Rocktron Metal Planet

Easy to use,yes...it's a stupid stompbox.Easy to get a good sound of,
i'm not too sure about that...

This one reminds me the Metal Zone i had 10 years ago,maybe a bit better ( more bass and output ).So if you have to choose between
the Zone or the Planet,go with the Planet,it's cheaper as well.
But try it before buying,i didn't,it now collects dust.Like the Metal Zone,it's very fizzy and it's noisy as hell.I'm much happier with my Digitech Metal Master.Sorry Rocktron.

It looks sturdy,but it's made in China so who knows.Anyway i don't care,mine's for sale.

Bought it out of curiosity since it was cheap and i wanted another
heavy-sounding pedal that could do metal and hard rock,my Digitech
Metal Master is thrash-metal all the way,nothing else,but i love it.
I haven't had the chance to try the Metal Planet prior to buying (got it via Pedalgeek).It's not a terribly bad pedal,maybe i was expecting too much for $60.I just don't like it.

This pedal has a lot of versatility, you can get a lot of great tones out of it. The manual is as discriptive as you'd want it I think.

I'm running a Washburn WG208 customized with my choice of Seymour Duncan humbuckers (it sounds great) through a Behringer GX212 (Great SS amp, buy a Behringer!) I was running my setup through a MXR 6-band EQ then to a Boss OS-2 into the amps flat EQ. I was suprised to find you dont need any more than it's 4-band EQ to get a good clear sound. This pedal kicks ass!! At first I would have said what the dude said about the pedal. But after playing with it straight into the amp you'll find some good tones. You can get a chunky AC/DC tone, Van Halen, definitely Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Judas Priest, Pantera etc. You can work it for Nirvana and bluesy stuff too I bet. If you need more distortion, your humbuckers are shit, or you don't know how to use an EQ. But for those who want a cool tone (which I use with my Seymour Duncan JB) its as follows: Distortion: MAXED (why settle for less :D) Bass: 1-2:00 Treb: 1-2:00 Mid: 9-10:00 Mid Freq: I like it around 10:00 - minimum availible.. except minimum seems TONE LACKING ;) but.. as we know.. some artists seem to like lacking tone). It's a great pedal, I A/Bed it with my old setup and I'm suprised at how much I like the pedal more after an hour... Think about working on some Testament or something to bomb the pedal with when you buy it, this pedal can do a lot of stuff, you can't really get a warm tone, but you can get a tone great for asskicking stuff. Funny to think there'd be anything better, this thing rocks!! I have yet to try the Keeley.. honestly this will do you don't really need anything better.. but better is better so take what you can get. About half way of the distortion is my OS-2 maxed out with the EQ providing mid/treble distortion (which I'm glad I can sway away from... Trebly (tinny) distortion is ick really.

This thing is the size of two Digitech, DOD, Boss stompboxes scrunched together. It's got bigger knobs, it looks really slick. Mine came with an empty 9V (instead of being pissed i found it humorous :D) The Pedal could stand some damage I'm sure. Though I wouldn't want to see it damaged because it looks so damn cool! (Plus the blue LED.. which could like blind you lol but I turn off the lights in my room when i play because it looks so cool!

I've emailed the Rocktron dudes.... about which distortion pedal I should get.. I told them I wanted a pedal great for harmonics (and you can great harmonics) and they led me to this. I tried a Boss Metal Planet and I think this one is better, and you can't get a light distortion with the Boss (that doesn't mean the thing has more distortion than the Rocktron) They are nice people.. and they saved me $20, gave us better tone, wow, seems we should sway away from the Boss pedals a bit and see whats out there!

