Metal Zone... Modded!

Stock, this noise box would give you a quite wide array of sounds. But no matter how you dial it, there's always that spiky mids that hurts ur ears so much. the sound is too sterile. it's been love and hate relationship between me and this box for a while. Mess with one of the knob ones, i'll get frustrated with it.

So one day while surfing the net, i've discovered something called pedal mod! ofcourse there's those infamous Robert Keeley and analogman, but they don't sell kits and i have to bear the cost of shipping there and back plus the mods! So i look into kits. First discovered pedaldoc.com but then settled with monteallums.com. So, once i got my debit mastercard and set up my paypal, i ordered the 'Tri-gain Sustaniac mod' kit.

With soldering skills of guitar cables, i gave it a go. Took quite a number of hours to do the mod. Changed some of the components to higher quality stuffs (metal polyfilm, metal boxed etc.) and also to other values. Took out the caps that's responsible for those spike mids. and added a switch to switch between two types of clipping; LEDs or germanium diodes, or just lift the clipping section altogether.

The result? a much2 improved distortion with better tones to be dialed to. The germanium diodes is my favourite althought having much lesser volume than 'lift' and LED mode. i didn't like the LED clippings.

So, after discovering diystompbox.com, gathered more info for further mods of MT2. I modded it more to give more fatness and replaced the LEDs with assymetrical clipping of germanium-silicon (1n34a-1n4001) diode combo. Just subtle difference actually comparing to the germanium diode symmetrical clippings.

After almost a year, decided to mod it a bit more. changed a cap value for a wider mid and replaced germanium diodes with JFET (J201). Better tone with noticable change in the mids frequency. However, the sustain with JFET clippings is too short. Great crunch, but lack of sustain.

Still, those assym clippings mode is my fav! Conclusion, i now have a fat and heavy distortion that i loooove so much! what it lack is single note at high notes, the treble kinda spiky there.. hmmm..