The Metal Zone: Is it really a pre-amp? 

The Boss Metal Zone... one of the worlds most loved and most hated on distortions. However, many of my fellow youtubers have considered the idea that perhaps it's actually meant to be a pre-amp. Maybe it's meant to run into the effects loop rather than the input of the amp. Then again, maybe not. I discuss this and more in the video. Plus we change out some frequency response curves, discussing why it may or may not actually work better in the effects loop. Or the input. Comment below with your thoughts on which way you thought it sounded best! Link mentioned: modyourownpedal.com/collections/books

"Sweep the mids" "But Sensei..." "SWEEP THE MIDS! ALL THE GAIN!"

Technically, any boost, drive, distortion and fuzz is a preamp. They're made up of an amplifier stage or stages, typically have some kind of EQ, and they’re always before (pre) the power amplifier. Really, I just see them as an extension of an amp's preamp section. So to me, running a pedal into the power amp means losing a flavor. That said, whatever gets you the sound you like, do it.

The pink noise generator is a genius idea. This might help me better understand why some pedals seem to work better than others with my amps. I honestly never considered how a mid humped pedal into a mid humped amp could just be difficult to dial tones in, because I honestly never thought to find out the frequency response of my amps. Thanks Brian.

The thing I have found with the Metal Zone is it sounds good with the gain turned down. You can crank the output volume and take advantage of the great tone shaping EQ knobs. Sounds great, and it's run in the input of my Marshall Origin. Great video - thanks!

I bought the top 3 distortion pedals I thought i wanted and compared them. I tweaked the eq section on each one to try and match them to each other and to different songs that had distortion I like. A darn funny thing happened...the pedal so many people hate was my favorite. I think the EQ section is versatile if you know how to "tweak" an EQ... MZ for the win!!!

This is why I love RU-vid, imagine flipping on a tv show and finding a documentary on the metal zone. What are your thoughts on pedals with tubes in them?

Always good to see a new video from you, Brian! Thanks!

Your videos are truly useful, educational, professional, objective and generous

i really enjoy all of the nerdy stuff in this demo. I found it very informative. Keep up the good work.

The ending is truly the GOAT

My fav channel by far! Love the section using the pink noise to compare the eq curves! Great stuff!

Just when I thought this video couldn't be any better, you whip out the BE-OD! Thanks for this, great work.

Love these videos Brian.... Your breakdowns on circuits, Freq Responses, caps, resistors,Lp/Hp filts, etc, etc, etc,. Ill definitely be watching!

Thank you for these videos. You've inspired me to get back into pedal making and modding!

I absolutely loved watching the eq as you turned the knobs with the pink noise!

Very professional and entertaining channel. You have given me the confidence to attempt a build of my own. Keep up the great work! I dig the wig... Thank you!

Neat video, I really like the production, pace, and length!

Awesome Work, Brian! Love the breakdowns and comparisons on these videos! cheers :)

With my old band we used to play a lot of shows with a certain opening band whose guitarist used a Metal Zone. He always used to want to borrow my 5150 stack so I would let him use it but get him to plug his pedal in through the FX return so I could retain my settings on the 5150's pre-amp. He was very happy with this as the Metal Zone always sounded good to him that way. I didn't particularly like his tone as he always had a scooped mid sound, so that's what I thought those pedals mainly did. Later on I got one myself secondhand for a good price and actually found they are much more versatile than that.

Brian, you're one of my favourite fellow nerds. Always informative and technically on point.

Thank you so much for doing nerdy technical content. I love it.

This was a great testing of this pedal.....understanding the frequency response seems to be a major factor in helping you dial in the eq better

I really love this style of analysis video! It combines my engineering brain with my love for guitar in the nerdiest ways.

I see you're at your old "confront internet opinions with science" trick again - I admire your dedication to what is arguably a lost cause!

