MXR Fullbore Metal Distortion

i kinda flipped a coin with this and another and am very happy with this im still gonna get the whompler but this petal is fun if u like heavy high gain stuff very nice i love it

If you have been tone chasing like I have been for 5 months just buy this pedal. MXR is legendary for construction and design. This pedal can get you sweet high or warm lows. it literally can do anything. This is my only pedal know i just sit it on the desk and tweak to my liking. I STRONGLY recommend you pair it with a MXR 10 band Eq pedal for super super sweet tone. so for around 300$ for this pedal and the EQ you will be set. Trust me Trust me Trust me. buy this pedal.

This pedal is not for everyone. It is for people who want extremely high gain to shape and play with. The eq is fantastic and you can get a wide, wide variety of sounds with very slight adjustments.It is really easy to lose control of this pedal. When you first use it you should keep the gain at or below 9:00. More gain also means u should turn the high down accordingly. Sometimes I have the high all the way down. When you get more acquainted with it you learn to avoid unwanted noise.I'm using a Roland JC-120 for my amp, a Fender Strat Standard with a SD Hotrails for a bridge pickup. I found that the best placement in the chain is Ibanez Tube Screamer>MXR Fullbore Metal>Fulltone GT-500 boost/OD. After that I have my delays and phase etc. The Tube Screamer works amazingly well with the Fullbore Metal to add body and better palm muting without causing any nasty hum or feedback. I put the GT-500 after the FM simply for a volume boost when I need it.It's style of distortion sounds like they started with a Boss DS-1 and just added more gain, far better eq, and a noise gate. They also added bite, anger, hiss, insanity, and when you let it off the leash a little more I swear it spits at you.It's better than I thought it would be. I had and sold a Boss metal zone, a Metal Muff, a Modtone Flextortion, and a DOD Supra Distortion all while looking for this. The only other pedal I am considering is a Wampler Triple Wreck, but for now I'm all set with this MXR Fullbore Metal.

BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: The MXR Fullbore Metal is a high-octane distortion suitable for modern metal music. It's 3-band EQ with adjustable Midrange Q gives the MXR FM the ability to model virtually every other distortion out there.WHAT I LIKE about the pedal is that it's small, easy to operate, and doesn't take much time to dial in the tone you want. I play with a Marshall JCM2000 DSL50 going into a 1960A 4x12 using a Les Paul Standard, and it sounds amazing. I love the onboard Marshall JCM-flavored tube distortion, but it is more in line with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (obviously), and not entirely suitable for modern American metalcore. The MXR Fullbore Metal gets me to where I need to go. This is nice because I can use my amp to have a good clean and overdrive channel, and then tap the Fullbore when I need to play metal.WHAT I DISLIKE is that this pedal generates a lot of white noise, so you have to be careful with the Treble and Mid-Q knobs. However I also noticed that the amount of white noise also depended on my amp's EQ settings as well, so know in advance you'll need to spend a good 15-minutes doing a proper setup for recording purposes.WHAT ABOUT THE EH METAL MUFF? I owned a Metal Muff for years, and this pedal totally blows it away. The big "selling point" about the MM is that it has a Top Boost. Big deal. I wrote a review for the MM on Amazon, but in summary, the Top Boost makes everything sound weird and unmusical. Comparing the Top Boost to the Noise Gate in terms of the big "selling point", the Fullbore's Noise Gate (which has adjustable sensitivity) to me seems like a MUCH better feature when thinking about how tight you want your rhythm guitar or leads to sound.WHAT ABOUT THE BOSS ME-70? I currently own an ME-70, and being totally honest - I think the negative peer pressure and crap guitarist's give each other about multi-effects is because in their mind they think an old-fashioned pedalboard with a thousand bucks worth of pedals is "real" whereas multi-effects pedals are "fake". This might be true to some extent, but modern digital modeling is getting so close to vintage analog signal chains... that at some point the trade-off does indeed make sense. (FYI: Dave Mustaine uses a DigiTech GSP1101 as part of his live rig). #endrant. Anyway, the Boss ME-70 has only a few settings useful onstage, but not so much for recording since in the end, they do sound a tad digital, and the ME-70 compresses your signal. The MXR Fullbore does not compress, and sounds analog, so it wins.FOR RECORDING PURPOSES? I bought this pedal because I wanted a dedicated metal distortion to use for my Metal EP I'm self-recording. In conjunction with an ADA GCS-3, I created an all-analog signal chain for direct interface that sounds amazing. Check out the ADA GCS-3 if you can. It's an amazing speaker simulator, and it can take any pedal you throw at it and convert it into a beautifully sounding emulation as if the pedal itself was it's own 1x12 combo amplifier. Anyway, through the GCS-3, the Fullbore basically sounds like a Mesa-Boogie.WHY ONLY 4 STARS? The Fullbore isn't for everybody, it isn't for every guitar, or every amp, but by itself, it's really friggin good. I suppose if it had a 10-band EQ and a 12AX7 preamp circuit, it would be "the best metal pedal", but for a small piece of gear, it's probably the best analog distortion on the market.

Pros:This pedal comes preset with a lot of gain, I mean a lot! At 9 oclock you get tons of gain, enough for a crunch and lead, theres also more gain in store for a super high gain lead. I wouldnt say this is a replacement for a tube pedal(Behringer Tube Monster ie Ibanez TK Blackstar HT etc) but certainly sounds EXCELLENT for an analog version, solid state and amp are often mixed, ie Ds into a Marshall head for a sweet analog and tube hybrid, this is what I use for it but it can achieve a GR8 sound with just the EQ knobs. I really like the harmonics and dynamics, the best solid state distortion for the price in my opinion, Im using it to generate a lot of gain into a tube and the solid state+ tube mix is just golden. It couldnt hurt to boost it, Bad monkey can get you the kinks for $50.Cons:You have to unscrew the bottom to change the battery, and if you want to adjust the Noise Gate threshold you better reach for a mini screwdriver, this really blew it for me on versatility, if they put a threshold knob this would be the ultimate analog metal tone machine.Conclusion: whether by itself or mixed into tubes this is a great pedal, only issue is you cant adjust the noise gate to get different crunches with the twist of a knob, only way I can think of is get 2 of these, but Dunlop better listen to us Amazon buyers :D

This is the sounds of a Peavey Bandit in a pedal. I don't mean that in a good or bad way. Many people may have fun with this overly saturated sound for heavy metal rhythms, or this would be good if you want a jacked sound at low volume in your bedroom. I love MXR products, this is made very well, I just really do not like the sound. Haha, not one bit.