Boss Metal Zone - The King Of Versatility?

we all know metal zone can do this [Music] but can it do this mmm [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] hey everyone and welcome to that pedal show dan here mick here hello right metal zone challenge we'll save you the comments right we'll save you the comments a couple years back dan and i in fact it was many years back now um it did we appeared in masks in face masks which you didn't see at that time marks weren't in common usage dan and i put them on and we sort of made a bit of a joke video about the metal zone i don't know don't touch it i'm scared hold me [Music] because everyone with a stick likes to poke fun at the metal zone but we've grown up we've moved on and today's question dan is today's question is can we get the middle zone to sound like four of our fav pedals yeah cause whenever we feature talk about mention whatever the fabled boss metal zone um there's two types of comment one is oh my god what a load of junk kids pedal can't believe you're even featuring it second one is actually it's a really really versatile brilliantly voiced pedal that can do a lot of stuff so we want to get into that so if you're here for metal go watch something else that's not what we do um we're here just to see and talk about and learn a little bit more about the metal zone but first some housekeeping please go to that pedal show store buy t-shirts buy merch buy pedals buy stuff it's predominantly how we fund this show and we appreciate your custom there indeed also for our friends in america we have that pedal shop which is new and fantastic so yes if you want to buy merch buy it from thatpedalshowstore.com but if you're in the us and want to buy some pedals why not head to thatpedalshop.com indeed you'll see our faces there it's new and spangly and uh yeah do that do that and subscribe please subscribe yes please subscribe okay um for regular viewers yes this is a new guitar yes i'm really fizzy about it it's the first day in in the tps studio so i'll play it for a bit and then i'll put it away in a while indeed so while this is a you know we're gonna the challenge is can we make the metal zone sound like these four pedals really what we're talking today about is how powerful eq is when you combine eq with gain one of the reasons this has come up among general metal zone love is we did a band video um a couple weeks back maybe even last week a couple weeks back um where we put a tube screamer and a boss sd1 together and a lot of the comments were like well surely if you just had an eq pedal after any overdrive you could make it sound like any overdrive it just so happens that the metal zone has a massively powerful eq in it indeed and that is kind of what we're exploring exactly that exactly that great so let's have a listen to the metal zone quickly and just this is the sound that most people associate with the metal zone yep right as once we are hearing that sound i will then manipulate the eq a bit and you can hear just how powerful it is [Music] [Applause] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] oh i don't know if you saw that but i i had that sound i went for the whammy bar just in case you're in any doubt that the metal zone isn't making all that noise here's the sound of our clean amps today [Music] so that's the sound that most people will associate with the metals that we know and love um well we know just for the halibut it's a tone king imperial mark ii and a martial 51 plexi neither of which are overdriving at all at all they're both set fairly uh clean actually specifically for this purpose okay um as you heard utterly crazy eq yeah and just the most my new of changes so what you've got is bass and treble control less bass more bass less treble more treble but a parametric mid-range control a semi-parametric okay so and what that means is you can select the band of frequencies at which you want to boost or cut now if you're familiar with uh mixing desk you will understand that principle so you can say uh 2k i want to cut you out yup you can say in the case of metal we'll do this in a minute um anything from like 250 up to 800 we want to cut you out yeah yeah there is the reason that's not a fully parametric eq is that we don't have control over the the queue the width of the frequency the the that width is set yeah so to be a fully parametric you need to be able to have control over the the frequency range so interesting point frequency range but semi-parametric you know that q is set we can go up and down and then sweep that frequency nice so metal zone is really interesting for a couple of reasons um the design of it is actually genius so when your signal goes in before it goes through the gain stage it has this mid hump then after the gain stage the bass and treble are added in and then eq is after that so it it so the parametric the semi-parametric mid is post everything is it well the the eq yeah and the uh parametric is post everything right but after the so you have this mid-hump that goes into the gain stage yeah after the game stage then they add all this bottom and top back in and then after that is the eq any idea what the mid hump is uh the frequency uh i will we'll research that and put it on the screen here um again we'll