Good heavens don't use a metal zone! Anything but a metal zone. Or that other orange boss pedal that sucks nuts. And if you get a marshall or something, don't play with it's distortion. Not that it's bad, but from the 80s to the early 90s there was NO heavy metal band that didn't play with marshal default distortion. You'll just sound the same as everybody else. I suggest you get some rack, not multieffect pedals. Having used both extensively, a rack is a better idea, I think.
Mock: you actually will never need anything more than 10/level eq... so get some cheap boss pedal or something. 30 bucks or so. Be sure to lower down those 250hrz frequences by some 5-7 Db, cut the lowest end and the highest end also and make a nice curve on the remaining bass tones up to +2 Db and a downwards curve on the high frequencies to +1 Db... just a simple metal setup, really.
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Nearly all pedals sound like crap at higher volumes.
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Not true. They do sound like crap if you're playing at 3242356 gain, they do. Guitarists need to understand that the crunch isn't about the biggest amount of gain possible, but about compression and equalizing. So don't bash pedals because one can do wonders with them. Check out My Dying Bride, they use a metal zone for
recordings and some nifty EQing and it sounds just fine. Not that it couldn't be better, but it is professional sound.
Noob: don't be afraid of your equalizer. It's very important to have control over your frequencies. Try killing the middle a bit and bringing up the low end. And cut off both the lower stuff and the higher treble like I said to mock. Middle is the worst thing for distortion guitar, unless you want to sound like a third-tier nirvana knockoff.
Sspad's pedal is pretty good.
And don't kid yourselves with tube distortions and the like. If you know your effects very well, and know a thing or two about mic placement, you can make even the humblest setup sound awe.