Boss ML-2 Metal Core

With everything at 12 and volume tweaked to taste it sounded great. For me turning the bass or treble past 2 o'clock was pushing it. The bass is tuned pretty low, and the treble is very sizzly. It can cover anything from AC/DC to Dimmu Borgir just by rolling back your guitar's volume and tweaking the gain knob.

This pedal didn't get noisy,butI was just at my friend's house playing it through his Marshall Lead 100 Mosfet (ew..) for the weekend. The distortion was plentifull, and the EQ did a good job to tailor the sound, but I'm a tube snob and could hear the difference in this solid state distortion and my Bugera's smooth thick crunch, so I didn't like it. At the MT-2's levels of solid state gain it started to loose musicality since SS distortion squarewaves your signal. With the gain a smidgeon or two over none at all, and the level maxed out it did give a small boost of nitrox to my Bugera's preamp. With some of the amp's overdrive mixed in it sounded okay, but I still prefered the amp alone.

It's Boss. Enough said.

And I'd never gig with this thing. Maybe a Metal Zone if my amp crapped out on me, which has less gain and bass.

They build their pedals like tanks, so obviously their customer support sucks. Why else would you build a product that will never need repair? Lol, no really. No opinion.

I'm more of a Black Metal guitarist primarily (anything from the symphonic low to high gain to early Cradle of Filth (Midian, Damnation and a Day)), but I play bits of every style at home. I do however hate anything ending in "core" or begining in "Nu". This pedal is perfect for Death-Core, Grind-Core, Metal-Core, Thrash-Core, Hard-Core, Party-Core (unfortunatly it exsists), Crap-Core, Poop-Core, Bass-Core, and Terrible-Sounding-Core styles of music, which isn't music, but marble's being shakin around inside a balloon with chainsaws made of dried crap going off in the distance. If any of those style's are your taste, firstly, get the best hearing aides in the world so you can clearly understand the mud coming from your speakers. Secondly this pedal is for you.

extremely simple, 4 knobs.

i run a greg bennet interceptor with steve vai dimarzzio pickup at the bridge. Generally i run my effects through an eq pedal ,then into the effects loop of a marshall avt 50 amp.

I normally use the Boss metal zone mt2 as my distortion in the chain.
I wanted to try something new with all the hype i have heard regarding the metal core.

THE METAL CORE SUX BIG HAIRY STINKY ******! it makes your amp sound like a tin can with a speaker in it. Man was i totally mislead about the metal core!People, i have been shreddind since 1978 and i must say i am very very disapointed in Boss now. I ahve always used their pedals in the past so i thought being a boss it would be worth it. Nope! I played the thing for 10 minutes, put in the box and sent it back for an exchange. I will now try the line6 uber metal.I know....I know its fricken digital, but hell maybe it will have some balls!

If you are seeking a pedal for heavy metal save your money. and buy the metal zone...head to head there is no comparison! The metal zone has way more balls!

i dont know i owned it for 10 minutes.

irrelevant

I only am being this harsh because this is a Boss. You would come to expect better from Boss.For $100 this pedal is a RIPOFF!

Very easy to use, 4 knobs, they suggest working from right to left (dist then high, low and level) to find your tone, this worked and I found a tone I was happy with, however see below

If you have a modern Line 6 spider amp DO NOT BUY THIS PEDAL! You can get its performance out of your amp's built in distortion!

Not known, returned after one day

A waste of money if you have a modelling amp, no better than built in distortion on one

This pedal is simple to use. There are only four knobs on it(volume,lows,highs,distortion). I honestly havent read the manual. Its use is self explanatory.

I have a Jackson Dkmg dinky guitar with Emg 81/85 pickups,my amp is Peavey 120 watt transtube half stack, and I have this demon of a pedal. Ive used every metal pedal there is ( the digitech Death metal, the Dod death metal pedal,digitech metal master,digitech heavy metal pedal,The metal master,boss metal zone). This thing has the ultimate distortion and the best sound ive played with except for possibly the metal zone. If youre looking for a strictly rhythm or strictly lead pedal, you get both in the same package.It has one basic distortion with bone crushing base and eye rupturing highs with great sustain. You can sweep, shred, 8 finger tap with clarity. Palm mutes sound like powerful attacks. If you love heavy, heavy music,with fast, clear shredding and alternate picking(cannibal corpse, braindrill, black dahlia, beneath the massacre) this pedal is for you. If you want multiple kinds of distortion sounds on one pedal, go for a Boss metal zone. I dont recommend Digitech products, although they look cool,they are not very durable, and sound terrible at high volumes(grunge pedal, death metal pedal, metal master). I do like the heavy metal from digitech however.

