Modified Boss MT-2 Metal Zone
Standard
Well...
the first time I tried a Metal Zone, I thought that you'd have to be more
or less deaf to think that pedal sounds good... 
Admittedly, metal and low-tuned "chugga-chugga" isn't really my
forte, but I still think I can distinguish between a good and a really bad
metal distortion sound. And the Boss Metal Zone was squarely footed in the
really bad department. It had a very fake-sounding, synthetic upper midrange,
that the sweep mid control didn't seem to be able to control at all. Whatever
way I turned the knobs, I never got the pedal to sound anything near natural,
and the more I adjusted, the worse it got. It was almost like the pedal had
a secret fixed equalizer inside, that made it sound fake at any setting. After
a peek at the circuit diagram, I realized that it wasn't just in my head -
the MT-2 does have some rather heavy eq filtering both pre and post distortion
and the tone knobs, and I started thinking that there might be more to this
pedal than meets the eye. If I could only straighten out and flatten these
fixed filters...
The modification
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Naturally,
I replace the LED. Normally it'd be a yellow item, but this time it
is actually an orange one, as I feel it fits the pedal's colour scheme
better. For some reason (possibly to avoid taunting), on a pedal like
this it's nice to have something on the outside showing that it isn't
stock.... -
The modification includes several changes to the eq filter sections, both the internal/fixed ones and the ones controlled by the knobs:
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The pre-distortion eq is modified to make the signal entering the distortion stage a little more neutral. This causes the pedal to lose a little in outright gain/distortion, but there's plenty of that left anyway...
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The output eq (located after both the distortion and tone controls) are also smoothed out to make the overall sound a little more neutral. This change gets rid of most of that unnatural high mid weezing sound that you previously couldn't filter out.
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I also lower the center frequency of the bass knob, so that you can add bass without the sound getting too boomy.
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Below the knobs I install a switch (not shown in the picture) which controls the midrange content before the distortion stage. With it, you can add a healthy boost to the midrange, making the sound more focused, as well as adding gain. With the switch activated, the sound reminds me a lot of the old Michael Schenker trick, where he'd leave the wah pedal on and fixed somewhere in the middle of its sweep.
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Finally, as always I go over the entire pedal, strenghtening soldering joints and doing up nuts and bolts that might have worked loose.
...and the result?
The pedal is completely different - much more like a proper high gain tube amp. The wheezy, unnatural midrange is gone, and the sweep mid now works as intended. You can use the midboost switch to bring back a little of the modern metal character from the stock pedal, which also comes in handy for solo work, but the fake-sounding upper midrange the stock pedal had is completely gone. You can now use the MT-2 for anything from early '80s Heavy Metal (early Iron Maiden, Judas Priest) to more modern nu-metal.
The modified MT-2 still works best in conjunction with a clean amp, and the heavier the music you're playing, the more important it becomes to keep the amp from not distorting too much on its own. Many other pedals will really come into their own when they are pushing an amp that is already on the verge of breakup, but this one is different. The MT-2 creates its own sound canvas, and will work best into a relatively clean amplifier.
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