This pedal is great for Metal! I've been playing for 3 years.. and well.. I guess I can sell my other pedals now!! If it were stolen... I would track down the theive and make him pay me double and buy the pedal and buy another pedal... the pedal is quiet and SO nice! It's got the right amount of distortion, a great EQ. It can sparkle through a lot of bass (my neck SD Jazz) and you can achieve some cool bluesy solos. I don't dislike anything! My life seems to be all about tone and I dont need any help at all.. no problems here, the mid freq knob really affects the tone, watch for that! If you have $69.99 and $5.00 for shipping (NJ(where Zzounds.com is ;) -> WI took 3 days ground) then buy it!! You shouldn't regret it, I havent tried it with crap equipment.. but hell buy it anyways, and when you get better stuff you'll love it! (Monster cables/Planet Waves 1/4 - 1/4's, $200 amp... $150 Basswood/rosewood fretboard guitar, then $200 to replace all the pickups, then $70 for the Metal Planet.. and you've got great tone!) I've seen Damage Plan, Drowning Pool, Unearth, and Hatebreed on the Headbangers Ball tour. You can get all their tones (though for the Hatebreed you may have to boost the mids/treb to get their more unpleasant to the ear tone! (Everyone else sounded great.. but their tone just really works the ears.. it sucks! I believe they were the only ones who use EMGs, which just may have been what it was.. just a theory. (Damage Plan uses SDs, Drowning Pool uses Passive I believe, not sure about Unearth) Basically, you can get tone much greater than the rivaling bands, and you'll get tone that makes you want to play! I know I've been very nice to Rocktron.. but they have done nothing to dissatify me.. even the box it came in kicks ass :P

This pedal is easy as fuque to use. You can get pretty much any sound you want. Only an absolute idiot couldn't work it.

I use a Washburn Dime and a Mesa/Boogie Bass 400+ with the Diesel 2x15 cab. Yeah, yeah, I know its a bass amp, but it kicks the shizzouse outta any "guitar" amp I've played (or bass amp for that matter). But anyways, I can get pretty much anything from Black Sabbath, to Megadeth, to Intestinal Disgorge. Don't try to play bass through it though, I'd use a RAT for that.

No problems that i know of. I'd gig with it.

Never had to deal with them.

I play mostly Goregrind, Death Metal, and the likes. It works perfect for anything though, really, good match for me though. I've been playing for some time now, I own some stuff. Id buy it again if it got lost or stolen. I love the "Mid Freq." knob, it lets you tweak the entire tone to your liking. I don't like the blue "night-light" though, maybe itd be good for a laser-pointer. I compared it to other Rocktron pedals, and the RAT, and the BigMuff Pi, and various other pedals, this one outripped them all. It's an awesome pedal, if you "can't get a good sound" out of it, then maybe you should go back to your DS-1.

this pedal is very nice easy to understand. The manual however isn't much help... but i didn't buy it to read the manual... so yeah.

I have an epiphone les paul runnin' through a spider 210... the reason i got this pedal was because the "insane" setting on the spider wasn't my preference..... it might be great for some people... but it wasn't my thing. this pedal has a more aggresive sound to it. I recently got a marshall valvestate head...... but have yet to run this pedal through it because it's still being shipped to my house! I don't have any noise problems with this pedal.... and i can't really get any sounds similar to any artists i listen to... mainly because of the rest of my gear.

this thing is built like a car... i would say a tank... but no... it's built like a well made car. I like the fact that it has the "round" button... as is more common with quality products... rather than the stompbox style digitech... boss... dod construction. I don't have anything against those pedals... as a matter of fact i have both a bass compressor and bass distortion from digitech and they're great...... it's just too bad they don't have the "round" button... oh well.

never dealt with them.

this thing is great.... it works for me... because 90% of everyone i know uses the boss metal zone like it's thee pedal to have. Personally i'm disgusted with that pedal... because i play bass in bands and guitar on my own... and every band i've played bass with has had that pedal.... and the only difference was who had the pedal in better condition... cause all they knew was low's up and hi's down... like that really works.

OK, YOU NEED TO PLAY WITH IT FOR A LITTLE TO GET THE SOUND YOU WANT,NO PROBLEM IT IT OVIOUS! THE MANUAL IS NOT TO INFORMATIVE BUT ITS GOOD FOR X-PLAINING WHAT THE KNOBS DO. I JUST PURSHASE IT NOT TOO LONG AND NO I DIDNT HAVE THE NEED TO UPGRADE IT. ITS NOT TO HARD TO FIX THE SOUND YOU WANT!!!

