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Greetings! I am Chelsea, I will be reviewing products for Middle Tennessee Music. Nice to meet you!

Today, I will be reviewing a distortion pedal by the name of Box of Metal Vexter Series, manufactured by ZVex Effects.

This pedal is awesome for, you got it, metal!

I find that the distortion is comparable to a muff pedal on steroids. It has the fuzz, but it’s heavily distorted and bassy, which gives your tunes a nice, unique, sound.

It’s gain and tonal features are similar to a high-gain tube amp. Many distortion pedals attempt to imitate that feeling and sound of a tube amp, but fail in competition. This pedal is about as close as it gets.

So, let’s get to the specs, shall we?

The controls consist of the following:

• volume
• bass
• mid
• treble
• gain
• gate
• bypass

The volume and bass are pretty basic.

The mid control is great if you want to draw attention to or delete the mid tones.

The treble control is also pretty self-explanatory, but I would like to point out that there is not much of a clean setting with this pedal. If you’re looking for a pedal that can clean up when necessary, this may not be the one you’re looking for.

I’d also like to point out that it is especially helpful to use the presence control on your amplifier, if it has one, when adjusting the treble.

The gain is high in general, which is what helps give it that tube-like effect.

The noise gate, in my opinion, is what makes the Box of Metal exceptional. It has a built in, switchable gate, which is nice for reducing noise and feedback that you may not want. This is especially helpful for palm muting.

Another great thing about the gate on this pedal is that you can switch it on and off with virtually no seam or volume issues. Switching it off can also help if you’re wanting that feedback as well.

Last, but not least, the bypass setting. This pedal comes equipped with a true-bypass setting, which is great if you’re running multiple pedals but want to switch this one off. Without loss of tone, this is a great feature.

Another great thing about the Box of Metal is that, unlike many other effects pedals, it holds a great sustain. Getting the sustain to carry for an extended amount of time can often be an issue when using multiple pedals.

See a video demonstration of the long sustain below.

Enough with the specifications, is it worth the money?

There are a couple variations of this pedal, the hand painted version that is available from the ZVex website and Amazon is priced at $379.00.

The Vexter series is a silk-screened art, but is priced at $239.00.

The parts inside the pedal are identical. In my opinion, if you are someone who primarily plays heavier music (especially metal) and are looking for a good “go to”, then this could be a great pedal for you.

If you are someone who just likes to play heavier music every once in a while, I still think this could be a great pedal for you.

This is a truly exceptional piece of gear and I would highly recommend that any musician with a taste for heavier music should have it in their collection.

Find more pedals from ZVex on their official website.