I liked this one; the sequencing and staging order of pedals is something I've only come to appreciate in my late thirties as I'm getting back into guitar, and videos like this are really helpful for someone like me! I've had a Hot Rod Deluxe for over a decade, however I've made a drastic detour and gone the digital modelling route using a Mooer Preamp Live into a powered speaker. It's a surprisingly decent solution for the music I play, and the geeky info in this video is useful to that end.

Thanks for the video. Very informative. I have an old Digitech Grunge pedal that I have tried both ways in my amp. I obtained similar results. Darker through the effects loop.

Man I love the tight sizzle of the MT-2. Yeah it’s real easy to go to far with the eq but once you dial it in 😀 soo sweet 🤘🏽. Pink noise, white noise’s more balanced sibling 😂

I don’t play guitar. I knew the answer to this question after you spoke for 30 seconds. Yet, I watched to the very end! You got some mad voodoo, man. Good job.

wonderful analysis. as both guitarist and physicist i absolutely love it!

I love this content, thanks Brian!

I had one of these as a kid in the 90s and loved it. Imagine my suprise when it became a bad pedal meme these past couple years

Hey Brian, I love anything about frequency responses. I'm always trying to craft my tone through a better understanding of frequency response. Big thumbs up! I'd love to hear more about pink noise through amps (Deluxe, Reverb Deluxe, JTM 45) and through all your pedals esp the Tumnus. Thanks for your informative videos!

I removed the C35 and C24 caps, which helps, and then I turn the gain on the Metal Zone almost all of the way down. I run it into my fx loop, then hit the front of the pedal with a clean boost. Best Metal Zone tone I've ever had.

Very good. As usual I loved the visuals.

Thanks for the understanding and education. Awesome video!

Stellar Video !!! Love the deep dives 👍🏻

Another great use of the Metal Zone ! Thanx, Master !

I always upvote the Metal zone :)

I loved the visuals with the pink noise! Very cool.

This was such an interesting video. Very well done. I'm going to try doing some pink noise analysis of my own tonight.

Hi Brian, great to see you applying your scientific skills to this debate! I only have a suggestion to start with the visualization for the EQ of a heavy gain Marshall tube presmp that the Metal Zone tries to mimic, so people have a baseline for comparison. Cheers

Nerd Vision, I love it. Keep them coming.🤘

I love my Medal Zone ! I get why lots of people may not like it, but I think many of them dont take the time to set it up to what they want, but to each their own.

Really enjoyed the vid, cheers!

Great video!!! Congrats!!!

Cool video. The visualization of the pink noise was helpful. You can go nuts examining the attack transience and all kinds of bits, but the frequency curve does what it does. Because guitar players, I just know there’s guys out there sticking distortion in their effects loops and then putting an EQ in front of it set to a very close facsimile of the curve of their preamp.

Nice video Brian. Your videos are always instructive. And by the way, I'm a Metal Zone user for years, mostly because of it's versatility (and solidity). From what I've understood, 'White Noise'= all frequencies at same level, while 'Pink Noise'= compenseted for human ears (it's a curve with more low and high freak'n'cies). About using it, I don't think they were built with the idea that they were to be used in the effects loop (EL) channel. It has become a trend, as more and more amps are built with ELs, but, What people forget, is that people were using outboard gear and entire racks in their EL, often Reverbs or Delays, some Distortions but usually a volume pedal, so you could dial the amount of 'Drive' you wanted in the moment. Also meaning many cables. Steve Morse is one good example. Another thing, usually, when you use the effects loop, you tend to use the 'wet' part not 'dry+wet',(like in a mixing console), something that you can't do with a pedal, by it self in the EL. Does that make any sens? Genuine question here. Btw, the way, The MT-2 can be useful for others things than the Guitar. Used it with a berimbau and a cello bow, same with a Portuguese guitar, Drum machine, Bass, voice, etc. The buttons are really tiny for their range, but you can really go from bluesy dirty tones to full blast metal, and everything in between. I use a few pedals but there's none that is always on. I see the MT as a guitarist's swiss knive, if you'll need a distortion of some kind. Keep up the good work, it is appreciated, and take care. ps I have one of your Triple Wreck pedals, and love it, but use it when i want a certain flavor. Also have the G4 from Revv, the Metal Planet from Rocktron and the Uber Metal from Line6. My amp is an Acoustic 165, all tubes, the wooden ones with a Vintage EV (12T?), full range speaker. Maybe that helps. ps2 Sorry for my bad English. Hope you're doing ok.