OK,OK THIS IS MY KICKER, OVIOUSLY IT DEPENDS ON WHAT EQUIPMENT YOU HAVE TO SOUND GOOD OK, SO THIS IS WHAT I HAVE AND I DO SOUND GOOD. I HAVE AN ASAT CLASSIC (G&L GUITARS). GOING TO A TUNER(PT-10)-VOX WHA-MARSHALL SHREDMASTER-MARSHALL BLUESBREAKER-ROCKTRON METAL PLANET-RAT DISTORTION-MXR DYNACOMP-DOD 440-BOSS TR2 TREMOLO-EHX SMALL CLONE-SOBBAT PHASE BREAKER-BOSS PS5 W/EXPRESSION PEDAL-BOSS DD6-DANELECTRO REEL ECHO-LITTLE LANILEY REVERB TO MY HEAVENLY REISSUE VOX AC30TBX. THIS SET UP AND PEDALS ARE NOT NOISY!!! THE SOUND IS NOT TOO LIMITED AT ALL, IT DEPENDS ON YOUR ORIGINALITY. I DONT PLAY METAL, I PLAY ALTERNATIVE POP ROCK,BLUES,AND INFLUENSES DOES VARY FROM BEATLES,RADIOHEAD,MUSE,SMASHING PUMPKINS,NIRVANA,GUSTAVO CERATI AND OTHERS,IT DOES SUIT THE SOUND...PERHAPS CAN SOUND LIKE THIS BANDS!!!!

IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN DEPEND ON IT, ITS IN A HEAVY DIECAST METAL MATERIAL SO IT IS HEAVY DUTY. I WILL USE ON A GIG WITHOUT A BACKUP!!!

I HAVN'T DEAL WITH THEM AND I GUESS I DONT NEED THEM....YET!!!

LIKE I SAID BEFORE I PLAY ORIGINAL MUSIC THAT FALLS IN THE ALTERNATIVE POP ROCK MUSIC. MY INFLUENCES ARE BEATLES,RADIOHEAD,MUSE,U2,NIRVANA,PUMPKINS,GUSTAVO CERATI,COLDPLAY AND MO'!!! I'D BEEN PLAYING SINCE 1990 WHEN I WAS 15YRS OLD.AS FAR AS GEAR I HAVE PROGRESS THRU THE YEARS. I THINK IF IT WAS TO BE STOLEN I WOULD BUY IT AGAIN UNLESS THERE IS SOMETHING BETTER THAN THIS ONE BUT LIKE I SAID UP TO DATE I HAVNT FIND ANYTHING BETTER THAN THIS WHEN IT COMES TO THE SOUND IM LOOKING FOR. I HAVE TRIED BOSS,DOD,DIGISHIT AND OTHERS AND THIS ONE IS IT, IT GIVES ME A BETTER SOUND THAN OTHERS LIKE METAL ZONE,MEGA DISTORTION,DS-2 AND MORE. I DO LIKE THE SOUND ON THIS DOG AND YOU HAVE MORE CONTROL ON THE SOUND THAN OTHER PEDALS. I DONT HATE OR DESLIKE ANYTHING FROM THIS PEDAL.IT DOES HELP ME MAKE MORE MUSIC AND A LITTLE HEAVY TONE NOT MUSICLY BUT TONEWISE. I CHOSE THIS ONE OVER OTHERS BECAUSE I CAN CONTROL THE TONE BETTER IT DOES HAVE THAT SCOOP MIDS AND IT DOESNT BLUR THE SOUND AT ALL LIKE THE METAL ZONE AND YOU CAN REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE PLAYING BECAUSE WHEN I PLAY THE DS-2 I CANT UNDERSTAND SHIT AND WITH THIS ONE IT DOES SOUND CLEAR AND OFF-COURSE WITH THE TYPE OF EQUIPMENT I HAVE ITS AWESOME!!!! ONE OTHER THING I WANNA AD IS "PEACE AND LOVE,BELIEVE IN GOD AND ROCK & ROLL"

6 knobs total, one switch, one in, and one out. Not much to it. The EQ is very active so it makes it easy to dial in wide ramges of gain and tones. The midrange control is critical in getting a good tone out of any distortion stage, and with the right settings this thing kills. If you're a beginner or if you hate tweaking tone (or if you're a brainless inverterbrate like that second guy down there) you might get confused but I love fooling with EQ so it was easy for me. Nevertheless the knobs are clearly labeled and the two concentric knobs (4 total) are larger than a Boss's so they're easier to grab.

