Boss Metal Zone

The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone is a high-gain distortion pedal, first launched in 1991 and still in production more than 30 years later¹. It is one of the most recognisable distortion pedals ever made: guitar.com's Pete Wise put it plainly, saying "The Boss MT-2 Metal Zone does what it says on the die-cast enclosure. Its high-gain distortion sounds are loved by legio[ns]"². Boss also makes a Waza Craft version, the MT-2W Metal Zone Waza Craft, released in 2018¹.

What it does

MusicRadar describes the MT-2 as designed to emulate a cranked amp stack, with loads of gain on tap, and notes that it has a highly tweakable EQ that was leagues ahead of anything else when it came out³. That EQ is the pedal's defining feature: midrange, bass and treble controls that shape the voice of the distortion far more deeply than the tone controls on most drive pedals.

The circuit behind it has been analyzed in detail by Electric Druid's Tom, who credits "those clever Boss engineers of the 1980's" with the design⁴. A few points from that analysis explain why the pedal behaves the way it does:

• Before the distortion stage, a transistor-based gyrator stage acts as a bandpass filter centerd around 1 kHz, shaping the tone going into the clipping⁴.
• The gain stage set by R051 and VR1 gives a minimum and maximum gain of x2 and x252, which is where the pedal's huge range of drive comes from⁴.
• The High control is simpler, being just a resistor and a capacitor to make a high shelving filter⁴.

Using it as a preamp

The Metal Zone's EQ and gain structure mean it can do more than sit on a board as a distortion box. Guitar World's Alex Lynham found that "Its powerful, amp-like EQ and huge amount of gain on tap make it a metal monster when used in this way," referring to running the pedal as a preamp into an amplifier⁵. JHS Pedals' history of distortion reaches a similar conclusion: "This is a great pedal, and it does the job really well. And it's actually super versatile," particularly when plugged into a good, clean, loud amplifier⁶.

The Waza Craft version and the anniversary

In 2018, Boss released a Waza Craft version of the Metal Zone, the MT-2W¹. On That Pedal Show, the hosts asked "Is there anything this much-maligned monster of metal can offer guitar players of more, erm, oldfartist tonal preference," and concluded that the Metal Zone, and the MT-2W with what the show calls its crazy powerful EQ, has something to offer players of more traditional tonal preferences, not just metal players⁷.

In 2021 Boss marked 30 years of MT-2 production with an anniversary version, announced alongside a 40th-anniversary SD-1 Super Overdrive⁸.

How players use it

A documented example of the pedal used against type comes from Kirk Windstein of Crowbar. MusicRadar reports: "He uses his Metal Zone as a clean boost in Crowbar with the distortion dialled off, level at max and EQ set at noon," tightening the amp sound rather than adding distortion of its own⁹.

How it compares

The Metal Zone sits at the top of Boss's distortion range for gain and EQ depth. Other Boss drive pedals covered on this site include the DS-2 Turbo Distortion, the MD-2 Mega Distortion, the ML-2 Metal Core and the HM-2 Heavy Metal, each a different take on high-gain dirt. Guitar Pedal X's Stefan Karlsson, writing about the JHS Hard Drive, notes that "The Metal Zone has some degree of softness in some of its EQ-Shaping," a character worth hearing against alternatives¹⁰.

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