really hear that Marshall flavor in this amp. The two 12AX7’s are all used for gain stages (4 in total) so it gets a lot more saturated than even most factory JCM800’s, and does 80s metal perfectly right out of the box.

Tube Clean doesn’t get talked about as much, but it’s just as praise worthy as the rest of the design. While it can be clean, it’s actually just a fantastic impression of a non-master Marshall tone, with a round bouncy low end, and with the two gain settings turned up it can get quite overdriven. Between the output level and master gain controls though, there’s plenty of headroom as long as your power amp can handle it, if you need loud cleans.

Taking that a step further, there is also a very interesting solid-state clean setting, which turns the second overdrive setting into a compressor. This is perfectly clean, and very snappy, almost like a Roland JC. Add in that ADA chorus and it’s killer - I can nail that “One Thing Leads to Another” Fixx tone almost dead on with this setup. I’ve also used this SS Clean setting a few times for various other uses, including as a bass amp and a microphone preamp. It’s not designed for those purposes but it did a pretty reasonable job all things considered.

Probably the most unique thing about it, and one that can be divisive is the 4-band EQ. The amp has bass, middle, treble, and presence - but presence is just a very high treble control. This preamp has no power amp, so there’s no negative feedback loop in the way a traditional presence control would work on an amp head. These 4 EQ bands are analog, but set digitally, and there are some gaps in between the range of frequencies they have an effect on. Personally, I have a list of settings I think sound great, but one of the more common mods to modernize the MP-1 is to make adjustments to these EQ controls to make them feel a little more interactive. I’ll be keeping this one factory default, but I’ll admit I’d be tempted to buy another MP-1 to use for modding - some popular mods like the 3-tube mod sound great in clips online. Prices have skyrocketed on these units though, so it’s harder to justify modding them now.