Heavy zone

I have a love-hate affair with DiMarzio's Tone Zone. In some guitars it sounds downright nasal with a semi-useless bass response. That fuzzed-out sound... I hate it. In others, it can really give a good punch to heavy distortion. Depicted above is the Tone Zone in my Ibanez SEW761. It sounds awful most of the time (in this guitar).

Today, I decided to pair it up with the Digital Metalizer (MZ-2). Outcome:

• the TZ has an excessive bass response so the MZ-2's EQ was set past midway to enhance treble
• overall tone was more usable in chorus modes. It seems that the TZ needs some kind of a top end booster to make the overall tone less nasal / fuzzy
• tone sounds more palatable when the drive was set to about 3/4 way. Implication - the TZ might be better for crunchy stuff rather than all out metal

Verdict: Nothing changes. The TZ is more of a miss than a hit for me. Strangely, I would want to hear it in action every now & then 😅

Metalizing

A friend was in Japan recently & he happened to be in a music store. He asked me if there's any guitar pedals that perhaps he could purchase on my behalf. Since the acquisition of an amp with the type of distortion / overdrive that I prefer, I have stopped looking & pedals. However, the MZ-2 (together with the HM-2) are some of the potent intense distortion type pedal back in its time.

To be continued...

Wish it was back: BOSS Digital Metalizer

I tried this pedal on the year it was discontinued- 1991. I was really attracted to the intensity on offer (because it was more aggressive than my default amp distortion: Peavey Rage 158). One of its modes combined the distortion with chorus to an extent that there were some Eventide (Harmonizer) overtones to be heard, which was the tone to be had back then. These days, if you fuse your favourite distortion & chorus units, chances are, each pedal's firm characteristic would try to over-power the other once you get your tweaking going but the MZ-2 actually had these effects in co-operation probably because they were built into a single unit & were configured to be fused instead of working independently.

There were some procrastinations & on the day I was set to buy one, it was nowhere to be found. Back then, I wasn't too keen in owning a used unit so the MZ-2 was all but unreachable. This was also the year the Metal Zone was introduced & I got it as consolation.