Review

Roger Mayer is not happy. “I’m bored of everyone making Tube Screamer copies,” he tells us. The solution, he says, is the Metalloid, a dual-band parallel distortion with individual control over your axe’s high and low frequencies. “In the studio, it’s common to build a guitar tone with parallel sounds,” he says. “I thought, ‘Let’s bring that to the floor’.” Why hasn’t anyone done this before?

The Metalloid is dead simple in use, with dedicated gain and EQ for each band allowing unprecedented fine-tuning. Cut the low gain while cranking the high and you’ve got a tight, warm chug on the bass strings, and a simultaneously searing, gravelly bite for solos. Reverse that for a fuzztastic rhythm crunch, fused to crystalline highs.

There are more aggressive pedal tones out there, but the Metalloid is pure old-school quality - a characterful, complex, valve-like distortion that sounds like rock’s back pages.

Next: Roger Mayer Metalloid verdict