The owner’s manual for the Ibanez MS10
Metal Charger is full of cringeworthy
buzzwords and unintentionally hilarious
eighties marketing nonsense, congealed
into regrettable phrases like “hot and
heavy, massive metalmania distortion,” for
instance. It also boasts of “five controls
to really let you capture the rage in your
guitar.” Despite the questionable content
of its manual, however, the Metal Charger
is a pretty cool dirt box. It’s essentially a
JRC4558-powered Tube Screamer
circuit with more gain and
are reliable pedals. The upside is that you
can pick these bad fellas up all day long for
like 40 bucks a pop, so you can probably
afford to buy a second one for backup.
EQ controls. It’s certainly not high-gain by
modern standards, but it’s got plenty of
warm, pleasantly woolly crunch and sustain,
the EQ is very usable, and it sounds tough
through a big amp. Like a lot of Ibanez
pedals from this era the Metal Charger’s
construction is not as bombproof as one
might hope, and they sometimes develop
squirrely switches and jacks, but overall they
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