Ibanez MS10 Metal Charger

Works just like any analog guitar pedal

I like the sound quality a lot - after modifications. In stock condition there is not much to talk about - just a dull and annoying sound like any bad fuzz box. After consulting various people, cut off diodes. I took off just the diodes D5 and D6, leaving the rest as is. That made all the difference in the world. Surprising. I do have a TS9 and the sound clearly comes from the same vein but has much more gain. After getting this box - and they are cheap - I don't know why some people want add more gain to their TS9's. To me, this is it, plus more usable sounds because of the eq. I have a number of overdrive / distortion boxes like TS9, Marshall BluesBreaker Mk 1, both solid state and tube home made overdrives (FET+ Germanium, tube EF86, tube ECC86 based). But I have been missing a more distorted 80's type of sound that I would like to use from time to time, thick and creamy, a little like for example in Mick Jagger piece Lucky in love. A modified MS10 seems to do it for me. I mainly use Yamaha Pacifica solid-body with PAF pickup, to a 6W Class A tube amp with Celestion Vintage 10 that a friend built for me, this amp somewhat resembles early Fender Princetons, I guess from '50's. Sometimes I use a Marshall compressor first before distortion boxes. I will not give this a 10 since I have heard a few and built some myself to know that there are some great sounds out there, but for a certain type of song this seems to work very, very well. Without mods I find it pretty useless.

Looks fairly reliable. Probably not as tough though as the 9 series, since the jacks go directly to the PCB. I had to fix a problem in the input jack before using it. But it was pretty easy to fix though.

Most of the time I fix problems myself. I am usually helpful and friendly so that works ok :-)

Overall some eq settings do not work with my instrument so I guess one can get way muddy sounds from it too. But maybe those could work with some other instrument / amp combination. Since these things for most bit cost next to nothing, I think it is great value as starting point for modifications. Considering the price, I will give it a 10. Without the mods this would be around 3 or 4.

Distortion devices are usually not very difficult to deal with. And while these knobs labeled DISTORTION and LEVEL (= Volume) are really quite self- explanatory, those three tone controls called ATTACK, PUNCH and EDGE are not as simple a matter. ATTACK actually is a pre- distortion tone control (the same circuitry that is placed post-dist in the TS) with a more or less neutral setting at 12 o??clock. So start out from there and use it either to calm a signal too shrill by turning it counter-clockwise, or OTOH to brighten a signal to dull by turning it clockwise. I usually have it around 1 o??clock. Now PUNCH and EDGE are post-distortion controls with PUNCH controlling the low end and EDGE high mids and treble. I usually set both to max as a starting point and reduce both just enough to get rid of too much oomph and shrillness, resulting in values of around 3 o??clock for punch and 4 o??clock for edge. Now that you know it??s not even that difficult, is it?

Okay, time to admit that me, too, has tinkered with this pedal??s circuitry. I think that the stock sound is quite good, actually. The only real shortcoming is its lack of output level. It??s funny but it seems like the more you distort your guitar sound, the more sheer volume you require to cut through. My `69 Marshall (50 watts, usually enough) never sounded lower then when I tried Boss?? HM-2 with it. So this is a serious complaint. Some people here nag about the full on distortion this pedal produces, comparing it with the Tubescreamer series. That??s so silly! This thing is called METAL CHARGER, not OVERDRIVE. If you want a TS, get a TS. TS 10??s, 5??s and 7??s are all really affordable.
Before I tell you what I did alter, let??s shortly have a look a the basic building blocks of this distortion unit, shall we? First off there??s the input buffer, of course. Interestingly the efx input is also being fet switched, assumingly because there would be some serious bleed through without it. Next is the Attack tone control around an op-amp, followed by two soft clipping stages, which in turn are followed by a pair of hard clipping diodes. Then there are punch and edge eq??s, the volume control, a fet switch and the output buffer. Not the usual bipolar transistor, but an op amp.
Now those people recommending the removal of diodes one through four tell you to convert those soft clipping stages into simple amplification stages. Well, what??s the point in that?
Here are my mod??s: first of all, replace diodes 5 & 6 (the hard clippers) with leds. Less hard clipping, higher output. Secondly, lift one side of diodes 3 & 4 off the board and solder them to a 0.1 ceramic disc capacitor, with the other leg of the cap going back to where those diodes once terminated. An idea I??ve stolen from the Big Muff Pi. This gives a clearer, more balanced distortion. Step no. three: replace diodes 1 & 2 with four germanium diodes. Two and two of these will get their legs twisted and soldered together in order to have them run in series. You could also leave diode 2 in and replace only diode 1 with Germanium, resulting in a soft clipping stage with assymetrical distortion. I found the resulting sound a little to lame and upped this stage??s feedback resistor from 4k7 to 100k. You could get even more by inserting 220k like in soft clipping stage two. If you find the resulting amount of distortion to tame, forget about daisy-chaining those GE diodes, replace the silicon ones with one germanium type each. For still more distortion replace diodes 3 & 4 with GE types. Last thing I did: I replaced the 1uF coupling cap that comes from the input fet switch with a 0.47 cap. If that seems to radical, try anything inbetween. Why? because 1uF lets a lot of low frequencies pass, giving a lot of intermodulation distortion. Also I found the punch control to insensitive. Now a lot of low end is being attenuated and the resulting distortion is smoother. The punch control brings a lot of low end back in AFTER the signal has been clipped.
The result is quite astounding: a hefty distortion which clears up nicely when you turn down that distortion knob. Ever lowered SUSTAIN on a big muff? There??ll be a point when the sound plain sucks (well, a big muff ain??t built for that, so no complaint). Not so with my modded MS10. You get real dense distortion that is never unpleasant. I??ve a/b-ed it with my FatCat (a RAT clone) and found that, both pedals having the distortion control on full tilt, the amount of distortion was about the same, yet the MS10 had a far more controlled sound (which is, of course, not always what I want). It??s a high gain distortion pedal, so don??t critisize it for what it??s meant to be when what you really want is an overdrive. If, however you like the sound of two tubescreamers in series, this here MS10 could be an interesting choice for you.

