My son is making great progress learning the guitar, mainly metal and especially Metallica. He's enjoying the Modern setting on my Yamaha THR10 (modelling a Mesa amp I think) but could do with a pedal to switch from clean to distorted mid-song. Any suggestions for a cheapish (ideally under £50) pedal? I've got a bit lost in my googling/youtubing - so many conflicting views and it seems like there's not an obvious candidate. A lot of people say Boss Metal Zone but others seem to hate it. The EHX Metal Muff looks pretty good but I get the impression it's full-on even with the gain down and a pedal that can do AC/DC tones as well would be nice. Am I asking too much?!
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It's a clone of the Horizon Preamp, which is built upon the MXR EVH5150 Overdrive. Both cost around £200.
The Chopper-Z can be had for around £50 or lower. It sounds very close to the £200 pedals and has a good noise gate.
I also vote for the Mooer Black Secret, which is their Rat clone. It's awesome.
BTW if you stick a TC Spark boost in front of an HM-2 things get pretty biblical, specially with a nice delay after it.
Between that mod and the stock EQ flexibility it'll do all the ODs and distortion pedals you'll ever need (inc. RAT, tubescreamer, even Klon) . I guarantee you'll be tempted to keep it for yourself
The pedal show guys themselves were amazed
Just putting my 2p in regarding the pedals some of the pedals that have been suggested are not right for Metalica Recto type sounds.
Boss HM2 is great, but it's swedish chainsaw death metal
Rat is great, but it doesn't sound anything like Metallica into a clean amp.
Lots of good options suggested in terms of: Jackhammer, Metal Zone (Hard to dial in!), 5150. I'd also add Shredmaster, Super Badass and Riot to the mix.
I'm considering selling a JuanSolo Riot clone for not very much if you are interested