Super interesting! Wonderfully demonstrated. Only been using the MT-2 for 30 years... I never ever tried this!!! Tomorrow morning, though... Thanks Brian. Can't wait to buy a Tumnus btw

I bought the DS-2 kindle! And managed to find an older pedal to open and poke at if the mood hits me. Thanks for sharing knowledge!

Got your Tamnus today, man what a sound, awesome pedal, greetings from Mallorca, Spain👍

That frequency response thing is awesome! I want more!

Great video, I had a Tube screamer a Boss Distortion and an MXR distortion over the years. My metal zone has more adjustments and sounds as good or better. The Tube screamer has its own sound. Great with a tube amp. Metal Zone is great on my pedal board as well.

I love these videos. Awesome

Man ,,, you help me so much ... I do love books ... Gonna get your's ,,, as soon as I can ... Thanks ... You da man ... D

Really interesting, thanks Brian!

S.P.I.C.E. !!! I haven't heard that mentioned since college! (hint - a LONG time ago).

Finally! I made a video that got close to 200k views about a super simple mod on the MT2 to take away that harshness and make it play nicer with the front of any amp. The amount of angry comments saying "you are using it wrong!" "it's suposed to go in the loop!" or "don't you know it's a preamp, dumbass!" is mind blowing. Luckily now I can direct them to watch this video and learn something. Thanks Brian for another awesome video full of knowledge and valuable information. Keep on with the nerdy stuff!

Most dirt pedals work about as well as a pre-amp as the pre-amp in your amp. It's all about raising the volume levels for the power amp section. Overdrive was a wonderful and unexpected secondary result of raising the volume level. So basically, any pedal that allows you to raise the volume, sculpt the EQ, and/or add grit will behave roughly like your amp's pre-amp. Nice to see the visual comparisons with the pink noise though! So thank you, Brian. THAT is what needs to be shown in many of the "pedal shootout" videos. In fact, Brian, just like freq response graphs allow us to kind of estimate how a speaker may sound, I wish we'd see freq response curves for out pedals. I want to know what freq the mid-push is at, where the low-end cutoff knee is, etc. You should start a revolution by adding these technical specs to your documentation. Hopefully other makers will join suit and we customers will have more info that makes our shopping more efficient.

I'm definitely going to use this as classroom material

Thanks for the nerd video, keep them coming! 9:07 I’ve been fiddling with running pedals into the return on my jcm800 2203 bypassing the preamp. I found this also bypasses the master volume control. So if I turn off the last pedal in line, the volume is no longer throttled and I ended up in a Marty McFly situation. “Whoa...Rock ‘n Roll!”

Thanks Brian - kind of shtuff I find interesting! ✌❤🎸

Nice 👍 I run my pedals into the loop return and use a GE7 end of chain just like you said. Works great for me. Good video

i have an early 90s metal zone and its my fave dist pedal....the eq on it is fantastic

Another video to the testament of how great the Metal Zone... LIKE!

Could you do the same test for Sd-1 and TS to finally see which mid frequency gets boosted on those pedals respectively

Hi Brian! Your predicament about lack of Volume/Level control when running a distortion or pre-amp unit through an effects loop immediately brought to mind Jeff Diamante's (Diamond Amplification) decidedly-unorthodox solution. He designs his effects loop such that, when something is plugged into the effects loop, the front panel knob labeled "effects return" acts as a master volume on the amp, with the volume controls on the channels then each act as a "Level" control at the Effects Send. At first, I thought this approach was a little perplexing-- I always run B/O/D pedals into the input, with my modulation and filter effects running through the effects loop, so I never really had to worry too much about volume control through the effects loop. Now that I've seen this video demonstrating the Metal Zone used as a pre-amp, Jeff's approach makes a lot of sense! Thanks again for the informative videos - they're some of the best out there on these topics!