True, then 10 series weren??t as sturdy as the nine series. But they??re way better then the so called tank series with their plastic housings (or DOD stompboxes, for that matter). Considering the shortcomings in the 10 series?? construction it is surprising how well they hold up. Which does have a lot to do with that stair case shape of those Ibanez and Boss pedals, I think. So while I do think they could have done better, I have to admit that they??ve done well enough to make these pedals pass the test of time.

I quite like the Boss Heavy Metal HM-2 pedal that I??ve got. It produces a whole lot of fizz that can be shaped into a variety of nice distortion sounds with a little help from a graphic eq. Same can be done with the Ibanez Metal Charger or any other distortion device for that matter. What makes the ms10 stand out in comparison is that it does produce decent sounds without the use of post-eq. Having modded the metal charger as described above gives this pedal a character very much of its own: a dual soft clipping device with just a touch of hard clipping, where every stage adds just a bit of distortion instead of one stage clipping the signal flat. Now if you only wanna play power chord riffs and/or single note solos, the stock pedal is absolutely fine except for that lack of volume boost. Which a graphic eq following in series could make up for. If, however, you want to play more complex harmonic structures than 1-5-8, I highly recommend a little bending of the original circuit, especially replacing diodes 5 & 6 with leds and lowering of the input cap. For a high gain distortion pedal this one is really very versatile, stock or not stock. Considering the prices these go for I would even go so far as to calling them a trade secret.

Quite simple

Without any modifications, I would give 5 points to this one. It was awful, and I could't get any decent sound out of it. Just horrible chainsaw effect. I tried to play metal with it.

So I forgot this pedal for about 10 years...

But after I did some modifications like suggested here, sound got a lot better. Now I am using it like Tubescreamer. In front of guitar amp it gives me good overdrive and fulfills the lak of attack of my Mesa/Boogie V-Twin. It's not suitable for hard metal, but still gives quite enough good drive for example old school metal. (Iron Maiden, Mot??rhead etc.)

The mod goes like this:
Remove diodes D1, D2, D3 and D4. That's it!

I'm not convinced about it's reliability. On the other hand it hasn't let me down ... yet. I have used only like 10 hours after the mod.

I use this pedal, when I play rock music in a cover band. We play music from bands like Deep Purple, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, CCR, Lenny Kravitz etc.
I've been playing about 15 years now. Mostly metal.

My setup is like this:

Guitar(Ibanez RG-620) -> MS10 -> Mesa/Boogie V-Twin -> Boss PSM-5 Power supply & master switch -> Line6 POD XT Live (switchable on/off with PSM-5)-> Marshall JCM 900 Amp

I'm also playing in three other bands, and I'm not using MS-10 in these band. (They are melodic metal and death metal)

I would compere this to Ibanez TS-9. Quite close.

If it where stolen, I wouldn't buy another one, because I have almost as good stompbox model in POD XT Live.

Usual gain (called distortion) and level control and 3 other conrols:
punch (bass and low mids), attack (very high mids), edge (ear piercing trebles).
Distortion, attack, punch and edge influence each other, so it is not easy to set the sound you want. What i miss is a usable mid control. The frequencys controlled by attack are too high for my taste.
The range of each control, regarded seperately, is ok, but they could be a little more linear imo.

