Electro-Harmonix Other guitar saturation effects

The Electro-Harmonix Metal Muff with Top Boost is an analog distortion pedal. The “Top Boost” feature boosts certain frequencies for solos and has its own level control. It can be powered by 9 volt battery or the included power adapter. UTILIZATION The Metal Muff is extremely easy to use. It has six knobs and two buttons. It has a knob for the Top Boost level, gain, lows, mids, highs, and over all volume. One footswitch turns the pedal on and off and the other engages the Top Boost. I briefly glanced over the manual, but the pedal is so self explanatory there is almost no need for it. SOUND QUALITY I use the Metal Muff with a Gibson Les Paul Custom and a Guild S-300D. In my experience I have found that there are not a wide variety of USABLE tones in this pedal. The equalization knobs tend to have one, possibly two, sweet spots in their range of motion. Any more or any less and the tone becomes too harsh or too stifled. I actually think having the Top Boost engaged with the knob set to about 8 o’clock makes the whole pedal sound better and I will often leave it on all the time. This pedal has massive amounts of gain on hand. I usually keep the gain knob set anywhere from noon to 3 o’clock. OVERALL OPINION The Metal Muff has a ton of potential, I only wish it had a more user friendly EQ. J.D. Cronise from The Sword uses one for his distorted tone and it works extremely well for him. I would recommend demoing this pedal with the same make and model amp you own before buying. Knowing what I know now I probably would have gone with a different high gain distortion box. For now it will remain the back up distortion pedal in my rig.