Ugly Guitar Truth: TC Electronic Eyemaster Metal Distortion

So, today TC Electronics let us see what they were teasing us about recently. They gave us a full frontal view of 8 new pedals they are releasing. For the most part, these are very interesting. There is a push button chorus, fuzz, tremolo, auto swell, and noise gate. I've checked out all the available information about these pedals and they seem much like the affordable pedal that they released a few months ago. Where TC has done a great job so far, there seems to be a rotten egg in the bunch. If you read the title of the post you already know what I'm going to say. Let's take a look at the Eyemaster Metal Distortion.

Just... Wow

Ok, if there is one thing that I've learned about the state of big pedal developers releasing their pedal via social media, it is that they have everything optimized before launch. They show us glamour shots on Instagram and they post well produced demo videos on YouTube. That is what TC Electronic did for each one of their new pedals. Each pedal had a video that did no less that convince me to buy every single one. I probably won't, but when I watch those videos, I absolute knew that I needed to buy whatever it was. The final video that I watched was for the Eyemaster. Why did I watch it last? Because that was the order that YouTube gave it to me. Ok?! Just like the other videos we have "Pedal Jesus" tell us just how great this pedal is, and we have an impressive guitarist giving us a demo. Only, I'm not really understanding what I'm hearing. Everything sounds awful. There is a chugging riff and some talk about brutal death-metal. I enjoy a nice chuggy metal riff, but do not dig the sounds on this video. I checked out the comment section to make sure I wasn't crazy. What had been a sea of praise for the other pedal release along side this one, was now a list of complaints.

Simpler Than-Thou

So, I copy-pasted that from the TC website. This pedal has two knobs. That is completely fine. However, the sounds that were coming out of this pedal is not fine. I know that TC can produce a video with great sounding metal riffs (just check out the Mimiq Doubler pedal they have). So it leads me to believe that this pedal just isn't holding up. It sounds like the intro of a song that uses a lofi filter before restoring the low end frequencies and becoming something worth listening to. The sounds aren't brutal. They are thin, scooped, and fizzy. They are a number of HM-2 comparisons being made, but to me it sounds more like a MXR Prime Distortion. Whatever the actually heritage of this pedal, the video does not do much to make me want the thing. After doing some digging, there is a "sound" that the pedal seems to go for, but it "sounds" like a MT-2 at a horrific setting to me.

Who's To Blame?

Here's the deal. Tore (I think that's the guy's name) is kind of an odd dude. Odd in this case refers to the fact that he doesn't agree with me all the time. I don't particularly like most of the distortion/overdrives from TC. So I think there might be some ideological differences between me and the people making decisions at TC. This is all totally fine, but I don't seem to be the only one finding the Eyemaster a little hard to handle. Why does this pedal sound like this? Seems like the TC guys have a thing for distortions with this particular palate. Or, It could be Behringer/Music Group to blame. Many people accuse TC of reboxing Behringer pedals. So maybe it's due to the designs being out of TC's control and not up to their standards. TC makes top notch pedal in nearly every category. There are even fans of the drive pedals... go figure. Or possibly, The amps they were using just didn't like working with that particular pedal. If Tore is to be believed, it may have been too metal for that poor Bugera amp. According to the videos in this series of demos, the amps used were Bugera. In the video is question, there was a close up of a Marshal Plexi, but that amp wasn't even turned on (note the unilluminated status light). This may indicate the use of the Bugera Plexi clone. 

Conclusion

Does this pedal dish out brutal and raw metal tones inspired by classic Swedish death metal? honestly, it might, I'm not up on my classic Swedish death metal. However, I can really recommend this pedal. Very few people have had a chance to play this pedal since it has only just been announced, but for what I can tell, this one is a swing and a miss. TC Electronics does such a great job on nearly everything it sets out to do, but issuing a two knob metal distortion just seems... limited. Here's hoping that this pedal has some internal controls to tweak.

The Ugly Truth About MXR Super Badass Distortion

Recently I was able to sit down with a pedal that has had a lot of attention lately, The MXR Super Badass Distortion. The most notable feature that is present on this pedal is the Mid knob. Most pedals have a Tone knob. We are very familiar with a singular Tone knob, or even having  Low and High knobs, but having a three band Eq is surprising on a compact, sub-$100 pedal. This pedal has lots of knobs. This is great for those of us that love to tweak pedals. The controls are very amp-like. We have Level and Distortion that do exactly what you think they do. Then, you get your Low, Mid, and High knobs that do what they sound like they do as well. I am not the expert on MXR. I've played through most of their distortion boxes. I can't say that I'm super impressed with many of them. My local shop is a pretty big dealer of Dunlop (MXR's parent company) so when sitting down with my friendly, neighborhood, pedal-pusher he lined up a bunch of them and ran through them with me. I was unimpressed with most of the offering of the MXR line. This was rather underwhelming because I like the looks and features of most of the modern line. True Bypass and a rugged compact case are important to me. The Distortion+ was too fizzy and didn't offer enough range. It felt like I was playing around the pedal and not setting the pedal to how I wanted to play. The Classic distortion/ Distortion III was warmer and more usable than any of the other pedals. The one that stands above the rest is the Super BadAss Distortion

The Complete Spectrum of Distortion

If you believe what the manufacture description states about this pedal, then this distortion pedal does everything from clean boost to scooped metal tones. Let's start as the beginning, the clean boost is fair. This pedal probably cleans up better than nearly every other distortion I've played. Most pedals will just die when the distortion knob goes to zero. I guess in a pinch this pedal will work as a boost, but I don't think it will replace my GE-7 (modded to take care of the hiss that is associated with this pedal). Of course the most likely use of this pedal is going to include using gain. At 9 O'clock the pedal give nice soft clipping saturation. I'd describe this as, "Just beyond breakup". Straight up noon on the gain will give you large amounts of gain. This is about where the line is between rock and heavy rock. Past this point and you'll be flirting with metal tones. At 3 O'clock it's over saturated, heavy rock/metal. Scoop the mids and you'll find some lush nu-metal sounds that satisfy that niche. This is all pretty impressive, that this pedal can clean up all the way to "clean" boost. There is a down side to all that versatility. Cranking that gain will definitely give you more distortion, but it also comes with a little extra white noise. This is not much of a concern util after 9 O'clock, but pegging the gain is going to come with a cost. Also the pedal comes with a fair amount of compression. Many metal distortions will compress your signal, but as your increase the gain you start to notice that everything is getting squished. The whole range of gain on the pedal is accompanied by some compression, but it is the most noticeable at full tilt.

Does It Really Do Everything?

In a word: no. It is my opinion that no one pedal can do everything for you. Even if it peg every gain stage that you want to play at, you'd have to change your settings to get to more than one of them. Then there is matter of stacking pedals. You can push your pedals just like the front of your amp. If you were setting up a pedal board and had $100 to spend on your gain section, I'd recommend getting two of the lower cost options that cover that range instead of trying to get a single pedal that does "everything". The way your can combined and mix these pedals are going to be a lot more satisfying then trying to find one setting that works for anything. At the end of the day, one pedal can only make one sound at a time. $50 isn't a lot of cash to spend on a new pedal, but there are a lot of good options out there. Most of the Outlaw pedals are just under $50. Of course you can get the orange and yellow boxes from Boss, but if you like the MXR line then you might want things like True Bypass and such. You could get as many as 4 pedals for your $100 From Behringer. However, if you are typically a low gain player that needs to add flexibility to you board, but you don't want to buy a ton of new gear to make different sounds, or have little space to spare on you board, then the Super BadAss might be a great fit for you.