James
January 11, 2008

Rating: 10/10

This is an unpretentious pedal that pretty clearly tries to do one thing and one thing only, and that's distortion. It is an excellent distortion pedal! I've used a great many pedals from various manufacturers (I'll give a full listing in the "Overall" section) trying to find "my" distortion sound, and I've finally settled on two real keepers: the Electro-Harmonix Metal Muff and the Zoom Tri-Metal. The Metal-Muff does not have as much gain available as the Tri-Metal (the TM-01 uses three diode clipping stages to achieve its over-the-top distortion), but its tonal quality is much purer. That is to say that the TM-01 has a very heavy, but grainy and somewhat loose character (reminiscent of the Peavey XXX), while the Metal Muff gets nearly as much gain but has a much tighter sound. The TM-01 has more adjustability, with +/-15db on the Treble, Midrange, and Bass, and a "range" control like the Metalzone that lets you dial in where the midrange's Q value lies; by way of comparison, the Metal Muff is adjusted like so: Bass has +14 dB of gain centered at 120 Hz; the Midrange has +15 dB of gain centered around 300 Hz; and the Treble has +10dB of gain centered around 1.2 kHz. Distortion has 10 dB of Gain while the output volume has +18dB of gain. What that means is that the Metal Muff retains its distinctive character within the parameters of adjustment, while the Zoom Tri-Metal is more of a chameleon (though it never loses its grainy, balls-to-the-wall roar). Like the Big Muff Pi, you'll never mistake the Metal Muff for something else

Iain Evans
June 27, 2007

Rating: 10/10

This machine kills!! If you want a pedal that can go from the heavier end of an old fuzzbox to utter chugtastic madness, look no further!! There is too much of everything on tap here! I like that. It tells me that I will not find its limits. You can dial in a bit of warm crunch, some bass heavy sludge, or with the help of the extra built in Top Boost, some very strident and intelligble distortions. This possibly does a disservice to the Metal Muff, to categorise three sounds, but these are what I looked for and found in a manner of days. There is much more to come!

An important point about this pedal is its analog nature. I always shy away from using anything other than an amp to drive my sound after being cursed by many poor digital o/d or distortion pedals. This has changed my mind (although I am probably committed to EHX pedals for life now!! Anyone wanna buy me a POG for Xmas?!!)

The truth is, that, when used thru my Ashdown valve combo, this thing is amazing, total clean true bypass when off, and sheer madness when on!! You can take it way beyond what you need, and it only gets a bit noisy/hissy on the very extreme settings. The top boost brings unfeasible clarity back to your sound, for a nice modern feel. I have found myself using open chord voicings with full distortion for a nice extra effect I never before thought possible!!

Lead can be biting to creamy, again, the Top Boost wins the day for clarity, and them pinch harmonics seem to come out by accident!!

10 out of 10 EHX for best drive pedal I have EVER used!!

10 out of 10 Dolphin for getting it to me lightning fast, with no fuss!!

Cameron
December 26, 2006

Rating: 9/10

this is an incredible pedal. i've only played it for lik 2 days but you only need 5 seconds to realise what this thing does. there is quite a range of sounds you can get from it, but usually you just want to crank the distortion up to the top and add some of that top boost, an awesome feature that just adds a huge bite to any chugging riffs or shredding leads!!! but it is extremely high frequency so don't turn the boost up to far. the only thing is it adds quite a lot more hum and buzz which is the only bad thing bt you can jjst buy a noise gate for £10 and that will pretty much sort it.
This is INCREDIBLE

Danny Wood
July 21, 2006

Rating: 10/10

I recieved my Metal Muff from Dolphin a couple of weeks ago and now I've had a chance to use it for a while, I just had to come here and praise it. There are so many distortion pedals on the market that it's difficult to make a decision on which to buy but you can't go wrong with the Metal Muff.

You can dial in a whole range of sounds through the sensitive tone controls. Anything from vintage fuzz to a scooped hi gain modern distortion tone is available.

When not in use the Metal Muff is silent with no alteration to the clean sound, stomp the bypass as hard as you like to distort the sound (it's built like a tank) then hit the top boost for extra grunt on the solo. A truly excellent pedal and fantastic value for money, I have'nt got a bad word to say about it.