Metal Muff-Like Pedal?

[KerryF]

I tried a Metal Muff with Top Boost yesterday and it had tons of gain!  The best part was, even if I have the pedal's gain cranked and fed it into my amp's dirty channel (Volume-10, Master- Low), it didnt go all crazy and didnt interfere with eachother.  But I really loved the amount of gain and volume boost I could get from that pedal.

Yea, I opened it up, but its all SMD so dont ask for any schems or anything.  Not that I would post em here 

But anyway, anyone know of a pedal that could get that much gain out of it and go from scooped metal tones to brighter, top boosted tones, or maybe just one/the other.

I know that there are a lot of metal pedal designs out there, but havent heard any sound clips of any, and havent liked the tones of the Metal Zone or many other metal pedals out there.

Kerry

[km-r]

someone told me that the metal muff is a beefed-up bmp... added a top boost and other whatnot.
would you suggest that the circuit is way far from a big muff[regardless if SMD or not]?
big muff has few components in it.
if youd find clipping diodes, is it similar to the bmp config?

im interested in the metal muff myself...

[KerryF]

Really, its no fuzz.  Its not harsh like a fuzz and doesnt have any fuzz qualities like one would think (it being in the "muff" series).  It doesnt have the smooth Big Muff Pie sustain.  Its a metal distortion.

I really dont know how to compare it...

Try it though, I really liked it, and for $90 or so, its worth it!  The Top Boost footswitch makes it go from whatever setting you have (say you have it scooped) and makes it more of a trebly and rough, trebly metal tone.

[soulsonic]

Wow, you liked that thing? I tried it once in a music store and I couldn't stand it. The part that really killed me was the top boost - it's so friggin' shrill! I like a bright tone and I like a "metal" tone, but that pedal is just way to much of it. I don't care for scooped sounds at all, and that thing had like this permanent weird filtered sound on it all the time - kinda like a Metal Zone, but in a different range. But whatever... it just sounded way too bad nu-Metal for me, I'm sure some people would dig it a bunch. FWIW, I tried about a half dozen distortion/fuzz boxes that day and hated all of 'em. Maybe it works well with your amp?

I think most of the Amp Simulator type circuits can get really metal, you just have to tweak the tone to taste. The Freya circuit I came up with is super metal thrashy but I'm not happy with the complexity of the circuit. I'm going to try to revamp it sometime soon.... maybe using JFETs, but I dunno, I really like the tone of the MOSFETs... it's just that they're so damned noisy.

Actually, this is one of he most inspiring circuits for JFET tube emulation I have ever seen.
http://www.sugardas.lt/~igoramps/article68/article.htm
Yeah, it's all in Russian, but so what? The important part is the pictures and Babelfish can give you mangled translation of the rest for you to get it enough to know what's up. The circuit I'm talking about is towards the bottom of the page. I have to build it just to see what it sounds like. I don't think it would be too hard to tweak it for whatever.

[soulsonic]

Okay, I was looking at the schematic for the Metal Muff, and it's a little suprising how "normal" it looks. 4558 chips and hard diode-to-ground clipping. Lot's of filtering too - just like I see in most "metal" pedals. The use of gyrators to add filtering to the opamp feedback loops reminds me of What's in a Metal Zone. The pedal is suprisingly BOSS-like in much of it's design, at least that's how it seems to me.

[mnordbye]

I'm also interested in checking out a metal muff. Anyone know how it compares to the Shredmaster, or even a Guvnor?

Magnus N

[ambulancevoice]

Okay, I was looking at the schematic for the Metal Muff, and it's a little suprising how "normal" it looks. 4558 chips and hard diode-to-ground clipping. Lot's of filtering too - just like I see in most "metal" pedals. The use of gyrators to add filtering to the opamp feedback loops reminds me of What's in a Metal Zone. The pedal is suprisingly BOSS-like in much of it's design, at least that's how it seems to me.

schematic?

[km-r]

soulsonic,

do you know how the filtering works in boss metal zone? i want to tweak mine in a vain attempt to improve its tone...
it doesnt look like a standard lo/hi pass circuit, looks like a glorified active filter...

[soulsonic]

The filtering happens in the feedback loops. You know that cap that's in the clipping stage of a Tube Screamer that affects the low-end? It's the same sort of deal, except instead of a just a cap going to ground, it's an entire active gyrator circuit that simulates the reactive elements of a bandpass filter. There's a schematic of the Metal Zone somewhere that has each section broken down, and it has some mods too. If I can't find a link to it, I'll repost it - or maybe redraw it and post it. It's in a different language - Polish, I think. Manipulating these filters can change the tone drastically, so there's much that can be done - I'm just not sure what would sound good. I have a beat-up Metal Zone I could start messing with and see if I can get a decent sound from it. I've noticed that my taste is alot different than most people's, so I can't just settle with an existing mod - I usually have to start from scratch.