Ibanez MS10 Metal Charger

I'm playin` different kind of blues/ bluesrock sometimes soul/ funk music.
From B.B King to SRV, Clapton and C.Santana.
My setup (I love it): Fender US Lonestar Strat (Pearly Gates HB in parallel)+ MIJ Strat with Texas Specials, Dunlop CryBaby, Rodenberg GAS 828, Ibanez MS 10, Boss PS-2 (using only for delay), Fender Deluxe Reverb - very fine amp, the best I ever used - playing guitar for almost 25 years playing gigs in clubs or on small stages.
In the past I used BOSS SD-1, Roland GP-8, Hughes Kettner Cream Machine and a Marshall Amp. Have sold all of it!

I think it's quite easy to get good sounds out of it, especially using it with the Strats and the Fender Deluxe (tube amp!!!).
I`m having the "made in Japan" version of the MS.
Received it with box and manual. The pedal was in excellent condition. Looks and works like new.

Well. Here is my review.
It's an IBANEZ pedal! TS like with his own character, up to heavy distortion.
When I saw it on ebay, first of all I read the reviews on harmony central!
Although some guys recommend a modification, i have to say if you are lookin for a overdrive(!) and distortion pedal with a maximum range of slightly overdriven to screaming lead sounds, this is a good choice. Also there`s a big amount of tone tone control options with the potis ATTACK, EDGE and PUNCH.
A powerful sound with nice harmonics and girth and of course enough distortion, for blues/ rock players, i`m not a metal head!
My GAS 828 is more TS-808 like, more midrangy, perfect for traditional Blues and Fusion stuff for my ears.
The MS reminds me of SD-1 but with much more power (punch!).
But it`s easy to produce also sounds like SRV`s Pride and Joy with the MS 10.
I'm still working on a C.Santana like sound, but it sounds great so far!
Reducing ATTACK makes the guitar sound more violin or flute like, if you know what I mean!
The tone control is also very helpful, to find your right position in the mix - I'm playin` with a horn section!
...some kind of "old fashioned" modelling unit!
Try one if you can, it`s very much fun.

Ibanez quality. The unit is about 20 years old.
It looks/ works like bought yesterday!

A fine unit for a nice price. Maybe even a quiet tip. Keep on playing!

I bought this effect used, without a manual, but the MS10 is very easy to use, 5 knobs:
Distortion
Level (Volume)
Attack
Punch (Bass)
Edge (Medium high frequeces)

After 5 minutes of tries, you're sure to obtain every sound you want!!!

I have a 1984 version, The sound is GREAT and i love it!!!!!
Ibanez create a very good pedals!!!!
I use it with a 1959slp with GT valves on pre-power, 1960ax greenback speakers cab, les paul '69 deluxe with seymour hot rails in the bridge, fender mexico stratocaster ash body with dimarzio pickups, greg bennett av3 with seymour seth lover on the bridge.
The pedal has a lot of settings that i can play from the "vaughan style" blues to the heaviest 80s - 90s metal!
I use settings
Distortion - 10
Level - 4
attack, punch, edge - 10
and i obtain, with the avion, a identical PURE "KISS" SOUND, with a lot of cutting edge screams!
With the les paul, the sound spaces from gary moore to ratt/scorpions genre (listen blues alive, invasion of your privacy, crazy world for understand).
But the maximum performances i have with the stratocaster because it's "equalized" favoring the medium or high frequences, tipical of "thin" guitars like fenders, jackson, esp.
Ideal for malmsteen - axel rudi pell style (my guitars plugged in the ms10 sounds better than the axel rudi pell CD/Live tracks).

However, if anybody want better performances and tone with les pauls, or for obtain a similar slash sound, you can get it using a cab with AV30 celestions.

Also i used settings
Distortion - 6
Level - 5
attack - 9
punch, edge - 10
for bluesin' or play country riffs, dirty-clean slides with bottleneck, "overdrived" solos, half-distorted crunch or 70s rock style.

It can be little noisy at high levels, especially with low quality guitars or pickups plugged in, but for my needs or guitars the pedal is OK and i don't want to mod it yet.

Very sturdy stomp box, i think no one have troubles with it....
However the internal slot is too much small for my 9V Rechargeable batteries.
With normal batteries it hasn't problems but i prefer rechargeable stuff or DC adapters.