While I don't think it is "supposed to be" a preamp, I think the effect of its huge EQ range and that it can push mids so high is that it maybe was "supposed" to make up for the mid scoop of amps like this. SO it was intended to be put in front of the amp, but that sounds prettttty harsh when put through an input with an EQ setting that doesn't like it, and it just accidentally worked better as a preamp where you can completely shape the tone coming in to the output stage. - What happened to the BE-OD when you put it in the effects return is it became so much less flubby in the low-end. It's those extremes that get bad when putting the metal zone through the input because of the shape of the tone stack. - To fix the issues with tone when not using the pedal would be a switcher that moves the signal from the pedal to the input, but then the pedal would always be pushing noise into the output stage, so it'd have to close off the pedal too. Tough sitch unless you're always going to be using the pedal.

Thanks a lot for that insight!

I really with more people did this kind of test to gear! Great job! I feel most of the fuss people get is because of pickup selection along with the pedal.

Thank you Brian! I got two intermediate commercial breaks in 11 minutes, so I hope you get at least something for that. Love your videos.

in my personal experience. every BOSS dirt box sounds great with Jazz Chorus amp (input).

Love your "Diezner" mod for these mt-2 pedals!

Please do more like this with other overdrive and distortion pedals! Also, it would be interesting to input an A440 sine curve and compare how different overdrive and distortion devices clip the peaks as viewed on an oscilloscope.

Loved this

Whether its actually a pre-amp or not, I can share my own experience. I like many others got a metal-zone as my first distortion pedal, but was able to make it work. it sounded a little thin, and flat, and after I got a Hughes and Kettner Warpzone a few years after, I havent really used it. every now and then I did pull it out to try it, but it was always the same. But after all this talk on youtube about it I decided to bring it to practice one day, I plugged straight into it with my Heavy axe tuned to drop G with a Emg 81 in the bridge, and ran it straight into my power amp. And it sounded great! the tone had grith, and it sounded much more alive and responsive than ever. I was surprised, and so was the rest of the band. It sounded so good that I used it for the reminder of the practice. So, it made a huge difference for me.

Fun video. A good amount of info

Another great one.

Love this!

I LOVE THIS VIDEO. As a system engineer, it feeds my nerdness. I understood your “SPICE” aside. Now, my important question: WHAT SIGNAL ANALYSIS SOFTWARE are you using, on what platform? If I can see the transfer functions, I can develop what I want in my rig.

Hi. I am a beginner and mostly interested in technical experience with pedals. And today I am getting this pedal delivered. I am sort of excited what I really can do with it. My goal is to get rid of some other Pedals. The reason to buy this pedal was some review of another well known channel on YT. They were excited about it and you answered my last question technically. Thanks for that. I need to reduce the number of pedals on my board. Spending money on bull I did too often and my financial situation is not terrible but also not as good as I would wish it was. Too much bull led to it. Any more mistake I try to avoid. This time I am confident.

Great vid!

I discovered running distortion pedals through the return a few years ago and was pretty amazed by the difference (starting with the DS-1). I almost feel like the designers of the pedals did all their sound crafting/testing through a raw amp without a pre-amp, and that's why it sounds better bypassing the amps pre-amp. Now I want to try every single distortion pedal I could get my hands on and run it into the return to see how it sounds. 😄 Although I will say, to me, no pedal beats my JCM 2000 head distortion, or even my Crate BV.

I love videos like this

I was using the mz2 waza and that custom switch is amazing ! it literary sounds like a amp rather than a distortion pedal, blown away !

Fantastic!

