This pedal does a great job of being the drive section you need to go from clean and crunch tones to thick metal tones. The sounds I tried to go after with this pedal were Recto tones and 5150 tones.
I found the pedal worked best with everything actually at around noon, but the tight knob was used to go from looser rectoish tones to tighter 5150 tones. Of course I will experiment some more with the gain and level's, but the tone knob is best set somewhere close to noon. The mid switch works like it should and both settings sound good.
When I experimented with Recto tones, it didn't get quite as loose and responsive, but it was able to sound fat and articulate. It was loose enough to stay responsive to my playing and had some of that spongy feel I like so much. When turned towards more of the tighter setting (and with some added mids) it really stayed articulate and heavy sounding. It doesn't have the same bite a 5150 has, however it nails those tighter lows and clear technical playing a 5150 can handle well on the higher strings.
The gate is just a switch, but works VERY well. No complaints, it cuts the noise when it should.
One thing it does lack is a little bass on the 9V setting. Not by a whole lot, in fact most 5150 fans would be perfectly happy with the amount of bass. However in the 18V setting it can get some big fat metal tones, but doesn't sound overly "squarish" and harsh like many metal pedals. 18V sounds pretty similar to the 9V, just a bit more lows and oomph.
TL;DR: I'd give it a 7/10-8/10 in terms of tone compared to tube amps. Most metal pedals i'd give a 4/10-5/10. Definitely worth the money for guys who want both good cleans and gain tones, or need a more affordable (and house friendly volume level) option before getting a more expensive tube amplifier. I found it worked very well with my Tweaker 15 to cover just about any tone I needed.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Tightmetal sweet distortion!
October 23, 2012
Reviewer:
Nik
from UK
I have been looking for a distortion pedal that could give me the sound I wanted, this is the 4th pedal I have bought and the only one that is suited to the style of music I play, if you play any kind of heavy rock or metal and are looking for pedal with that valve sound, this is the one. Within seconds of plugging this in, you can get an excellent tone. Well designed, solid build, and with a built in effects loop which is genius.
Nice 