If you want to use adapter, use high quality power supply or it can cause annoying buzzes!!!

Personally, i use a 220-12v PSU for old AT PC's limited at 9v by a 8ohm resistance for all my pedals, it works perfectly!!

I never need support....

It's simply to understand how many sound you can posses in a small, green, sturdy box.

The distortion can be from quiet to hard, from bright to very cutting, is the best pedal i never heard and it kicks off the boss pedals in every way.
It has 4 JRC4558D (the ts9 contains one) chips that produces a very analog high quality sound.

A bit trickier than pedals with only 2 or 3 knobs, as the controls are somewhat dependant on each other. But if you spend enough time playing with them, you'll find something good. Watch the punch and attack buttons particularly, as they shape the sound more subtly.

Using an Epi Les Paul, tried it with tons of effects and by itself. "Pristine" isnt' what I would use to describe the sound, really. The name "Metal Charger" implies high voltage rock beast, and thats what this baby is! I've read about the mods people have done to the pedal, but I'm refraining. Everyone wants to turn this into a tubescreamer for some reason, Lol! I've already got one of those, I wanted METAL! This isn't you super-sludge metal, its more focused on the lower-mids and high freqs. Does have a nice, thick high gain sound. Not at all processed or cheesey. I played this into a roland jc120, and also a fender hot rod, the hot rod def. sounded better, I just don't like those rolands, they can't handle distortion so well...anyway. Screaming leads with the gain way up, level even, attack and punch both at 3 oclock and edge just a hair shy of 3. Thick rhythm with the gain at 3 oclock, level and edge even, attack and punch maxed. Some people think the clipping diodes hide the JRCs, but they're there to clip! The whole thing together makes a nice mass of noise. Can do good palm muting, leads, rhythm. Just depends if you like the overall sound or not, some will, some won't. I do though, hehe

Very solid, that battery compartment is nice! I would put the 9V adapter input more centrally between the two other inputs, as if you use too large of a cable you can't plug the adapter in! Solid other than that...this pedal is quite old and in totally good shape.

n/a

I play various kinds of guitar based rock. I"m not a metal head, but I like being able to include metal-like parts into some songs. I like palm muting and the occasional crazy solo in what otherwise sounds like straightforward pop/rock, for example. I like stuff thats all over the place. I play lead in a band, and this is my effect for 'punching' up my level, and sailing above the mix live. This pedal is good for that, sounds pretty shrill at bedroom practice levels. But, if you open it up, and play it high volume, that's where you really hear those 4 JRC opamp chips! Do the mods if you want a beefed up tubescreamer, but this is a very cool pedal in its own right. Yeah, there's noise, welcome to the world of high gain! Metal zone? noise. DOD - noise out the ass! Boutique pedal may reduce noise some (some...) but then you're paying like $200. This is a fine high gain distortion pedal.

There are 5 knobs and each of them makes an extreme change in tone when turned even the slightest so it takes a long time to tweak to your desired tone. I'm using it before a DS-1, keeping both boxes switched on at the same time for a thicker and smoother tone. I use the two pedals together as one box to achieve one desired tone, therefore I have to mess around total of 8 knobs to get my distortion tone.

When I first got this box it took me literally days of constant messing around to get my tone. At one point I even had to write down what I had all the knobs set to so I could remember where all the good settings were at.

I got this pedal basically for free from a guitar trade shop. I came to the store with a busted up, no name wah pedal and he basically gave me the cheapest item in his store (he was selling straps for more than this pedal) I played through it and of course it sucked big time. The sound was muddy, distant and very noisy. Basically unusable. By itself I would give the pedal a 3 or a 4.

Checking the reviews for it I came across the mod. Basically there are 3 circuits in the pedal with 2 diode pairs in each running parralel to each other. Some clever dude figured out that cutting 2 of the circuits would give you a smoother more controled distortion tone, comparable to a TS-9. I had nothing to lose so I got myslef a pair of needle nose pliers, opened it up and broke diodes 3,4,5,6 and covered them with tape. The sound was much smoother now. Not metal, but much better non the less. At this point I would give the pedal a 7.