I was at Guitar Center when I tested it, and as this pedal is brand new the Rocktron representative himself was there to give a demo use to customers. Upon asking what kind of tones this is designed to get he straight-up told me, "This is a rip-off of a Boss MT2 with a few changes in the circuitry." ooookay..... Just for fun I a/b'ed it with an MT2 (which is one of my favorite hi-gain pedals) just to see how different (or similar) it was.

I was surprised to find that it was BETTER than the MT2! for three reasons:

1. The raw tone has more natural bass, which gives it a ballsier low end. This ends the complaints about the general thinness that an MT2 is sometimes guilty of.
2. The drive control has a wider range than the MT2; everything from full-on Pantera-ish scream to a mild distortion. The MT2 seems to have nowhere between 0 and 10.
3. The sound cleans up niceley as you back off the guitar's volume, the MT2 seems to have trouble doing that.

In short, you get an MT2 that has a greater range of drive and a rounder, more fuller tone. It makes it sound more like the Keeley MT2 but it's less expensive.

Built like a tank although I'm suspicious of those MXR-style switches for their reliability. But I shouldn't be putting the cart before the horse as this thing was pretty solid.

I talked to the Rocktron rep and he was very friendly, informative, and helpful. Never had to deal with Rocktron before regarding anything else, though.

I bought one on the spot after demoing it... I've always liked MT2's but the occasional thinness scares me away. This pedal fixes that with more low end and adds some nice crunch tones along the way between "Off" and "Nuclear War." We have a winner! Oh yeah the MT2 retails for $159 and sells at GC for $89... FULL RETAIL is $99 and that's what I paid. It'll probably get reduced down to $79 for the Guitar Center price but it was too good to wait.

Very easy to use. Just dial in the amount of distortion you want and let 'er rip. Nothing fancy about it, and perfect for any player who does not want to spend time with a manual.

I don't know what the retard who wrote the last review was smoking, but this is a great sounding pedal. He obviously can't spell and has his head up his ass. Try this thing with a Marshall or a Boogie or any other combo amp you can get your hands on and it turns the amp into a raving screaming metal machine. And yes I would gig with it. No problem there. Beats the hell out of a lot of other distortions on the market out there.

Haven't had it long enough to rate this yet. But most Rocktron stuff I have dealt with has been very reliable in the past.

Rocktron has always been one of the best for product and customer support, and it doesn't matter if you call about a stomp box or a midi controller. They treat it all the same.

I'd favorably compare this to any distortion box out there. For the price, you'd be hard pressed to beat this. Great distortions, very satisfying tone and works fine with any amp I tried, including my cheapest practice amp. I tried it with a strat and with a Les Paul and with an Ibanez guitar and it sounded fine in all cases.

This pedal is so easy to use you would have to be cognatively disabled to have problems. Seriously this thing has low lowmid hi and himid. It has a distortion and level knob also.

I used a Jackson DXMG on this little black box, through a crate blue voodoo. WEll this pile sounds as scratchy a breakbeat song. I have every setting it ranges from harsh,if you could play your guitar through sand paper and a death metal from dod then you would have the hi's. The lows are cold and muffled so scooped really really lacks any sort of good tone. So basically if asshole was a tone the metal planet would be it. This pedal sucks so much as a retard ass pop punker could only be happy with it. Oh yeah for some reason the mother fucker decideds to self oscilate. The only effects that don't make it sound horrible are delay, reverb, and tremelo

Yeah I throw it out of my window but the peice of shit still works one of the bottom pads feel off but thats about it. ANd Hell no I will not gig with it. I Fabtone sounds as shitty as this pile glad I got it for cheap cause if I would have payed full price I would have shit myself in the face.

I have better things to do than bitch out rocktron. THey have nice sounding racks but the stomps so as shitty as new found glory.