The metal core is a durable and reliable pedal. I have owned it for a little over a year, and I never bring a backup pedal to shows. As long as you use it within reason it should last for quite a while(no throwing it at your friends or getting it wet).

I havent had to deal with Boss for any of my pedals. They work as great as the day I bought them.

I play technical death metal, blackmetal,thrash, power metal, grindcore, blues, rock, country, rock, and classical guitar. I have been playing for 7 years strong. Ive had lots of other pedals(most of which are broken) and a couple of other guitars(piece of crap Ibanez gax 70, and a hybrid piece of crap Bc rich made from parts of other bc riches). This pedal makes me feel like playing more, my riffs sound cooler my shreds/sweeps/finger taps sound just as fast, and my pinch harmonics sound fantastic. I do wish it had mid control, but not a huge deal at all, infact it sounds more metal without so much mids. Oh and if anyone ever stole this pedal, Id beat their skull in.(No way Id lose without help).However, if I needed to, I would gladly purchase another one assuming a better pedal hasnt come out in the last year.

The boss metal core is fairly easy to get into. With all knobs at 12 o clock, some good sounds can be attained by tweaking amp EQ. Adjusting the 2 band EQ on the pedal (bass, treble) is simple and straightforward.

I'm using this with a Epiphone Les Paul into a MG100 combo... yeah i know not the best gear possible but I like the sound. The distortion is very deep- excellent for any type of music that requires heavy distortion. This pedal shines when doing chord work, as the bass is tight and the attack on palm mutes is excellent. Treble is there, but can be adjusted to taste thanks to the fact the pedal has a 2-band EQ and not a tone knob. I', using this for heavy pop-punk riffs and mostly hi-gain rhythm playing. Distortion can get noisy at the highest levels, but that can be expected.

It's a Boss- they've proven their track record as far as I'm concerned. They really do produce dependable products.

Never dealt with Roland- they are a big company, so I would rather contact whoever you purchased the pedal from instead.

I play Pop-punk hi-gain style music (NFG, Blink, ATL, etc.) If you want a modern metal sound, then this pedal is a good bet. If you like a fuller sound in your distortion, that is good for rhythm, then i would suggest the ML-2. I don't really play lead, so i cannot comment on the distortion for high-register single note passages. Overall, the ML-2 metalcore is a good pedal for hi-gain, crushing tone. If brighter, harsher tones are required, than I would suggest the MT-2 metal zone as that box is much brighter, and middier.

Step on it to turn it on, step again to turn it off. Ridiculously simple. Four knobs that you can fiddle around with, it's very easy, especially if you're a newbie player (like me).

It's metal. Thrash metal, speed metal, nu metal, death metal, math metal, etc. Only problem I could find was a little unwanted reverb.

Batteries die kind of fast, but the pedal itself is practically indestructible.

Never had to.

I play rock and metal, and the tone is great. I usually run it w/ my B.C. Rich Warlock. I have a B.C. Rich 10Watt practice amp (shut up, quit laughing, I'm poor) and it sounds great. I really recommend it to ANYONE.

4 knobs- Level, Low, High, Gain. Simple. Each one does what it says, and not too interactive, so if you dial the bass out, you get the bass out with no impact to your higher frequencies. GREAT having a separate Hi and Low controls. I loved this in my Bad Monkey too--All pedals should head in this direction and get rid of that "universal" (read: limited) TONE knob.

Woah. This is probably the best Boss pedal I own, and could be the best distortion pedal I have ever owned. The funny thing- I don't play Metal. I don't even know what "Metal Core", "Emo-Core", "Apple-Core", etc is. I play instrumental stuff, a la Via, Satch, Johnson, LTE, Lynch, etc. so my main objective was to get a gainy yet articulate tone. This pedal delivers in spades. It is mid-scooped by design, but don't let that turn you off if Metal isn't your thing--it works PERFECTLY with a mid-heavy amp like a Marshall, or a Valveking (with a Tonker speaker= very heavy mids). They compliment each other perfectly. One warning: the Bass and Treble controls are VERY dynamic. When my amp is cranked, they are barely above 9:00 each. Which is a great ting--I'm tired of getting pedals that suck the bass tones out when you stomp on them, so it's nice to have that kind of control if/when you need it. The gain on this is where it's at. I've never had a pedal with that much gain, that actually sounded this good. And it is DEAD quiet. It seems like there is some kind of built in limiter or something in it, which is great to have that as part of the circuitry. Don't worry about any impacts to your sustain-it sustains for days, almost like one of those Fernandez pickups. I can't say enough about this pedal, and if you play with any kind of "more than bluesy" gain, you owe it to yourself to at least try this one out. I gotta give it a 10, cause I never came across a pedal that I wanted to sleep with, until this one. If it had pants, I'd definitely want to get in them.

