Guitar Man Plug 'N' Play Metal review

  • £17.95
The Plug 'N' Play Metal's tones are too middly to do its name full justice.

MusicRadar Verdict

If the EQ could be used to scoop the tone that'd be something, but the tone is too rounded for a genuinely fulfilling metal experience.

Pros

  • +

    Exceedingly dirty tone…

Cons

  • -

    …but not a particularly great one.

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No selection of tone generators would be complete without one dedicated to metal.

The secret is to marry crushing amounts of gain with ferocious highs, fat, expressive lows, and not too much in the middle.

Sounds

However, with anything less than full gain the tone is too middly and flabby: winding up the gain only increases the fizz. Consider Dimebag's solid-state rhythm crunch, yet without any real depth or definition. Palm-muted chords bark rather than crush and despite plenty of gain on tap, it's not a patch on the Vox Metal AmPlug.

Simon Bradley is a guitar and especially rock guitar expert who worked for Total Guitar magazine and has in the past contributed to world-leading music and guitar titles like MusicRadar (obviously), Guitarist, Guitar World and Louder. What he doesn't know about Brian May's playing and, especially, the Red Special, isn't worth knowing.