FW19 Good Sounding Metal Zone ?!

Good sounding metal zone? Cliff, I think you f'd up!

I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, I owned a real one, and hated it. I honestly don't know how I wound up with it, and I can't even remember what happened to it, but I don't miss it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I had one too, and I hated it as well. It was a little too thin and greasy for me. I got it because I was looking for distortion pedal with full EQ control. I sent it to Keeley to get it modded with the Twilight Zone mod. They replaced all the components with all high quality components and added a switchable bass boost. No longer thin and greasy. Now, it's fatter with less harsh highs. It's in my gear closet at the moment.
 
good sounding metal zone? is it something real? :D
haha - this reminds me of something that happened years ago - I asked the guy in a music shop if he had any recommendations for an overdrive pedal that had a nice smooth and subtle break-up. He recommended a metal zone. Apparently, the rationale behind it was that you get a lot of control over the eq with the MZ and thus you can dial up a whole variety of overdrive tones (presumably from subtle to extreme). Anyhow, I politely declined his suggestion to purchase one :) To this day, I'm not sure if he was being genuine or if he was just winding me up ...
 
Good sounding metal zone? Cliff, I think you f'd up!

I kid, I kid.

Seriously though, I owned a real one, and hated it. I honestly don't know how I wound up with it, and I can't even remember what happened to it, but I don't miss it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

When I had the Metal Zone years ago, I could not for the life of me make that thing sound good, so your comment just about made me spit out some tea LOL....
 
Man, just can't, for the life of me, remember how I acquired my metal zone pedal. I know I didn't actually buy it, so someone must have left it at my house, and never came back for it. I used to have weekly jams in my garage, so that used to happen a lot. I got to try out lots of stuff back in the day because of forgotten gear. As far as where it went, I either gave it away to the same guy I gave my Korg Toneworks to, or traded it in on something. Either way, I never got it to do anything pleasing at any setting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
For Boss specialists, a question : is the Metal Zone an evolution of the HM2 ? That one was my first decent distortion pedal, back in the eighties
 
I can't remember buying it either, but it still there. Whatevrer I tried, it was impossible to get something good sounding out from it.
 
For Boss specialists, a question : is the Metal Zone an evolution of the HM2 ? That one was my first decent distortion pedal, back in the eighties
Not really,
It was the successor in the lineage of "metal" pedals because it was released after the HM-2 was discontinued, but the tone is completely different. it has a slightly smoother distortion and it's focused in the 90's metal sound while the HM-2 is like a 80's Marshall on steroids.
The real successor should be the HM-3 and later on the MD-2.

All of them has different distortion so there is no real successor like a "re-issue" (replicating same tone years later).

It's funny that everywhere you read about the MT-2, all you read is complains about his tone, but it's the only one that it's still on production since '91 and one of the best selling for BOSS.

I have one that I bought when I was a kid, and honestly I haven't plugged in ages. I don't think it sound bad... I think because the wide range of the PEQ you can make it sound bad easily, that's why the bad reputation.

EDIT: BTW I'm not a Boss specialist at all ;)
 
Last edited:
I never had one, but it can sound pretty bad@ss trough a fat clean channel.
And you have to know how to tweak the eq. Youngsters usually take out all the mid and scoop it, kicks up bass and you have the stereotype. May sound cool alone, but disappear in the mix. Classic ;)

I bet i can get a cool blues sound out of it too.. Hehe.

Let's have a competition. Best sound out of a MT-2..
1.place gets glory.
 
Youngsters usually take out all the mid and scoop it, kicks up bass and you have the stereotype.

That was the tone I tried to avoid most, but it pretty much didn't really do anything else without getting unpleasantly brittle. After I got my JCM800 the metal zone got shelved.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I never had one, but it can sound pretty bad@ss trough a fat clean channel.
And you have to know how to tweak the eq. Youngsters usually take out all the mid and scoop it, kicks up bass and you have the stereotype. May sound cool alone, but disappear in the mix. Classic ;)

I bet i can get a cool blues sound out of it too.. Hehe.

Let's have a competition. Best sound out of a MT-2..
1.place gets glory.

At The Gates - Slaughter OF The Soul was recorded using a Metal Zone, and I'm sure there were many others. You can get a good tone out of it through a nice clean fat channel as you say. I used to use it through a 1960s Vox AC50 head and I loved it. It was very easy to get it to sound like crap though. Like any pedal it had it's uses; NOT blues or anything requiring subtle distortion.
 
cannibal corpse have some of the most brutal distorted tones going and they use MT2's (one of them is Keeley moded the other isnt) into triple recs.

they use them as boosts and having tried it myself it does work well when used like that.
 
At The Gates - Slaughter OF The Soul was recorded using a Metal Zone.
Lol no way, that's interesting. I always just thought it was an ENGL powerba'll set to a fizzy setting. Never looked into if but I know they use engls live now atlsast when I saw them last. Sure it wasn't an HM-2? A lot of those Swedish death metal guys were using those. You're probably right but that's too funny.

Edit: After some research
. Anders Bjorler used a Boss Heavy Metal (Hm-2) and a Boss Metal Zone in series, into a solid state Peavey Supreme 160 and a home-made cab on slaughter of the soul

Too funny.
 
Last edited:
haha - this reminds me of something that happened years ago - I asked the guy in a music shop if he had any recommendations for an overdrive pedal that had a nice smooth and subtle break-up. He recommended a metal zone. Apparently, the rationale behind it was that you get a lot of control over the eq with the MZ and thus you can dial up a whole variety of overdrive tones (presumably from subtle to extreme). Anyhow, I politely declined his suggestion to purchase one :) To this day, I'm not sure if he was being genuine or if he was just winding me up ...
The MT-2 can actually make a decent boost. It is very aggressive. I was able to make it sound very similar to a SD-1 back when I had both. However, its strength is aggression. That is why bands like Cannibal Corpse and Crowbar use them as boosts. I have one I modded years ago. I dont use it much, but it is a cool alternative to a TS-808 or similar Tubescreamer.

As a distortion pedal they can sound OK, like others have said. If you just run it through a small thin sounding solid state combo amp with the mids all scooped like so many do then they will sound horrible.
 
Back
Top Bottom