BOSS DS-1 vs MT-2 Metal Zone

Buy the DS-1 if you want one distortion sound, cheaply, and you are willing to keep the Tone knob low. Buy the MT-2 if you need to shape where your guitar sits in a mix, because its sweepable mid frequency is a parametric EQ and the DS-1 has nothing comparable. Both are commonly blamed for disappearing in a band, and in both cases the cause is the midrange — the difference is that only one of them gives you a control to fix it.

These two get compared because they are the same price bracket, the same enclosure and the same brand, and because both carry a reputation for sounding worse in a band than at home. That shared reputation has a single shared cause, which makes this a more useful comparison than it first appears.

01 — The shortlist

Which BOSS distortion

#	Product	Best for	Price
01	BOSS DS-1 Distortion Three knobs and a single hard-clipping stage — consistent, legible, and easy to set wrong.	One sound, done well, at the lowest price	$69.99 · Check price #ad How we’re funded · price as of September 13, 2026
02	BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone Three EQ bands plus a sweepable mid frequency — the most tone-shaping on any BOSS compact dirt pedal.	Being able to fix the problem the DS-1 gives you	$107.20 · Check price #ad How we’re funded · price as of September 13, 2026

Rows link to the full write-up further down this page. Prices come from the live price layer only — where there is no live figure the button reads “Check price” rather than showing a remembered number.

02What BOSS publishes, side by side

That publication gap is worth noticing on its own. If you are budgeting a shared power supply, one of these two can be planned exactly and the other cannot.

03The shared problem: mids

Both pedals are blamed for the same thing — sounding enormous alone and inaudible with a band — and in both cases the cause is a scooped midrange. A guitar competes with vocals and snare in the mids, so a sound with the mids removed occupies frequencies the rest of the band has already filled.

The difference is what you can do about it. On the DS-1 the scoop is a consequence of the Tone knob's wiring: turn it up for brightness and you cut mids at the same time. You can avoid it by keeping the Tone low, at the cost of a darker sound than most people want. On the MT-2 the scoop is the factory setting rather than a circuit constraint, and the parametric mid means you can put the midrange back exactly where you want it.

01

BOSS DS-1 Distortion

One sound, done well, at the lowest price

The number10 mA, 1 M ohm in, 1 k ohm out, 360 g. All published by BOSS.

The DS-1 does one thing: it clips hard to ground, the same way every time, regardless of how hard you pick. That consistency is what keeps a chord legible — play a full open chord and you can still hear the individual strings, which is not true of most higher-gain pedals.

BOSS publishes the full sheet for it: 10 mA, 1 M ohm input, 1 k ohm output. It runs off anything, it shares a supply happily, and it is the cheapest pedal in this comparison by a clear margin.

The con is the Tone knob, and it is the whole reputation problem. Turning it up adds treble and cuts mids together, so the setting that sounds exciting alone is the setting that vanishes under a band. Keep the Tone low, or put an EQ after it, and the DS-1 is considerably better than its reputation. No adaptor included and it is buffered rather than true bypass.

Published specifications for the BOSS DS-1 Distortion

Controls	Tone, Level, Dist, pedal switch
Input impedance	1 M ohm
Output impedance	1 k ohm
Current draw	10 mA
Power	9 V battery (6F22 / 6LR61) or PSA-series adaptor
Size / weight	73 x 129 x 59 mm, 360 g
What it does not do	No adaptor included, no true bypass. The single Tone knob scoops as it brightens, so a DS-1 into an already-scooped amp is the classic recipe for disappearing in a band mix.

Specs from BOSS DS-1 specifications. We have not used this unit.

$69.99 · Check price

#ad How we’re funded · price as of September 13, 2026

02

BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone

Being able to fix the problem the DS-1 gives you

The MT-2's reputation is the worst of any pedal on this site and it is mostly a reputation about one factory setting rather than about the circuit. What BOSS actually publishes is a three-band EQ with a sweepable Middle Frequency control — a parametric mid, which is a genuinely powerful tool and something no other BOSS compact dirt pedal has.

That control is the reason to own it. You can choose *which* midrange frequency you boost or cut, which means you can place your guitar in a gap in the band's frequency range rather than hoping the fixed curve happens to fit.

The cons: the factory scooped setting everybody hears is the one nobody should use, and it takes real work to get past it. BOSS publishes no current-draw or impedance data for it, no adaptor is included, and at high Dist it is a specific and very compressed voice rather than a general-purpose distortion.

Published specifications for the BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone

Controls	Level, High, Low, Middle, Middle Freq (parametric), Dist
EQ	Three-band with a sweepable mid frequency — the most EQ on any BOSS compact dirt pedal
Power	9 V battery or PSA-series adaptor
Electrical data	No current-draw or impedance figure is published for this pedal, so none is stated here.
What it does not do	No adaptor included. The factory mid-scooped setting is the one everybody hears and nobody should use — the parametric mid is the reason to own it, not an extra.

Specs from BOSS MT-2 product page. We have not used this unit.

$107.20 · Check price

#ad How we’re funded · price as of September 13, 2026

04Which one for which job

1. Rhythm playing where chords must stay legible. DS-1. Hard clipping at one stage keeps the individual notes separate.
2. You need to fit into a busy mix. MT-2, using the parametric mid. Nothing else in this price range gives you that control.
3. Modern high-gain metal. Neither, really — both are older voicings. Best distortion pedals covers the category properly.
4. Your first distortion pedal. DS-1, because there are three knobs and it is hard to get badly lost.
5. You already own an EQ pedal. DS-1, because the EQ gives you the MT-2's main advantage for less money.

05Stacking, and why it rarely works

Both compress heavily, so running one into the other means the second is clipping a signal that has already lost most of its dynamic range. The result is more noise rather than more of anything useful, and the noise floor of two gain stages in series is meaningfully worse than one.

As a two-pedal dirt rig they make more sense switched rather than stacked — one as the rhythm sound and one as the lead sound. If you do run both into a high-gain amp, budget for a gate: your pedalboard hums covers which kind of noise a gate actually fixes and which kind it does not.