I did not like the distortion character, neither original nor modded.

It has lots of gain, but the distortion sound is to harsh and mushy the same time, overly compressed, undynamic, artificial and transistor-like imho. I did not like the sound at all.

Therefor i tried a modd: cutting off diodes 1 to 4.
With that mod the dynamics became much better, now it reacts fine to the volume control of my guitars, but the basic distortion character didn't improve.
Modded i can't rate it higher than 6.

Imo unusable in front of a clean tube amp, not very convincing in front of a slightly overdriven tube amp.

Another down sside of the MS-10.

It is made cheaply, pots/knobs seem really cheap and the foot switch doesn't work reliably. Often i have to kick it 2 or more times to turn it on or off.
Unusable for stage use.
I have another pedal of the 10 series (compressor CP-10), and its foot switch works better, but also not as reliable as it should work.

I can rate it only 4. If it was newer, i'd rate it even worse.

no idea

It doesn't sound good, it is not reliable, therefor the best possible rating i can give are 4.
Even if it would sound good (what it does not) it was hardly usable because of the unreliable foot control.

It is easy to get sound out of it, but to get a decent sound is not to easy.
In addition to the usual gain/level controls it has 3 further controls:
attck, edge and punch. These 3 knob behave like an interdependend EQ,
one for bass and low mids, one for trebles, one for very high mids.
And the interdependence of these 3 with the gai/distortiuon control make it more difficult than e.g. on a marshall overdrive pedal to find your sound.
I have no manual, firmware doesn't apply here.
Gain (labeled distortion) and level work as they should, but the eq is quite dissapointing.

I seek for my sound, not teh sound of a certain artist.

Unmodded the effect quality is rather bad, in my taste. Too compressed and un-dynamic, either too mushy or too harsh (very hard too find an overall-ok setting). It is not very noisy.
I play (better: played) it in front of tube amps with gibson-scale mahagoni 2 humbucker guitars like 2 Burny Les Pauls or a Dean Sarasota Std.
As i wrote, the unmodded sound is in my ears rather bad. I was very disappointed after i have read several good reviews. Drive level was o.k. (from middle overdrive to almost high gain drive), but sound wasn't.

Then i read about mods: cutting off sdiodes 1 to 4. I had nothing to lose (but a bad pedal), so i tried it.
In deed, this improved the sound a little. It became more dynamic, less compressed. Now it reacts rather fine to the volume control of my guitars and to the way a hit the strings.
Nevertheless, it still doesn't sound good.
Still either too bassy or too harsh, still the distortion character is not good, too transistor like and artificial, still remarkably worse than a chepo pedal like Digitech Bad Monkey.
It is usable (but not too good) to blow a slightly overdriven tube amp a little (or more than a little) hatrder, bit it sounds really bad and annoying in front of a clean tube amp.

After mod i'd rate it 6 from 10. Befor modification max. 4 of 10.
All in all 5 points.

After the soudn the reliability is the other down side of this pedal. Built really weak and cheap. Especialliy the foot switch is unreliable, therefor it is unusable on stage.
I have another Ibanez Pedal of the 10 series (cp10 compressor).
On the cp10 the foot switch works a little better, still not good enough for stage purposes. On stage a foot switch has to work at the first kick, exactly in time. On the Ibanez 10 pedals it sometimes takes 2 kicks to turn the pedal on/off, my MS10 sometime needs 3 kicks.

The knobs and the chassis seem very cheap and not exactly built for eternity, therefor only 4 points (and this does regard thatthe pedal is not new, a new pedal would get 1 of 10).

no idea

An overdrive/distortion pedal with 3-band-EQ is a d*** good thing.
This spedal could be a good pedal with:
- easier to fix EY
- good (or at least ok) sound
- reliablity
The pedal has nothing of that, even after modding it it doesn't sound ok.
I have read several good reviews 'bout this pedal. Either mine is a 'monday model' or defect or the MS10 is just sh*t.
I highly recommend to test it befor buying it.

5 controll,
distortion, level, edge, punch, attack.
Edge, punch and attack are kinda EQ, interactive and its hard to find the right blend.
Edge and so on also influence the amount of distortion.

For the difficulty to adjust it right, i can rate it only 6.

I do not care for the sound of artists, i do not want to sound like some artist, i want to sound like me.

Setup: full tube amps (Engl, Fender Tweed Clone), mainly mahagoni-guitars with gibson-scale and 2 humbuckers, e.g. 2 Burny Les Pauls. Hardly ever reverb, no other effects.