try not to tangent too much but it is a bit impossible on this show fans of heavy music will know that one surefire way to a really classic heavy guitar sound is to use something like a dual rectifier or pv6505 5150 those kind of amps and hit it with a tube screamer and my the reason i asked you what the frequency was is because i'm just wondering if it's sort of doing that pre-eq job a little bit well i think i think after the game stage where you've got um so the mid range is going into the game and then after that you've got bass and treble so basically you've got this platform where you've got all the mids and all the bass not the treble but because the mid is pre-gain those frequencies are going to as you hit harder in the guitar they're going to a limit first yeah and then because you because the eq is so powerful you know it only really matters where those the centers of those frequency are if everything's set at noon right you know what i mean so and the other thing is metal zone is a hard clipper so we've got back to back diodes after after the op-amp but it's important to know that with the metal zone the amount of gain in it is like the minimum amount of gain is times two so the even even at the minimum amount of gain those clipping diodes are on are wrong i'll hear that in a second but at the maximum gain it's something like 250 and the op amp is actually distorting oh really at that point interest yeah yeah so you're getting a mixture of the dye is just caving down and everything and the op-amp as well so for anyone who doesn't understand that so the op-amp is the um amplifying bit operational amplifier also called an ic sometimes integrated circuit right and that gives you your amplification and in most overdrive pedals certainly most overdrive pedals of these natures uh you can then get something called clipping diodes which creates the distortion and where those clipping diodes are in the circuit depends whether it's a hard or a soft clipper that's what he's just been talking about maybe we can manage a diagram there very good yeah that'd be great okay so the question is then how close can we get to these you know classic sounding things so awesome let some metal people turn off now if you want to grab the strat yeah and then we'll go through them what do you mean my new strap grab your new strap my new custom shop 62 strap in fire mist gold which is slightly annoying because um it should have been shoreline really they didn't introduce uh fire mist until 64-65 so is it an anachronism it is right um i guess in certain lights it wouldn't wouldn't look that different from shoreline it's beautiful yeah it's also in sort of somewhere between e and e flat so okay that's good right let's have a listen let's start with nothing [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's start with the rat i'm just going to turn the reverb down a tiny bit so nice though it is nice but it just means we'll add another eight minutes onto the video waiting for the tails okay so what i'll do i'll get you to play yeah and i'm going to manipulate the metal zone and see how close i can get to it okay um i am going to pick up another guitar in a minute uh because i think as much as i love strats i do think the audience might be a little bit annoyed at hearing a strat with these higher gains no this is this is perfect that's perfect all right i'm thinking of you ready well i'm thinking of me [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] um [Music] [Music] just keep guys just eq is so true [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] it's pretty good it's not bad in certain areas of the neck yeah i am already having a heart attack at all the masking i'm gonna have to do through the edit of that but um it yeah i tell you what so the the rat has got such a wicked q on it yeah um at that point where it's nasal yeah i mean bear in mind we didn't adjust the wrap the filter on the rat there so brett um rat one metal zone nil rat one millisecond nil okay um for the rat sound let's do the let's try the idea one then okay all right please please [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah have fun fine bye [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] [Music] so it's really interesting eq is nearly there that's probably a bit bright and maybe a bit fizzy but there's still even with the gain down that low yeah just in case you can't see it the gains at like 8 a.m yeah yeah um there's again the nobles has got we talk about it as a flat sounding overdrive but it does have a a lovely especially with the spectrum control around there a bit it's got a little bit of a nose on it and also you can hear the way the odl1 breaks up yeah it's not just an eq thing it's the way it it limits um oh here we go which is very different than the metal zone the metal zone is it's distorted the whole time you know what i mean whereas the odl1 has got that um it's more dynamic actually just roll your volume down then and let's have a listen to little listen to that [Music] foreign [Music] okay soon as we've got um pedals we're not familiar with why don't we have a guitar we're not familiar with this is malcolm's sg not that malcolm with many humbuckers from the mid 1970s please work [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i