I play metal and this is not for metal the name and materail is the only metal thing about it. I would rather play thru a zoom 505 than this shit hole. If it were lost or stolen I would call up the person and thank them for taking it off my hands but no one wants the damn thing. I wish it had good tone. The only thing that its useful for is punkbullshit or blues or old bastard rock. If you buy this fag rocker pedal don't bitch to me because old Bob warned you shit heads. So if you fuck faces buy it after this you should cut your own balls off because your tone will also lack balls.

This is a distortion stompbox, so it's not terribly complicated. Still, it has a nice active EQ that seems a bit more detailed than other units in its class and lets you really dial in whether you want a "tinny" or "bassy" distortion. There is not much to the manual, but really, there doesn't need to be. The only improvement I could suggest would perhaps be suggested settings to get one type of overdrive sound or another, but then again, it's just as easy to twiddle the knobs yourself!

This pedal impresses me. I use a Yamaha G20-110 III amp, which, even though it has a clean and dirty channel, is a remarkably clean sounding amp. It is so clean, in fact, that to get adequate distortion from this amp before I bought the pedal, I re-adjusted the trim-pots that bias the amp so that the dirty channel would have adequate distortion. The problem with this approach is that it left the clean channel somewhat dirty as well. Now that I have this pedal, I've returned the amp to it's original settings. The results: I have beautifully clean tone with the pedal off, and bone crushing crunch (with a little fuzz) when I turn the effect on. At the end of the day, it's not a Marshall Stack, and it won't make your practice amp sound like one. But it comes as close as something like this can get to that wildly overdriven type sound.

I haven't had trouble yet. Unlike the plastic stompboxes some other manufacturers are fancying these days, this unit is solidly built out of metal. I would gig with this without a backup, but then again, typically you have some way to play with distortion if need be so it wouldn't be the end of the world if it went out.

I've never dealt with Rocktron.

I've been playing guitar for about a year, but I've played bass in bands for about 10 years, and I've heard plenty of different guitars, amps, and effects to have an opinion of what I like. For the punk-ish music I play, this is about perfect. Most working punk bands (ones that don't have tons of major label money for equipment) don't have particularly great equipment, or they just play whatever is handy. So I go for that "semi-nice amp with every knob maxed out" type sound where you get a good amount of overdrive with a little bit of bad solid state fuzz thrown in for effect. This pedal will give you that sound.

What I like in particular about this pedal is that is has a nicer active EQ in it than a lot of the competition. You can adjust the sound to whatever you like, be it my preference for a bassy crunch, or a tinny sound if you prefer, or anywhere in between.

What I don't like is that I have this pedal pretty well maxed as far as the "distortion" setting goes, and the "level" control has to be set pretty low so that clean and dirty have the same overall volume. This isn't particularly surpising though, and I attribute this mostly to the fact that my amp was really probably designed by people who felt that cleaner was always better, and so this pedal has a lot of work to do to make it sound aggressive.

One other comment I'd make is that Rocktron has totally bought into the trend in pro audio equipment in the last few years of using blue LEDs in everything! These seemed cool for a bit; to me they are annoyingly, ludicrously bright and distract/bother me, especially when playing somewhere poorly lit (which is almost any bar or other venue). I guess if you had any question as to whether the distortion is turned on (and trust me, you won't) it'd be handy.

I didn't do a whole lot of shopping around, as my local music store doesn't have a great selection, and things like sounds from pedals are so subjective that I want to hear it for myself first, so I wasn't going to buy online. I compared it to one of the newer Ibanez Tube Screamers, and a Boss overdrive pedal (don't remember specifically which one; it was yellow). I hated the Tube Screamer, which left the Rocktron and the Boss pedal. In the end, I bought the Metal Planet because it was cheaper and I like the sound a tiny bit better.

Overall, I like the sound, and it helps me make music, but I do stress that I have pretty simple taste when it comes to this sort of thing. Simply having a ton of distortion is just fine by me.

I give Rocktron points for actually including a battery with this; I was pleasantly surprised that I could use it without shelling out more dough for a battery.

In the end, I give this unit an eight. It's very nice, but I haven't seen a stompbox yet that works miracles.