Got my first Mz running it through my 4x10 hot rod Deville III I only paid 30 bucks for the thing so I figured what the hey! Now thanks to you I have a chance at enjoying it a little!

I love using my 'Zone as a preamp, but I am under no illusions that it's meant to be used that way. It's just a harsh, super high gain pedal that's easier to wrangle going in the back door...

Cool experiment! 😎 Particularly since a MT-2 is the only pedal other than my Dunlop Crybaby, both from the early 90s, that I now have, well those 2 and my old Elector Harmonix Golden Throat Dlx talk box. Unloaded all my other pedals after I got one of those Digitech GNX3000s in 2005. The irony is now since the boutique pedal explosion, there are a good number of various pedals that peak my interest, with most being within the OD & Distortion category, as I'm not overly indulged with all the other FX beyond having some reverb. And tone tweaker pedals such as your parametric equalizer pedal and the various graphic eq pedals have also been of interest. The irony I spoke of is that when I decided to go minimalist on pedals in 2005, I now find myself itching to created a new collection of pedals.😀 I have never tried it in the FX loop of my few amps that have one, so that is now something I'll have to try for comparison's sake on my own amps; I have to date been able to work out a good tone from it as things stand and even used it as a mere EQ of sorts in front of one of my tube amps to good advantage. When the MT-2 wasn't doing it for me as a distortion source, I simply used my ole H&K Cream Machine. And, the 'nerdy' vids such as this experiment do provide some good insight that is appreciable. Thanks.

Great video!

Really cool and informative video. Thanks for sharing the complete signal path from noise to output/DAW, I learned a lot! One question, though: Which amplitude/spectrum would I have to chosse in order to simulate a nearly accurate guitar signal? I guess maybe even the levels vary a lot between single coils and humbuckers...

Best Bass Distortion Ever.

For better cleans with volume control, split the signal. I use a Boss TU-3 that starts my clean signal out the Bypass jack and into the input of my GK 800RB bass head. The Effects Send then runs out to my clean chain (BF-2, TR-2, Polara) and into the A/B-side of a Passive Summer. Back at the TU-3, the Output jack connects to my Metal Zone and the remainder of my distortion chain (CH-1, M108S), then into the A/B-side of the summer. The combined signal leaves the Y-side of the Summer to connect to a BBE Sonic Stomp, then the amp's Effects Return. With BEAD-tuning, the always-on cleans help define my distorted low end.

Amazing video.

+1 vote for the Tube vs. JFET video you spoke of on your podcast!

I had a Metal Zone, oh so many years ago, but probably won't buy one again. That said, it's a lot of fun to look at a frequency response analysis of what it was doing. The EQ, especially the mid sweep (with a notable exception somewhere in the middle) is at least remarkably honest. Even if I still had the pedal and curiosity, I don't think I'd have the time or the patience to do this, so thank you!

Thanks for this

Great vid

It occurs to me to use a Boss Line Selector pedal and run the amp’s preamp through one line and the Metal Zone through the other so when you switch the MT-2 goes straight to the power amp. It would effectively give you 2 amp channels. Not only that, you could theoretically have different modulation effects chains for each channel as well.

I did my first recording in 1995 with a Metal Zone. My Brother did also. I was running a solid state power amp, and a new Peavey 5150 4x12 with the "Shitfield" speakers. Been so long I forgot the name of the power amp. LOL. My Brother was running his pedal into a Crate Blue Doodoo Head and Doodoo 4x12. LOL. I always thought mine sounded better. LOL. Jokes aside. When we did our first album, whatever the engineer did to get our tones, still sounds modern today. Dialed in right and they have killer tone. The band was called Conflict of Interest. Hardcore/Metal Crossover from the mid 90's. Great drummer, great bass player, great singer. Not to push my old band, but search here on RU-vid "Conflict of Interest - Jobless". Click on the link, there are 5 songs, and like 80% of my other music on my page. RU-vid compressed the music, so it's a bit off. But still sounds good today.