Still not satisfied I tried using this in different combinations in my loop with different settings. Finally, by accindent I put it in front of my DS-1(A truly terrible distortion pedal) and put the level knob all the way down to about a 3 and all the other knobs to about half. To my amazement it completely transformed the sound of the DS-1. All, and I mean ALL, hiss and background noise disappeared. The sound of the distortion which came out thin from the DS-1 was now thick and smoother, like overdrive from a Marshall. It was much more responsive to my guitars tone knob now and I was able to go from hard rock distortion to overdrive and then a dirty sparkle just by turning the knob down a few clicks. The combo of the DS-1 and the metal charger is the most intergral part of my rig and creates one of the most distinct distortion tones I've ever heard.

Not sure yet. I've only had it for a month or so but I'd be very surprised if it lasted given how much I messed around with it.

Old discontinued pedal that I'm sure Ibanez would rather forget about. didn't have to deal with them

I've been playing about 10 years. I play a 1983 American Stratocaster Elite and a Gibson Sg through a Roland GP-100 into the Metal Charger/DS-1 pair into a Fender Bassman 100.

I am very lucky to have stumbled on this little pedal and its mod. It has, in some respects saved my rig, which I have been very disapointed with in the past. Its ironic that with all this expensive equipment a cheapo $10 piece of shit could turn it all around. I use it more as a noise surpressor, volume boost, or EQ than a distortion pedal. I'd even say its more of a tool than a pedal. Truly great stuff. It is however highly unlikely that another person could replicate these results. I got it to work more through chance and trial and error than anything else. If you find one cheap go ahead and get it. It lends itself to modding very well and through some work you can customize it to make your sound.

Indeed The MS10 takes a bit of tweaking but after you find what you want it's a very good pedal.

I don't think you need to have the distortion set to max to get a good sound out of a pedal.The MS 10 is a great proof of that.I Use the Distortion a little past the middle,the level set half way and the attack and punch set to max with the edge setting between the 4 - 5 o clock position and To me this is a great distorted sound, awesome for rythm work.
It works nicely with the ibanez cf7 for a cool spacey flanged distortion.I got an epi les paul custom with a an sh-5 on the bridge and a strat with duncans and I really like the sound of this thing.It truly is brighter than contemporary distortion pedals but still packs a punch!great crunch rythm sound

I use it with the ibanez dc 5 adaptor and haven't had much of a problem with it.I'm not a pro so I can't tell for sure this is a gigworthy stomp box or not but for a hobbist like me it does its job well

I like a little bit of everything that's guitar oriented,so I dig a lot of different stuff from softer music,from modern,alt rock,etc.
My brother in law gave me this pedal and I'm really grateful to him for that.I really like the dynamic range you get from this pedal,with distortion a bit past half way you can simply use the guitar's volume knobs to change from a nice sparkly "clean" tone to good crunchy rythm sounds.for alt rock sounds this is very useful imo

It?s difficult to use. There?s 5 buttons: dist, level, attack, punch, edge. The three last are complicated to understand, but after you got it, you can customize great sounds.

I used to have this pedal for more than ten years. It was retired and forgotten on the box since 1996 when I bought my first Zoom. Reading the others reviews on these page I found the guide to modify it. Even I was going to sell it, I tried the mod, taking off the diodes 1,2,3,4. It?s easy to do, and it brings a great sound. I don?t know if it?s identical to Tube Screamer, but is very near. Now, I simply can?t use a tube amp without the Ms10 giving more punch and rage on input.

I use these settings, with a 9v alcaline battery, cause with a power suplly it?s very noisy:

level 5-7
dist 6-7 (more than that brings a lot of feedback)
attack 3-4
punch 4
edge 3-4

Plug it on a tube amp at high gain overdrive and get mad!

I never used it in a gig after the mod. Before the mod I never would use it, cause its sound was terrible and noisy. Live, I use a Zoom 2020 or a POD 2.0 pluged on the return line of a amp.

I?m sure that the MS10 will be great on the next record I do, now that it ressurected with the mods.

I play Death/Thrash Metal, and otherwise someone said, It?s possible to get great high gain/Thrash Metal sounds with Ms10, if you do the mods. I have a Gibson Flying V anda a Jackson RR3 with Seymour Duncan JB on the bridge. I will never search for another overdrive/distortion pedal again, maybe a Sansamp, but it?s another way.

