Arion SMM-1 Metal Master

I've used the Metal Master since 1986 and it's my go-to distortion pedal for a number of reasons. I use it to play mostly Metal/Punk Rock styles.

Bought this pedal the first time at the local Guitar Center after trying out a bunch. I;ve since bought two additional units off of ebay for about 15-5 each.

Back in the eighties, I was looking for a dirty distortion pedal since a lot of the distortion pedals sounded like the DOD's - really clean smooth distortion. I used the Rat, which is great for metal dirt, but its way too squeaky and trebly for my tastes. (A Rat, squeaky? No way!). Part of my sound is getting GOOD feedback out of my Fender Showman, and the Rat just couldn't do it, it only got squelch. The Metal Master has great bass resoinse from the EQ, enabling me to control the squelch.

I agree with the other reviewer about the unecessary and somewhat confusing direct/soft output option. I've only ever used the direct out.

This is the biggest problem of the pedal and why I've had to buy three of them since the 80's. Cheap, plastic parts. The stomp part of the pedal is cheaply made and will break. The 9V Battery covering almost always pops off and gets lost or breaks and won't stay attached. The battery wires are easily pulled off making the battery power non-functioning. The input/output jacks are cheap and will end up popping quickly.

When I bought this pedal, everyone tried to talk me out of it. However, I have yet to find a distortion pedal that can sound metal/punk and still be able to get good tube feedback. If anyone can recommend a pedal that fits this bill, let me know! Until then I'll be stocking up on these everytime I see one for sale used. It goes to show that you should always try things out to find what works for YOU, instead of following what everyone else is using

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

I payed 20 bucks on Musicians Friend after hearing the sick 80's guitar sounding audio sample on soft mode. That was a mistake...

Theres nothing really to like about this pedal...

Its confusing as hell. To get the different modes (Soft and Direct) you have to plug it in to either out one or out two and it MIGHT just decide to play clean. It only has a two band equalizer, so that sorta sucks, cant really ever get that perfect sound your looking for. The distortion control is crap, you turn it up and it gets all kinds of feedback. And no matter what settings you have the pedal on it will kill your playing dynamics more than i ever knew a pedal could. Theres not alot of good in this pedal.

Meh, it's pretty solid plastic, nothing special.

Dont let the musicians friend audio sample fool you, this pedal really sucks.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Back in the 80s Arion was the brand of pedal you got if you could not afford a boss pedal. The quality is not very good but if this is all you could afford the rest of your gear probably was not as good as well so a low quality pedal would not really stand out. This is Arions budget metal pedal. The SMM-1 has 4 knobs on the face of it for tone shaping. From left to right it has a level knob then two frequency or EQ knobs then a knob for distortion. The pedal is an all plastic construction with a large plastic pedal portion taking up about half of the face of the pedal.

UTILIZATION

With the all plastic construction I would not count on this pedal holding up to serious abuse. The tops will get dirty over time and make noise. The level knob does what you would expect it increases the output of the pedal. The distortion knob like wise increases the saturation of the gain. There are two EQ knobs one that effects the high end the other one effects the low end. On the top there is a switch for direct and soft. This further changes the tone you can get from the pedal because in the direct mode it makes one of the outputs an effects bypass. So with the dual outputs you can run one amp dirty and the other amp clean at the same time.

SOUND QUALITY

If you max out the high end it will make your guitar sound like it is coming from a transistor radio. The high end knob seems to control the mids too so at certain settings you will get a really boxy middy tone. If you max out the low end your sound will become really muddy. The pedal already produces a muddy sound when the gain is up so turning up the low end just makes that worse.

OVERALL OPINION

If you just started playing and have an amp with bad gain this is something you could get to add more variety to your sound. The stereo out is something many cheap pedals dont have but I wonder if this is the best pedal you can afford do you really have two amps you can use the stereo out with. Back when this was the only pedal I had I only had one amp to use it with so the stereo feature went unused.