Hey,

So, I need to buy a distortion pedal, and I mean like theres a lot to choose from. I want pedal that can do t all and produce many different tones. What I have been noticing is "Distortion" pedals have 3 controls.. I think its Tone, Drive, and Level. Where as the "Metal" pedals have a lot of different controls. For example: Mids, Lows, Highs, Drive, Tone.. All on one pedal. When they say "metal" pedal. does that mean that it is only meant for metal? Or other genres of music too?

When it says 'Metal' it's going to sound best with metal. You can use it with other styles but I've found they usually still have the 'metal' characteristics to the sound. I haven't looked for an all-in-one distortion pedal lately so I don't have any suggestions on which is best.

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Neal
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I have the AMT Freak. It's got an awesome tone with a decent amount of adjustment. I spent well over a day researching various pedals online and settled on that one. It's a Tube pedal by the way.

If you want an all in one box check out the M9 from Line 6 - has got loads of effects (over 100) and about 10 or so are distrotion

The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone (or whatever they're up to now) covers a wide range of distortion and it takes a while to learn how to get the sound you want of it because truly it isn't just a Metal distortion pedal. It has about 6 controls with high, low, mid, and hi mid, drive, and volume controls. The manual that came with mine illustrated 6 basic genres of distortion (including a country style distortion) you could accomplish with it - and anything inbetween.

But... you'll get way more bang for your buck in a larger fx unit - particularly an old Pod Xt Live or a Pod X3. You'll have several distortion and over drive pedals as well as being able to choose the sound of your amp and size and sound of your cabinet. The 5 band eq that's built in can also really change the tone of things. You can really make one instrument match the tone of another just by changing the frequency.

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great absinthe

for basic distortion/overdrive there are two that really come to mind for me.

the big muff great pedal and you can shape just about any sound out it with some experimenting. if you amp has distortion built in you can get some killer tone for hard rock blues or even some classic metal tone. with the right mixing ive even gotten some hendrix like fuzz with it and my amp.

the boss ds-1 this is also a great pedal. you can shape some good soft distortion (almost clapton esq) and even get some heavy sound (alice in chains other 90's hard rock alt metal) ive even gotten some great blues (srv and george thorogood style sound) again if your amp distortion built in you can use it to shape a very wide range getting as far as metallica (pre black album post kill'em all) to close to van halen.

a few notes on other pedals.
the marshall jackhammer is a good pedal for metal and thats about it. the dod grunge is a good pedal but again its best for hard rock/ metal, but you can get a few good mixes out of it that range from heavy fuzz to mechincal distortion. pod dose make some great multi effects but they are very complex and can rob tone from your guitar/amp (but thats just my opinion cause i hate multifx).

a good peice of advice is to hit guitar center find a guitar thats as close top your main axe as possible and try as many as you can, but i dont think they'd let you hook up an amp like yours (could be wrong though.)

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