The stock Metal Charger isn't difficult to figure out, but getting a good sound out of it is another story. It was very muddy and it took me considerable tweeking time to get anything decent. After the mod, it's the complete opposite. It's almost hard to make it sound bad.

In a word - WOW! What a difference these mods make. The muddiness is totally gone. It's been replaced by a warm, round tone that sits perfectly in the mix. I've used it with both a Peavey Classic 30 and a Vox Pathfinder, and it sounds great with both.

Using Brian's instructions, I did the mods myself. I'd never soldered anything before in my life, so I'm not sure how reliable this pedal will be long-term. That's the only reason I'll give it an 8. But it sure seems to have gone very well.

This is where Brian gets a gold star. As a mod newcomer, I had a number of dumb questions. Brian answered them all quickly and thoroughly. He also passed along a couple of extra tips. It made the whole experience a lot of fun.

I play classic rock, and the MS-10 will now be one of my mainstays. Just a short time ago I was going to sell it. I can't believe this is the same pedal. That's how much of a night-and-day difference this mod makes. Since I bought Brian's entire mod package, I can hardly wait to tackle my Boss GE-7.

First of all, this review refers to the "3 to 6 diodes mod" (thanks to Giancarlo, very helpful and friendly moreover!!!). Anyway, the three trimming knobs (not merely affecting the eq actually) tend to make the tweaking long, but if you push them all close to max you can't go that wrong.

The unmodded pedal deserves a 4, not more. It's virtually unusuable at high gain because of noise, and even at lower gain you get a hyper-compressed, unnatural tone which totally disguises the 4 JRC4558 chips in it.
After the mod, well it nails my TS10: noise is reduced, boost is improved, distortion sounds much creamier and clearer (with more drive when maxed), even if it lacks a little bit of transparency in high frequencies in comparison to TS. Very good overdrive-soft distortion range, anyway, it definitely gets above the average. You can taste the JRC's in this way..

I don't wanna talk about it... Had it for too short.

Ibanez who?

I bought this as a backup to my TS10 and TS9, but I didn't like it at all and I was considering to sell it. After the mod, it stands on its own and has a really nice personality. As I said, very good soft distortion: my TS's are maybe still more suitable to my ears and my playing style as overdrives themselves, but if I wanna push things a little forward in terms of gain, MS10 has become a better option...

easy to dial but you will need a lot of patience to get a good sound out of it. The 3 eq buttons seems to interact with each other.

First I would like to really tell you guys (and girls) to do the modification removing the 1,2,3,4 diodes ( just unsolder one leg of the diodes and cover it with a small tape, very easy) as the guy with Ibanez JS 6000 under my review did. Thanks a lot man!!
Differences: The noise goes down to a "normal" level when the drive is at max. Muddyness almost gone. More volume. Dynamics comes alive even at high gain. I've been able to get almost any kind of sound that I like/need (not for death metal). Very versatile. Much better than the ts9s that i tried.
Some of my setting:
top drive: level 5, dist 10, attack 0, punch 3.9/3.8, edge 3.8
ts9 like: level 7, dist 6/7, attack 3/4, punch 3.9/3.8, edge 3/3.5
I hope you like it and share yours too.

Bought used but it shine as new. I think the owner never used.
I think it will last more than me ( I hope).

My musical roots came from 80's pop/rock and heavy metal stuff.I've been playing pro for 15 years.
I'm thinking to buy another while it is cheap to use if this one goes away.
Very nice. Try it.

This pedal really kicks Boss Metal Charger's ass. I played it for about 3 years (still got it) and nothing compares to it. The sound is versatile and you can play from blues to heavy metal and even things like Metallica on it. I LOVE IT !

The only problem is that if you don't have a good power supply it can be noisy but that's easy to fix with an alcaline battery. I played it on a Marshall Valvestate 100Watts and it blowed me away. Right I don't use it becose I own some other stuff but it's in my "precious gear" collection.

It is damn reliable if you use it with an alcaline battery. It goes on for almost 20 hours with one 9V battery.

It never had any problems at all

I play rock music (stuff like Metallica, Anouk, Guano Apes). I also own a Boss ME8, a Jim Dunlop Cry Baby wah pedal, a Yamaha 421DL, an Epiphone Les Paul Lefthand and a Cherry CB50 Bass Amplifier (for a fat sound).