need to put my own strings on this guitar i think we got closer with that one yeah okay muff muff so this would be really interesting um talking about the the metal zone is a flat out hard clipper right in every way you possibly think about it the muff is really interesting because we've got cascading gain stages so the attack of the note is very soft on a muff so this is going to be a real challenge [Music] [Music] so [Applause] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] do [Music] very nice it's really hard because what you're hearing what i'm hearing there is quite a lot of bass in the in the in the muff letter but it's not kind of 80 100 hertz bass like the kind of bass you would associate with a 4x12 cab or indeed lower than that which is what you would associate with the resonance of a 412k yeah yeah yeah yeah but it's there nonetheless and it's got this nose on it and again we're back to that being able to alter the queue of that mid-range because my assumption so the first thing i was hearing was not very much high end at all right but actually when you start playing there is it's in there it's just way up there it's way up there and it's so limited yeah you know the weight so the way those gain stages work everything by the time it gets through the last gain stage yeah everything is shut down so you've got you've got a bunch of choices you know do you keep the treble low and boost the high mids up to the point where that treble frequency is like 10 12k or do you choose the mid control to boost the nose of it which is very definitely sort of i don't know somewhere between five and 800 hertz right that very nosey maybe even up to 1k actually yeah yeah that's really good so it's just the attack that feels different yeah because the attacker is so soft on the big mouth and the game feels different yeah yeah totally yeah so this is really interesting in that we can get the eq there are there abouts but in actual fact the the nature of the overdrive you know is is the thing that's the hardest to cop yeah i i think just to make the point we're not sat here going these things sound exactly the same they really really don't yeah yeah they're what we're saying is we're ballparking them we're getting close to it and i rather suspect in the recording they'll be further apart than we're experiencing here right because in the room at bang on where they're just nailing it they're in they're playing the same sport they are yeah and at times they veer into the same ballpark purely by accident yeah now this is going to be really interesting okay the archer a clone style overdrive it's got more bottom end than the uh than michael than your clone um but it is a hard clipper as well so yeah well let's so if i had a um a clowny type thing this is how i would set it a little bit treble plenty of level not too much gain so it's kind of being used as a clean boost so let me just see if it was my clone that's how i would set it let's see if i'm getting the the right thing out of it here [Music] bang on doesn't quite have the nose of my claw no it doesn't have that um the upper trebley stuff as well so i might just pump the tone a bit more so that's how i would use my cloney we will get some more gain on in a minute yeah yeah let's see if the metal zone has that little game [Music] my [Music] food [Music] minimum gain minute that's that's the least amount of gain you can possibly get from this pedal we know that some of you like to run your metal zones in the um effects loop of your amp right uh for a boost cool but it won't we just proved that this one just put it on the other mode a minute dan it's got the mode switch [Music] that's the mud mode um interesting enough that's the standard mode if we've got it in the custom mode for this demo yeah um okay so we know it won't do that let's crank the gain on the archer then right um as many of you will know uh josh from jhs loves to crank his clone as a brilliant overdrive pedal and why not it's a great clipper [Music] [Music] lovely just hitting you in the right in the air huh right how was it really huh that's great it sounds really good it's got that classic you know honky punchy thing but it sounds amazing that strat sounds amazing all right so all right let's begin okay [Music] [Music] oh [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] all right [Music] interesting [Music] uh there's a more brittle edge to the gain in the metal zone yes um and even with that little eq it almost feels like the nose is over overcooked a bit yeah right just play for a second [Music] huh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] this is where you're really missing that cue yeah for the mid-range thing yeah because we've got this spike yeah but we can't widen that out so that i don't know about this particular clone type but my clone has got a pusher 1k and it's got somewhere between three and four it's got a little kick as well so you're trying to do both of those things so if your eq centers aren't in the right place or the queue is not right and the queue being the width so if you push it one how much 1.25 and 0.75 does it push as well yeah how wide is the is the amount that it pushes up in the eq curve which is to come back to the top of the show why a