The only drawback is that is isn't the best pedal for any mid-gain tones, or for guitar volume rollbacks. That's not to say that it sounds horrible, but this pedal's intent is gain. Heavy, clear gain. So the Blues-only guys can skip this one. For the rest of you "normal" players who don't limit yourself to just one genre (that's right, I said it), you should already have a pedal/sound for the blues anyway.

Typical Boss (which is a good thing).

?? I have never contact any customer support for a pedal. I have never owned one that broke, nor had a question on one.

Giving a 9 because it is somewhat of a one trick pony. But this is the best trick I have ever seen in my life. And the trick isn't providing a "metal" sound, although it can, it is really providing an articulate, clear, noise-free, gain, that I honestly have not heard in a pedal before. At least not this good. It is dead quiet, and unlike the SD-1, adds no noise to your signal when on or off. This and the Bad Monkey are the only non-true-bypass pedals on my 8 pedal board, and you'd never know. It's been said, but Boss REALLY nailed it with this one. Don't let the catch-phrase-of-the-day name fool you, this is a very refined, very professional sounding pedal. For a seasoned player like myself (20+ years playing) who likes and knows tone, to a bedroom-playing teenager who likes to Chug Chug Chug, this pedal will fit on many boards like a glove.

You'd have to be damn near a vegetable to not know how to use this pedal. People ***** cuz there is no knob for Mid's but, who needs it? if your really that concerned with your sound you should have an Equalizer pedal as well.

Extremely BALLS!

My rig is a Peavey VK 100 Head *Tube Amp head if you didn't know* with 1 Peavey VK cab. My guitar's are a Schecter C1-SheDevil and Schecter S1-Elite Diamond Series. Pedals are the Boss ML-2 Metal Core distortion, a Boss equalizer, and Planet Waves Chromatic Tuner.

This puts me at so much low end it's RIDICULOUS, so the EQ is a big must for me.

The distortion sound is so amazing and clear.

It's a Boss, of course you can rely on it. This thing will still be running when my ***** in the dirt.

Have actually not done this yet considering I recently got the pedal.

But in previous cases Boss has always been 100% fair and reliable on everything.

This is an amazing product, if your a metal music player like myself *IE Bands like The Black Dahlia Murder and such* I definitely consider this product.

Amazing tone
Amazing distortion
Amazing BALLS

It must be Boss

Simple. Batteries do not last long, so a power supply is a must. Some may find that out the hard way like me.

I think the tone was pretty good for the mostly heavy metal stuff I play. My setup needed a kick in the ass for the low end, and this did it. I think there should have been a mid EQ, the pedal could be more useful with a little more fine tuning. I haven't tried many distortion pedals, but this is the heaviest I've heard.

But there was a very bad problem for me. The problem is a bit hard to explain, but I'll do my best (I tried 3 pedals, all did the same thing). If you hit a note and let it ring, usually you'll get some odd fluctuation in the tone. The note won't ring clear, it almost sounds like some kinda bad compression or noise gate maybe. The problem is more pronounced the lower the note (Low E string was the worst).

Some people seem to be ok with this, or apparently don't even notice it. I admit to not noticing it at first myself. But when I got it home and played for awhile, I knew it wasn't my answer for more gain.

My previous Boss pedals never had problems, but didn't have this one long.

I'd be fairly satisfied with this pedal if Boss had a fix for the problem I described.

Super easy to use. Your microwave is more complex.

I have a "78 Washburn Hawk (like a Les paul), a Jackson with Dimarzios and a Warmoth strat with Dimarzios that I play through a Hughes and Kettner 60 DFX. I wasn't getting enough heaviness out of my amps distortion and my Metal Zone was sounding too trebly for what I had in mind. I wanted a heavy sound for death metal and decided to give this a try. It definitely came through - nice beefy bass that doesn't sacrifice the highs. I'm very pleased.

I'm giving it a 7 just for lack of versatility (you should get more than a one trick pony for a $100) even though it delivered exactly what I wanted.

It's a Boss. I suppose I could have bought a digitech DEATh pedal but every digitech pedal I've ever owned has dies on me. My Boss pedals will probably outlive me.

NA

Overall I'm very happy with this purchase. It's a mean aggresive distortion pedal and gives me the sound I needed.

If you don't have the greatest amp or guitar and need something heavy I recommend you try this before swapping gear.