What's the Worst Pedal Ever? Boss Metal Zone Pedal, Demo

My Favorite Guitar + Filming Gear at Sweetwater

Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself and all opinions expressed here are my own. The link above is an affiliate link, that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission on.

[Cascademenace]

The worst pedal I've ever heard is my Ditto Looper. It repeats the crap I play over and over :)

[SeanEXtommy]

A great pedal under two conditions:
1. You have a decent tube amp
2. You're not disabled and can actually dial a tone in

[z.s.n.]

I have been using this pedal for the last 10 years. it's the only pedal I've consistently used .It isn't meant to be played with all of the knobs on 12 o clock. it's the most versatile pedal I have. it is in my opinion, a must have.

[josep]

Marty: I'm not a metal player


Marty with the Metal Zone: I AM metal

[beerman]

had this pedal for years had no problem with it for metal tones people dont know how to tweek it

[bodier]

I once took a pedal out of my Moms car and plugged it into my amp... That was pretty bad.

[zigastupan]

Korg Miku is the worst pedal, or the best... i can't decide

[mattmadden]

run a metal zone thru the effects loop on your amp, low at 10:00, high at 3:00, middle at 11:00, mid frequency at 9:00, distortion at 2:00-3:00. and it's actually got a pretty good metallica type sound to it.

[theEsturm]

These things are awesome once you dial it in! A friend of mine had one when we were in high school and had it set perfectly for hard rock/metal tones. Great amount of crunch for the rhythm sections but the leads came through really bright! I find a lot of times leads can get muddy with some distortion pedals.

[Mike_the_Barbarian]

everyone bags on this pedal but it does 80's glam metal pretty day well. But its easy to make it sound like crap.

[corbon]

I fought with this peddle for a long time before I found it's secret.
Plugged into the front end of your amp, it soundly sucks. But if you plug it into the return of your effects loop, it essentially replaces the tone stack and preamp of your amp. Used in this way, the result is a well ballanced and divinely useable setup.
It's the only way to get it to work well.

[Jaspertine]

The real danger of the metal zone is that it's way too easy to scoop out the mids while boosting the lows and highs, which tends to sound pretty good *in isolation* but often causes the guitar to compete with other instruments in a band and fade into the background.

[malavparmar]

a friend of mine uses boss metal zone and dials a tone which sounds like fried balls

[gedaom]

Its not 2 mids knobs, its a PARAMETER, you pick your mids with the outside knob, and you boost or cut using the inside knob, when the outside knob is at 12, there is no change in sound. You obviously have no clue how to use it. Its a very versatile pedal if you now how to use it.

[AustinPowerz-bnry]

For best results, turn up the LOW FREQ and leave everything else at neutral with slight adjustments. This pedal is WAY too powerful lol. Also, if you would read the bloody instruction manual before doing a demonstration, the MID FREQ outside nob specifies which middle frequency you want to adjust, and then the inside nob is to boost or cut it. To everyone talking about this FX loop nonsense, again the instruction manual doesn't mention anything other than "Guitar-->MT2-->Amp".

[burden]

I actually think this pedal is one of the best, you can dial in fuzz to dimebag mode. distortion is distortion either way.

[DanW]

The Metal Zone was meant to be used as a preamp.
Sounds amazing if used correctly, doing away with that terrible tin can sound. Probably one of the most misused pedals around.

[Kor]

I loved the sound of this pedal when I was in highschool. It's kind of easy to saturate the tonal spectrum with the Metal Zone, but with a good ear, and the right mix of hardware, it can make an amazing heavy metal sound. Something about Marty's setup hurts this pedal's sound...maybe a little more low end on the amp.

[naderzein]

3:40 the shit every guitar shop employee listens to on a daily basis.

[falcoperegrinus]

I have one and I like it. It took a lot of tweaking to get a tone I liked as the knobs are not the easiest to work with. The highs are very prickly with this pedal, so I always keep that knob well below noon. Also, increasing the mids too much makes it sound really muddy, so I keep those dialed back as well.