lot of people are saying if you just stick an eq pedal after your overdrive pedal you can approximate pretty much anything sure interesting what i found interesting about that though is the game felt closer the the attack yeah felt closer yeah and you think that's because of the hard clipping i think yeah because the diets are in the same well very similar place yeah um yeah really really interesting certainly extremely versatile but that you know it almost feels like you've got that you've got the dual concentric pot there with the the semi-parametric mid on it yeah it feels like if you could spread out like that much travel across the whole knob that would be enough it's so sensitive it's crazy well we had simon on didn't we from biffy yeah and he was saying you know it has to be no too much yeah yeah yeah that okay that was really interesting i thought that i did think we'd get a bit closer on something that yeah i was when i was setting this up i had the um the princeton and the marshall and the little uh 10 inch speakers in the other room yeah i definitely got closer um but now hearing them like you know large the largest of these of this rig that large fidelity and you can hear it's like oh okay um yeah but but nonetheless yeah impressive that we were able to get that close with a metal zone there's one final sound i want to do my favorite sound of the day was the odr one the archer stacks right right um so i think this is a nice place to be because what i was getting off the strat anyway is that enough gain but also the sort of harmonic yeah edge to it so if we just turn the odr one on a sec so [Music] [Music] so good that's a nice noise the archer by itself [Music] i [Music] oh [Music] very self-indulgent and for those of you who don't like bluesy playing apologies stop it that's that's my home territory it's beautiful that's the kind of guitar sound that makes me go oh yeah baby that's amazing yes guitar sounds amazing if you just listen to the telly on that it will probably sound a bit nosey [Music] [Music] [Music] that's great honky right hungry i've used the word nose about 50 000 times in this video what i mean is a mid-range peak and that when we talk about nosy we're talking about frequencies those which are boosted by a little bit like that yeah and it sounds nasal can sound nasal um boost anything from like i don't know somewhere around 600 up to around 1k and in there you'll find the mid-range nose of the tube scream and the clone yeah so what is great about that sound though is it again back in the two and four it gives you some really nice harmonic stuff going on there [Music] i picked that note entirely at random wow says wicked and it and you get into that harmonic feedback [Music] this [Music] right on the edge so we're going to try and replace the audio on with the with the no we're going to see if that sound will come out the metal zoom okay come on right okay all right all right [Music] [Music] boom [Music] [Applause] good [Music] holy moly it's really good it's really really good keep going yeah try position two [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we got one win um that is killer not only did i think it sounded very similar we could have done a bit more work on the high end but it not only did it sound very similar it was great to play right you gotta do it you gotta try it what am i pressing between eight and twelve right [Music] hello [Music] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] so [Music] uh so the metal zone couldn't do all the sounds i didn't much like today it could absolutely do the one that i like the best that is so cool yeah that is so cool wow all the harmonics were there yeah wow yeah there we go that's a win that's a win so all your archers and odr ones in the bin very good brilliant thank you so much for watching that was a lot of fun it was um again please subscribe if you haven't subscribed uh apparently um we're shallow and narcissistic and we really really like that stuff oh yeah yeah totally narcissistic let's talk about me um uh if you want to support the show please head over to thepedalshowstore.com and check out our merch uh this is what funds the show we don't take any money from any manufacturers to you know for this stuff the merch is what funds the show indeed predominantly so uh as does that pedal shop in the us if you want to buy some pedals indeed in the u.s brilliant massive thank you to our patreons on patreon as well thank you so much for your support we really appreciate it thank you uh and of course a massive thank you to our preferred retailers in the uk and europe is would be anderson's music of guilford in surrey with whom we did a live vcq yesterday a lot of fun it was too that was awesome uh our dear friends in australia would be pedal empire of brisbane in queensland indeed so have a fantastic week and we will see you on monday for viewers comments and questions and would love to know uh what you thought and what your experiences with your metal zones are indeed brilliant have a great day we'll see you soon bye [Music] [Applause]

Channel: That Pedal Show

Views: 94,776

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Id: O1p5TV7cA_0

Length: 43min 54sec (2634 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021