The Artec MBM Baroque Metal is an analog distortion pedal, a member of the broad family covered on the site's Distortion Pedals page. RockBoard's PedalPedia describes it as specially designed for fast picking and sweep picking solos on a single-pickup guitar, and says its aim is a "special strong tone with not-much-high-gain crunch distortion" that gives fast players a particular experience1.
What it does
The pedal's defining feature is what RockBoard's PedalPedia calls a unique tone expander circuit that works as a preamp before the distortion stage1. Placing tone shaping ahead of the clipping is the maker's stated approach to keeping the pedal's crunch distortion usable for fast playing, rather than stacking gain on top of gain. Artec positions the result as a crunch-leaning distortion, not a high-gain one, aimed at players running fast lines through a single-pickup guitar1.
At 8mA of current draw on a 9V DC center-negative supply1, the Baroque Metal sits at the low end of what a standard pedal power supply handles, so it fits alongside typical pedals on a daisy-chained supply without special arrangements.
Sources (1)
- MBM Baroque Metal by Artec, RockBoard PedalPedia, 2026