There is a big difference between classical and rock music. I once asked a pro classical pianist friend of mine, Helene, to play the 19th Goldberg variatio for me. She never played it before, and could not remember it. So, she just grabbed the score, put in on her piano, and within 3 minutes, she could play it in a wonderful way for my greatest pleasure. What if I have asked for “Foxy Lady” ?. When it comes to modern music, no matter how good you are at reading scores, you’ll go nowhere without a complete knowledge in tone. You can play Bach on any instrument but in case of rock music, tone is part of the music itself. I handcraft distortions, and have been doing this very peculiar electronic experimentation since 1973. When I came to mass production, my idea was to benefit from the comfort of high-tech manufacturing while keeping the handcraft tone. In the case of the Mercer Box 2, never before has a stompbox benefited from the best of both worlds. Using discrete components for tone and hightech components for non-tone, we merged my best handmade designs into a coherent electronic device. Its tone is based on my best handmade Mercer Box which emulates the heavenly union between perfect fuzz pedals and raging plexi 100watters. The resulting complex interaction, known as the best guitar tones ever heard by human ears is now available in a modern compact stompbox. If you think this is exaggerated, you should have seen the look in Steve Morse’s eyes when he played it… and Steve even asked me to autograph the MercerBox2 #1 for him. You could expect an unusual concept like the Mercer Box to act differently. Of course, every Mercer Box potentiometer has its own tropism, a goal where it aims. HATE introduces an immense low rage, while lack of LOVE takes off the harmonics and gain. BLOOD brings intense life and FUZZ brings in distortion with no limits. LOVE & FUZZ , The two gain controls of the Mercer Box work as pushing on the brakes and the gas at the same time : that ‘heel toe’ method transfers the distortion weight for different tones.