Boss Metal Zone... why all the hate out there?

cvogue

Yes, that's Oolong. :)
I wanted a buffer at the beginning of my signal chain since when gigging I use quite a bit of cabling. Got a DS-1 since it was the cheapest Boss pedal I could get. (All Boss pedals are buffered) Didn't plan on using it as a an effect, was just going to use it as a buffer. But... when engaged it sounded pretty terrible.

So I got some birthday money from my inlaws I *had* to spend so I upgraded to the Metal Zone. It gets a lot of hate out there and it's easy to get terrible sounds out of it but if you back off on the distortion (halfway at most) and don't get radical with the midrange EQ controls on it it can sound pretty darn good. Back the distortion down to 9 o'clock and it does the blues thing pretty well... beef up the low end with the eq and it sounds pretty rich.

Does a lot more than the metal jiggedy jiggedy jah jah!!!

As I said there's been a lot of hate out there for the MZ, not sure why... maybe people are expecting Diezel tone out of their 1x12 solid state amp with this 90 dollar pedal.

Whatchya think?
 
I had some kind of Boss pedal with metal in the name and it wasn't bad with the gain down. I think it was the hyper metal though.
 
Love mine, got it for $20 used at GC. You want to go to outer space. Put the MZ in your chain (set it with the factory metal setting from the booklet) followed by the DS (with the knobs at 12 noon) and then engage both. Pay attention to your volume levels at first.
 
Had one years ago and it actually was great for metal run into another EQ, dialing out the can o bees.
Sold it to a guy who used them with the gain dialed way back as an OD pedal.
 
My bro in law always plays through a Digitech Metal master. He likes that it has tons of compression.
 
Aside from the high frequency sizzle, they are fantastic. A little post EQ fixes it right up.
 
Honestly, I didn't have much hate for the DS-1 either. My main gripe was the tone control seems to have about a micrometer of range between "blanket over the amp" and "ear-piercing harsh".
 
I had one on my board for about a year back when I was playing a lot of Allman Brothers tunes. I was reasonably happy with the Warren Haynes tone I could cop with it. I never used it for metal, though.
 
Boss pedals are just a popular target for Bandwagon hate. Probably because they're not booteek.
 
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The metal zone was my first pedal. My mom bought it for me when I was about 13yrs old or so in about 1989. I still have it, but I haven't used it in yrs.
 
Aside from the high frequency sizzle, they are fantastic. A little post EQ fixes it right up.
That's my experience. First pedals I ever owned were a Metal zone, Boss Chorus (the now super valuable one which I sold long ago for cheap), and an EQ. I got a great variety of sounds out of the MZ.

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I have bought close to 30 Boss pedals, some are great some are stinkers, but buying one used for 20 bucks is a small gamble. I love buying old shitty pedals at pawn shops just to experiment with different combos
 
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