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MT-2W Waza Craft Metal Zone – The Metal Pedal You Deserve

Waza Craft compact pedals are the high-end, premium offerings of the BOSS compact line. This treatment is a great honour reserved only for iconic pedals in the BOSS echelon, giving them new life with upgraded components and “hotrodded” modes with custom functionality – from the rare, long discontinued VB-2 Vibrato to the highly prized analog CE-2 chorus, and now…

Contributed by Ed Lim for the Roland Australia Blog

The MT-2W Waza Craft Metal Zone.

That’s right, we really did it.

We really did. And we think it’s totally justified – the original MT-2 has certainly earned its icon status since its release in 1991, as one of THE top selling BOSS compacts of all time (and if you disagree, you might want to have a read of this article first).

WHAT’S WAZA GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Let’s start with the original MT-2 sound. In the Standard Mode of the MT-2W, we’ve taken that OG supercharged high gain sound and made a few refinements – using carefully selected analog components to lower the noise floor and optimise the midrange Q, to help bring the Waza touch to the Metal Zone.

But the MT-2W certainly doesn’t stop there.

All Waza pedals have a custom switch that incorporates some new functionality or sound that the original pedal didn’t have. The MT-2W is no different.

Custom Mode unlocks a totally different beast. It features a completely distinct new gain stage that was designed from the ground up for the modern metal player – that means you too, extended range downtuners! Instead of the scooped sound profile that was the order of the day in 1991, this new mode is all about mids, bringing a huge, dynamic, amp-like chunk that will turn any amp into a fire-breathing beast! This almost makes it like two distinct pedals in one.

LET’S HEAR IT

If your immediate question is… “Does it chug?”, obviously there’s one person who is best suited to answer that – Ola Englund himself.

Custom Mode tracks beautifully for highly technical playing, while retaining fantastic note separation and articulation. We’ll let progressive guitar wizard James Norbert Ivanyi drive home that point with his unique brand of high octane playing.

The added versatility of the new voicing means that it’s not just for metal – it works great for heavy rock playing as well.

Now here’s something you might not be expecting – the MT-2W’s Custom Mode is so dynamic that you can actually use it to great effect for rock and blues, and rolling the guitar volume back yields many shades of expressive sounds in between! Our friend Leon Todd demonstrates this perfectly with a Strat and some single coils (the last thing you might expect to be paired with a Metal Zone!).