ilovefuzz.com

Weird little pedal. It was my first effects pedal; it sounded terrible through my Peavy solid state practice amp as a kid. It was really cheap then, too, like 30 bucks. That said, I was probably cranking the gain to max and then using the cut/boost high/low knobs to either try to get a scooped sound or cutting out all the bass and treble entirely. The Peavy was terrible and by virtue of my inexperience, probably EQ'd wrong too.

This pedal doesn't really sound like any kind of metal to my eyes, hair metal or otherwise.

Today while organizing old pedals, I put it in front of some fuzzes to see what it sounded like. In the process I turned the gain way down and realized that the stereo output's "soft" mode isn't just for doing a line-level output to something that needs a lower volume level, like I always assumed. Nope, putting your cable in Out2 and switching to "soft" gives you slightly smoother distortion. I can actually match the lowest gain setting on the Metal Master with the max gain setting on my Sparkle Drive fairly closely. I was intrigued, so I opened it up, which I've never done.

Inside was the typical zillion components for a soft switching / buffer, but also 3 JRC4558 opamps. So it's related to the Tubescreamer, in a way. No schematics online. (I was actually kind of hoping it would be related to the Marshall Shredmaster, but alas, I've never gotten the amazing lead tones out of this pedal.)

The cut/boost knobs are interesting. For example, if you wanted to filter out most of the high frequencies for some really heavy BRUTALZ riffing / power chords, you can cut out most of the treble, keep the gain low, and put it into an Algal Bloom or other bass-friendly fuzz (like the pharoah, but I don't have one of those to confirm.)

Final verdict: You can get these things for $10 on eBay, if you want something that is as black as your heart while secretly being a high-gain tubescreamer, this is it. That said, it is a plastic buffered pedal that is over a decade old at this point, and will probably break on you at an inoppurtune moment. Snatch it up for free if you can, and use it to stack

ha i was doin a search on stereo distortions the other day and this one kept coming up!

isn't the arion delay the same delay chip as the boss dm2? or am i confusing it w/ some other pedal?

Take a look @ bottom row, middle

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:isn't the arion delay the same delay chip as the boss dm2? or am i confusing it w/ some other pedal?

One of them is. There were 2 or 3.

Yep was gonna mention the TAL MAST... Sounds killer in Jero's setup...

Jero wrote:Take a look @ bottom row, middle

Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D. wrote:isn't the arion delay the same delay chip as the boss dm2? or am i confusing it w/ some other pedal?

One of them is. There were 2 or 3.

How do you use it? Just curious!

I'm going to make another board of my neglected pedals (that have been knocked off my main board) and I think the Metal Master is going to be the OD/distortion, with a Devi VFM, Fender Starcaster Chorus/vibrato (that $8 best buy pedal), a Dano Cool Cat vibe, and a Dano Corned Beef reverb in slapback mode. Actually kind of versatile for neglected pedals that don't have a home on my main board.

I found this:



in a box of assorted guitar parts in my friend's garage. My friend Max has been using it on bass with great results through his 100W Univox head. It's pretty ragey, but doesn't sound like ass!

This find has gotten me interested in other Arion pedals, but I don't have any disposable income, so that's pretty much gonna stay at "interested in" for now.

The SDI1 was my first ever pedal

The blue stereo phaser is also pretty cool

mathias wrote:How do you use it? Just curious!
I'm going to make another board of my neglected pedals (that have been knocked off my main board) and I think the Metal Master is going to be the OD/distortion, with a Devi VFM, Fender Starcaster Chorus/vibrato (that $8 best buy pedal), a Dano Cool Cat vibe, and a Dano Corned Beef reverb in slapback mode. Actually kind of versatile for neglected pedals that don't have a home on my main board.

All sorts of ways. Mostly with bass. It can do a decent muff sound. Really nasty over the top, or mild and heavy. Boosting it does wonders with guitar.

Yeah, I did germ treble booster into the Metal Master with low gain, EQ knobs set to roughly noon + some fine adjustments, and I was getting a decent distortion-by-way-of-Muff sound out of it for guitar leads.

I've also used it as the main distortion pedal for my laptop running Garageband, since it sounds better than their built-in distortion pedal (GB's fuzz is pretty good, though.) I can put the metal master into the laptop, with Garageband emulating a clean Marshall JCM 800 stack, and get a nice metal lead sound for practicing the Metalocalypse riffs.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK4XTIY_R2s[/youtube]
Edit: I do this with my Gibson SG, bridge pickup cranked, which is a fairly high-output pickup compared to my other guitar, and that helps a lot with getting that sound..