Which pedal is better?

[Hope Leaves]

I'm sure this has been asnwered many times before, but the search function is disabled so I can't find it.

I was looking in the thread below about distortion pedals, and the 3 that seemed to come up were the Boss MT-2, Line 6 Uber-Metal and the DigiTech XMM Metal Master. This is probably going to get varied responses, however I was just wondering, which would you recommend? I'm looking to be able to vary my tone from low grungy stuff (Acid Bath etc), to Opeth (if it's possible, I doubt it) with everything in between. Or are there any others that you'd recommend?

Any comments would be appreceated!

 

[Nostalgiaplatz]

If you want to reach opeth's distortion sound, you should look for a GT-6 or its successor GT-8

There you can setup patches with whatever definitions you want. Mikael and Peter use GT-6's connected to laneys, with the amp setting to the clean channel with flat-5 eq.

 

[Hope Leaves]

GT-6/8 is a little out of price range, otherwise I'd have one already.. I just wondered which single distortion pedal was the most recommended.

 

[Loner]

I like the Metal Master a lot. Regardless of which one you choose, I highly reccomend getting an EQ pedal as well. You'll have much more control over your tone, and it'll work wonders with any amp as well (just put it through the effects loop).

 

[Hope Leaves]

I've never understood EQ... I sound like a n00b now but can anyone explain it to me? Thanks

 

[Nostalgiaplatz]

Making a fast retrospective, the sound, or what is perceptible to the human ear, is a nervous stimulus on the brain, a vibration. Most men and women have the hability to listen the frequency range 20hz to 20,000hz (or 20hz - 20khz) some animals can go lower than 20hz, some people can also listen beyond this range (either down/up range), but that's not very common. The 20hz is the lowest frequency in that range and corresponds to the bass-most part of the frequency spectrum, whereas the 20khz is the highest-most part of the spectrum and is what is perceived as the treble, or the highest frequencies. On an amp, pedal, whatsoever, when you mess with the bass/mid/treble knobs, you're just making these knobs do a compensation at some (often unknown to the user) part of the spectrum. It may be that "Add 10 decibells (sound amplitude measure) to frequency 1000hz". This stuff is never compatible (geenerally speaking) across different pedals, amps, preamps, mixers, etc. Some do have more sensitivity and move from a frequency to another in a tight knob rotation, some don't, so you're always forced to fiddle with buttons and all this theory brings us down to "What sounds good to your ear, is what you should use" as in everything soundwise.

As for GT-6, I'm not sure if you're pretending to buy this stuff on a store, but GT-6s on ebay can be bought for good prices. In portugal, at least, they're being sold very very cheap (used) abou 200€ (135£ / 258$US).

Good luck and hope it helped, and by the way, the pedal that which I liked the most (and some purists will crucify them for the brand) was a Zoom Driver 5000. It's a very rare pedal and it's probably the best thing zoom has ever released. The guy who designed it, is surely no longer working for them or they never realised how good the pedal was, as after this one, all of their (guitar) gear has been very very very sucky, from bad cnstruction quality to bad sound quality in extremes. I've once found a pedal of these on ebay, but I was outbid...

Cheers!

 

[Hope Leaves]

Ah I see, thanks. The GT-6 is usually being sold at around £200 on ebay.co.uk, whereas the single effects pedals are around £30 - £50, which is why I opted for one of those. However, if I can get a GT-6 cheaper (around £135 is good) then I will!

 

[guitar_man_27]

i really like the metal master too, i've been using one for almost a year and it's never failed me, but i'm sure it would sound even better than it already is if you use it with an equalizer like Loner said.