Sound quality: i did not like it at all. It sounds too compressed, too artificial and too in-articulated for my taste. No beffy sound there, no classic distortion or overdrive tones, more like a fuzz, but not a good one.
I tried to mod it (cutting off diodes 1 - 4). Makes it sound a little better, but still not good. Unusable in front of a clean amp, not too good in front of a slightly overdriven amp. A little better than unmodded, less compressed, less fuzzy, but still not good.
A little bit noisy, but not too much.

Sorry, it doesn't sound good, it sounds remarkably worse than a 40 Euro digitech Bad Monkey or other cheap pedals, therefor only 6 points, and this contains some good will.

It is about 15 yars old. Built relatively cheaply.
On/off switch doesn't work reliably at my pedal, therefor only 4 points.

No idea.

Imho this pedal is not worthy to buy. No really good sounds, reliabilty is not as should be.

It has 5 controls: the usual drive and level, and in addition 3 controls for:
- attack (upper mids and drive)
- edge (mids and trebles)
- punch (vass and low mids, also influences the drive)

It is not a 3way EQ but a little like 2 drive circuits for different frequency ranges and treble contour control. the controls act interdependent, what makes it a little tricky to find the right soudn for you. But: it makes it versatile! 6 points for easy of use, one extra point for versatility, that gives 7 points.

I have to separate:
un-modded it doesn't sound good. Not really bad, but alsonot good, in my ears.
The drive character is o.k., but is a little too compressed for my taste, not really dynamic. Level should be higher, and lower drive setting are only possible if you turn down punch and attack.
All in all it sounded too artificial, transitsor-like, un-dynamic and un-musical too me. 5 points (because it is not really bad).
But i have to confess, i did not test it very long unmodded.
I didn't really like the sound, so i fastly modded it.
Mod: remove the diodes d1 to d4 (just cutting them off).
This REALLY changed the sound.
Now it makes lower drive settings possible, it acts way more dynamic, it sounds a little like a better tube screamer ts-9 with enhanced EQ possibilities, more bass and really good dynamics. You can go from clean to decent hard crunch just with the volume pot of your guitar. Each pickup setting sounds clearly different, it doesn't sound artificial but tube-like. Output level is a little better now (but could be still more). Now it can be set to totally clean, but because of too less level it can't be used as a clean booster.
After mod: 8.5 points.

That makes all in all 7 points.

It is from the 80s.
It is not built like a tank. Controls seem not very stable, but the main disadvantage is the switch, which is not very reliable.
It often takes 2 or 3 kick to sqitch between bypass and effect mode.
Therefor i can't rate it higher than 6, if it was not that old i'd rate it even lower.
I wouldn't ig with it. Maybe a replace of the foot switch could solve that problem.

no idea

After mod it sounds good and versatile. It offers a lot of possibilities to adopt it to your guitar or your taste, and drive sounds are good. Now sounds roughly like a tube screamer with enough bass.

Without mod it doesn't flash me soundwise, and the reliability is not as it should be for a brand pedal from Ibanez.
Therefor only 6 points, all in all.
I like the modded sound, but if it was stolen i wouldn't buy another one.

it's pretty easy to use. 5 controls,
first is the amount of distortion upto and over silly amounts
second is volume when on
third is attack which makes it sound smoother when rolled back
punch is like low frequency whallap
and edge is high frequency wallap.

This has a great sound on it's own sometimes i stick a compressor on
before it.
It's slightly better for lead than rhythm.
I use this with a parker with single coil/humbucker (coiltaps).
It's a bit noisy on full gain as it is doing what is asked for.
I've used it straight into a hi-fi amp (surprisingly good),
a peavey bandit and a marshall valve head and cab (half stack).
It's always good, but with the marshall i let it do less work so
that i can marshall up the sound a bit.

I had one for years and damaged the in connector by using a really
thick guitar lead and jamming it past the power socket ( with
a power socket thing in ).
The battery connector thing is a bit frail.
Everything else is solid.
I have 3 of these. I bought one in about 86 and damaged it a bit so
I bought a replacement which was modded ( I hate the modded ones ).
Just by a tube screamer if that's what you want. (I have a tube screamer as well). So I had to buy another on ebay so that I could use it live.

I play rock and blues stuff like that. This thing as far as I'm concerned is for rock solos. In that respect it excells and makes
other stuff like the various Boss metal and distortion pedals look
like a heap of junk. ( I have some of these also ).
Remember that when this was new it was about ??75 in 1986? and the
equivalent boss stuff was ??40. Now you can get yourself superior
ibanez series 10 pedals on ebay cheaper than the boss ones?
Strange and true. Except for tube screamers (series 9), people really wet themselves over those.

