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Hatsubai « Crazy distortion »
Published on 06/08/11 at 18:02The Zvex Box of Metal is a more extreme version of their Box of Rock. Think of this as a crazy, over the top distortion pedal with some fuzz overtones at times. The pedal has a volume, gain, bass, mid, treble, noise gate. On top of that, there's an extremely cool Vexter look going on with the case, and the pedal is 100% true bypass to ensure no tone suckage.
UTILIZATION
The pedal is designed a bit differently than most other distortions. Most generally just have a single tone knob, but Zvex uses a three band EQ. This adds versatility to the pedal, and it gives you some extra cool options once you start fiddling with the knobs as they all seem to interact with each other in a unique way. The gate in this is particularly useful as there's tons of gain built into this pedal. It'll turn even the cleanest JC120 into a metal monster, although the tone might not be the best you've heard...
SOUND QUALITY
The sound is where I am a bit weary with this pedal. It's such an over the top distortion pedal that I think it was meant for clean amps. Because it was meant for clean amps, it has that distinctive "pedal" sound going on. Imagine running a DS-1 into a clean amp -- that's the pedal tone I'm referring to. That said, the pedal does the job it sets out to do, I believe. The three band EQ is probably the coolest part of this pedal as you can really shape the tone the way you want it. I don't recommend running this into a high gain amp, but if you do, you can try using it as a boost by turning the gain all the way down. The noise gate gets bonus points as well.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're looking for a more boutique style distortion pedal that delivers the goods, this is probably something you should check out. It's a bit over the top, but the gate helps keep everything under control. I recommend trying to find one of these used as it'll help out in terms of the price department, and these pedals are built to withstand a nuclear warhead so no worries about it shorting out during shipping.
UTILIZATION
The pedal is designed a bit differently than most other distortions. Most generally just have a single tone knob, but Zvex uses a three band EQ. This adds versatility to the pedal, and it gives you some extra cool options once you start fiddling with the knobs as they all seem to interact with each other in a unique way. The gate in this is particularly useful as there's tons of gain built into this pedal. It'll turn even the cleanest JC120 into a metal monster, although the tone might not be the best you've heard...
SOUND QUALITY
The sound is where I am a bit weary with this pedal. It's such an over the top distortion pedal that I think it was meant for clean amps. Because it was meant for clean amps, it has that distinctive "pedal" sound going on. Imagine running a DS-1 into a clean amp -- that's the pedal tone I'm referring to. That said, the pedal does the job it sets out to do, I believe. The three band EQ is probably the coolest part of this pedal as you can really shape the tone the way you want it. I don't recommend running this into a high gain amp, but if you do, you can try using it as a boost by turning the gain all the way down. The noise gate gets bonus points as well.
OVERALL OPINION
If you're looking for a more boutique style distortion pedal that delivers the goods, this is probably something you should check out. It's a bit over the top, but the gate helps keep everything under control. I recommend trying to find one of these used as it'll help out in terms of the price department, and these pedals are built to withstand a nuclear warhead so no worries about it shorting out during shipping.