Which high gain pedal?

[Doadman]

OK, following on from my other thread it looks like a need a high gain pedal to go through the clean channel of my amp. I need the best balance between cost and quality. These are the ones I'm thinking about:

Hardwire TL-2 Metal Distortion
EHX Metal Muff
EHX Micro Metal Muff
Blackstar DistX

I've included the Micro Metal Muff as well because the top boost isn't suppoed to be great and I have an MXR Boost pedal for solos anyway. So which of these provide the best balance between cost and quality or what else would you suggest?

[Adam.M]

Hmm, I'd say the DistX or one of the Metal Muff's.

I've only heard two people mention the TL-2, one said it was great, the other said it was a lot like the Boss MT-2...

When you think about it, a lot of metal tones are just a boosted JCM 800, surely you could put your MXR Boost in front of your amp for good results? Just trying to be economical here... Unless of course you just don't like the drive tone out of the DSL401.

[Doadman]

No, I love the drive channels, probably because Marshall is the sound of my youth. I just want to get that Marshall sound on steroids

[mikey5]

Dude I dont Like any of your options. I think the Metal Muff is terrible personally. I have recently gone on a major distortion pilgrimage myself, and to be honest The best thing for what you are discribing is the Radial Hot British-Plexitube, Or what I have settled on and this is the best thing I have heard in my life is the Wampler SUPER Plextortion. He has the regular Plextortion, but if you want Marshall on Steroids look no further. What kind of Amp do you have?? Anyway this soundclip tells you exactly what it sounds like the only difference is now there is a mids knob and no bright switch. LOOK NO FURTHER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nudwRzogNJU    take a listen this clip is accurate
I have played the Metal Muff Owned Radial British -London bone, Vox Bulldog (nice but returned it) MT2 by boss Fulltone OCD. Wampler kicks all of these in the @ss if you know what I mean. Also if you have a booster unit you could throw even more meat behind the wampler. I cant imagine the need to do that, but if you want serious wayyy of the chain death distortion than you would have it. Other than that the Super packs 3 great settings overdrive, distortion and High gain. All of these settings are great for anything. A friend of mine was playing Pantera with it the other day. I do Ozzy SRV Santana, Metallica Sykes. It does it all ACDC it nails beautifully

[hamfist]

Another pedal to look at could be the Barber Dirty Bomb.  Doesn't seem to available yet from the UK importer (Stringsdirect), but you easily buy one direct from the States.  THat pedal was certainly on my radar when looking for high gain pedals, and is very well thought of on the US forums.
 Barber certainly makes top quality pedals, that for sure.
  It actually seems quite hard to get a single pedal which does it all on it's own. In my opinion, all the higher gain pedals I played were a bit thin, and needed an OD or booster pedal before them to get thick high gain. unfortunately, as I mentioned in your other thread, thats when noise becomes an issue.

[Mr. Air]

I haven't tried the Tonerider "British Distortion", but it sounds pretty good from the clips I've heard. It's supposed to sound like a Marshall, I guess, and it's quite cheap too (60£).

I use an Emma Electronics "reezaFRATzizt" and I'm very pleased with it. It can do anything from high gain distortion to soft overdrive. Only downside is that it's expensive. Check out the reeza in the following link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnmq92jXmp8

[jibidy]

I would say get rid of the metal muff's. I bought one from twinfan and i didnt like it at all. Its not like other EHX pedals.

Get the Blackstar. I've not heard one demo that hasn't repulsed me.

I think you should get an tube screamer type pedal.


http://www.visualsound.net/index.php/products/guitar_effects_pedals/v2_double_trouble

It sounds like you need two stages of gain.

[indysmith]

dsl its dual super lead (2 channel Wink )

Nope, pretty damn sure it's 3 channels on the dsl401, but whateverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr :P

Doad dude I also think that if you need more gain a boost on your already overdriven signal will be far more effective than a high-gain distortion pedal, which in my experience never sound good.

[LazyNinja]

Doad dude I also think that if you need more gain a boost on your already overdriven signal will be far more effective than a high-gain distortion pedal, which in my experience never sound good.

Seconded. Get a treble booster or a tubescreamer.

[gwEm]

i sometimes use my crunchbox to boost my marshall master volume. since the tone of the crunchbox and marshall are similar, the two together give a really nice high gain marshall tone. then one can play with the EQ of the marshall to get the exact right tone.

[indysmith]

i sometimes use my crunchbox to boost my marshall master volume. since the tone of the crunchbox and marshall are similar, the two together give a really nice high gain marshall tone. then one can play with the EQ of the marshall to get the exact right tone.

Intriguing... now I'm harking for a Crunchbox to try with my Marshall :lol:

[gwEm]

i sometimes use my crunchbox to boost my marshall master volume. since the tone of the crunchbox and marshall are similar, the two together give a really nice high gain marshall tone. then one can play with the EQ of the marshall to get the exact right tone.

Intriguing... now I'm harking for a Crunchbox to try with my Marshall :lol:

its an incredibly versatile pedal i think... as a booster I use it on a very low gain setting - 1 or 2, and it works excellently to get a hot rodded JCM800 tone from a gain maxed vanilla JCM800. it doesn't sound contrived at all.

we all know the clean on the JCM800 'low' input is pretty good, the crunchbox sounds just like a jcm800 if you set it to a gain of 4 or so, so you can sort of use it to get a 2 channel amp.

using a SSS strat on a jcm800 can be really ice-picky - its not usually something that works. for some reason the crunchbox fixes that, and you can get a really nice blackmore-ish tone - by combining a medium-level amp gain with a medium level crunchbox gain. it sounds really fine.

the tone control of the crunchbox is quite sensible too, one can easily tighten up the low end without going too bright, or you can leave it loose if you prefer.

and its true bypass... on my marshall master volume, due to the high quality of the amp i always hear instantly the tone suck of something like an SD-1, even a modded one.. the crunchbox doesn't have that issue

and its pretty cheap!

its one of my favourite pedals into my marshall in fact.

plus is great for late night gain tones into a cheapo practise amp.