N/A

This is a fun pedal to play around with. Very dynamic! I would not consider it heavy metal as much as I would consider it classic rock. In other words, more Judas Priest/Kiss than Van Halen.

***QUESTION*** I am very interested in converting this pedal into a TS-9 (but with the extra knobs for tweaking!). I have seen reference to this mod on this board. Can someone post a real layman's description on how to do this? I have heard that you just have to take out a few diodes, however, I don't think I would know how to tell D1 from D2 or D3 just by looking. Also, if you take out the Diodes, do you have to re-soder the connection?

20+ years old and running strong, much like all of my Ibanez Pedals!

Very impressive actually. I had trouble with my Ibanez Chorus (CS 505 I believe it was). That pedal was a good 25 years old, and, Ibanez was still able (and willing) to send me a schematic!

A fun pedal to play around with. A no brainer for the the 40 or 50 bucks it will cost you on eBay.

I wrote a review for the MS10 yet, but this is my second MS10 that i want to use in Live. I modify it immediately to test the improvements of the mod.

Is easy to use it, and it's very easy to mod!!!
Just open the box, take a solder and remove 4 diodes in the center of the board (D3 - D4 - D5 - D6).

After the mod, it becomes more easy to use and obtain wonderful sounds!
The EQs and all the levels seems to work better and give more colour at the sound.

Unmodded MS10 create a good amount of distortion, but too much muddy at high levels, noisy, overcompressed, it seems to denature the amp then the guitar sound, it lose some cranck shadings/frequences of the amp and some guitars like les paul.
An example: it was well for strats solos, but my '69 Les Pauls seems to be a stagg, sounds too much shrill without a "body" (for example gzzzzz sound instead of Grrrrrrr in the chords) and punch don't change it.

After the mod there's NO LOSS OF DISTORTION in my 1959slp!!!
The gain is more linear and it excites the features of the guitars and pre-tubes, bass break-up very well with gibsons guitars and don't need to be "punched".

When i plug my '69 les paul in the modded MS10, and it to my '73 jmp plexi, i discover a TRUE MARSHALL DISTORTION and i can't stop play for 3 hours!!
Recently i substitute the GT ecc83s (really, selected sovtek 12ax7wa) with JJ Tesla Ecc83S in V1 and V2, Ecc803s as phase inverter.
Now the sound is more marshall like and the modded MS10 amplifies this improvements!

Now it get a pile of distortion (more than the jcm2000), it's more warmest, round tone, the EQ works better, it get finest sound with the strats, cranckest sound with the gibsons with more liquid solos, infinite sustain without feedbacks also with volume at 10, better slide effects....and, it's very important, PURE GUITAR and AMP TONE!!!

It's the best "marshall in a box" that i never heard!
I tried the TS9-DX (modded "plus" by keeley) of a friend (paid 160 euros) and it was awful compared with my second MS10 paid 46? and modded by myself in 5 minutes!

Now I use these settings
Distortion - 9
Level - 3
attack 3
Punch, edge - 1

With this setting i obtain all marshall tone only adjusting the volume of the guitar, from jimmy page - slash to zakk wylde, from Stevie Ray Vaughn to Malmsteen.

The mod don't take positive effects in solid state amps (this is a "pro" pedal), but you can get a good mod distortion replacing the 4 diodes with leds ;)

...I have also a MXR D+104... it was good for some rock tracks, specially using the bottleneck...
But i don't think to carry it in live (now I don't use it anyway), the D+ bypass is awful and the modded MS10 become good also for the slides (removing the muddyness), has the triple amount of distortion and the thent of MXR noise!

I think to modify the mxr to obtain less noise but, the modded MS10 has anyway the triple of distortion, more controls like EQ, better sound, better bypass. There's no comparison!

I open it...
Heavy box, good PCB, solders and pots. Very good!

As said yet, the internal slot is too much small for my 9V Rechargeable batteries.
Normal batteries fits OK but has only 3 hours of life.

Now i try to use GBL AC-DC 1A adaptor, but i'm forced to put 4 electrolitic capacitors of 220uF in the output for remove the AC buzz.

Can Ibanez support a pedal modded by myself?
It's easy to repair like a toy.
There's 1000 schematics on internet!

I'm opening a website, i will include schematics and photos of useful mods.

Thanks to Jerome for the first photo of the mod.

Simply the best!
You can have it used at ridicolous prices, after the mod you can discard and replace any overdrive, distortion pedal, compressor, BBE Maximizer with only one pedal!

I bought two MS10 (Live + Studio) and i haven't regrets.