The TS9 Tube Screamer is an analog distortion/overdrive unit. Mine was made in Japan, and it has the characteristic green paint, 1/4" input and output jacks, red led light, and ac adaptor input, all in a rugged metal case good for stompin' on.

Its a super simple pedal to operate, just 3 knobs; "drive", "tone", and "level" so its pretty self explanatory. Having a single tone knob rather than seperate "high" and "low" makes it easier to achieve a more "transparent" sound from the TS9 since you can just park it right at 12 o'clock.

In itself, the TS9 only makes one sound, but is good at it. Its not a super hi gain distortion, but will give you a stinging lead tone for soloing and plenty of balanced, sweet sustain depending on what guitar you are using. I play most an Ibanez Ghostrider which is built like a Les Paul with mahogany body / maple top and set neck.
Its not a thick, beefy overdrive, but its not thin or buzzy. Its sort of a sweet, middle of the road, mild distorion, or even just a gentle overdrive if you dial it in low. Its fairly versatile in its range, but its character remains the same through its spectrum from mild overdrive from medium to hi gain distortion.
One thing I like to do with my TS9 is use it as a boost to push a tube amp like my small Epiphone Valve Special into greater breakup.
I also get really cool results by purposely dialing in distorted sounds from the TS9 and then backing off the volume on my guitar to clean it up, like going from the solos in "Black Magic Woman" to the verses which are obviously cleaner, or just to get a clean sound with more sustain than usual.

The DS-1 is a distortion stomp box. You've probably heard it before. The pedal is cheap, so many people end up picking one up for some easy distortion.

Theres 3 knobs for tone, level, and distortion. Boss provides a battery for it, but you can also plug in a standard 9V adapter.

The simple setup makes it easy to use. With only three knobs, there's not a whole lot to fuss around with, but there is still enough room to vary the sound a bit. The controls all respond how you would expect them to.

The pain with this pedal is, if you're using a battery, like many pedals you must unplug the input or the battery will drain.

I like this pedal quite a bit. It's got a crunchy, "fizzy" distortion that I enjoy. The tone knob will take some adjusting to find the sound you want. It seems to start off a bit muddy on the low side and gets a bit too bright on the high side. But I like to vary the fullness of the sound and the tone works well for that.

The distortion will provide some nice crunch even on its lowest setting, and add the "fizz" as you turn it up. Level works well to help dial in the sound.

It's probably not for everyone, but it's perfect for a basic distortion. It also seems to work well with fuzz boxes and other pedals.

The Nady TD-1 is a true tube analog overdrive pedal, with adjustable equalization, gain, level, etc. There are 1/4'' inputs and outputs and it is not a rackable effect.

No trouble at all setting this up - simply plug your guitar into the input and send your output to an amp. There is plenty of control for tone and it is pretty easy to get that tube overdrive sound that I am looking for. I haven't had a need for the manual as I just tweak the sound by ear.

I love the overdrive that this produces - to me it is pretty similar to the overdrive on newer Fender amps, and since my amp is older and has no built in distortion, this is really great to have so I can achieve that specific tube overdrive sound. I use this with guitar only but it can of course be used with anything you can plug into it. There is a switch for low, medium, and high gain and the three different channels can make for some nice overdrive variety.

The AMT Electronics Du Hast is a "distortion combo emulator." In case you haven't guessed, it's a distortion pedal that seeks to emulate the sound of the popular German band Rammstein. In fact, the pedal used to be called the AMT Rammstein, but I'm not sure why they changed the name.

It's got an input and output, battery clip (which requires a screwdriver to access), 9V jack, and four knobs, Level, Low, High, and Dist. Pretty standard for a stomp box distortion, and it's made in Siberia. Feels nice and sturdy. I like the orange color.

It's a simple setup with only four knobs. No manual, but none is needed. I like the fact that the stomp button doesn't click when you hit it. This might be a detractor for some who would like the feedback of a solid click, but I find that it makes the pedal much easier to switch. I wish more pedals had this kind of button.

I'm docking one point for making me use a screwdriver (and a fairly small one at that) to get to the battery.

Here's the thing I don't like about this pedal: I can't seem to get a good sound that I like from it. Reading other reviews, you would think that this pedal would be a replacement for any general-purpose pedal. In my opinion, that's not the case. It seems to do the Rammstein sound quite well, but I'm finding that this particular sound just isn't my style. And when I switch from another box, like my Little Big Muff, to this pedal, the box sounds flat in comparison. Even with the BBE Sonic Maximizer, no matter how much I tweak this pedal it sounds flat to my ears, compared to just about everything else. Maybe it's just the nature of this kind of distortion, but it doesn't seem to fit in with my other effects.

I also had a weird issue of getting a hum after playing with it and my other pedals for a while. It was only coming from the Du Hast. I decided to unplug it from the Voodoo Labs Pedal Power and try it with a battery, and the hum went away. When I plugged it back into the power supply, it was still gone. It hasn't returned, so I'm not sure what happened there.

This pedal is a bit noisy, too. You won't really want to use this in conjunction with a fuzz pedal, unlike some of my other fuzz pedals which can be stacked without a whole lot of extra noise. Overall, the sound just isn't what I'm looking for.

The Boss DS-1 is a distortion pedal, with adjustable tone, level and distortion. It is an analog pedal and has a 1/4'' input and output. It is not a rackable unit.

Like most of the Boss pedals, you can pretty much just plug this thing in and let it rip. All you have to do is plug in your guitar in the input and the amp to the output. I had no need to look at the manual as I just adjusted my tone by ear with the 3 knobs and had no troubles setting it up.

This produces a great heavy distortion sound. Its really thick and great for sustaining a power chord. The distortion can range from just a light overdrive to all out heavy metal. However, I am unable to get a real tube sounding overdrive with this. I have only used it with guitar, and it sounds great with my amp that has no built-in distortion.

According to Electro-Harmonix, the Little Big Muff is identical to the Big Muff, only smaller. It's a rather basic, but seemingly sturdy stomp box fuzz pedal. One input, one output, three knobs (volume, tone, and sustain), and a foot switch.

I chose this pedal primarily as a compromise between the Big Muff and the Nano Muff. The Big Muff is just too... big, and I honestly don't understand why the pedal has to have such a large housing. The Nano Muff only has a volume control, and I wanted to be able to tweak the sound. But I really feel that the Little Big Muff is no compromise at all, more like the best of both pedals, and it seems deceptively flexible.

Some people have complained that it adds too much low-end. While I do tend to keep the tone above 12 o'clock, I feel there is plenty of room for adjustment, and it might be more about the amp they are playing out of; my tube Peavey Classic 50 makes this pedal sound a bit less bassy than my digital Peavey KB-60 keyboard amp (but surprisingly enough, I feel that this pedal sounds good through both of them).

I was inspired to try an EHX Muff pedal when I heard some of the gritty fuzz tones coming from Jack White's guitar on the DVD "Under Blackpool Lights." It's extremely easy to get a very similar sound with this pedal and variations on it. Perhaps this pedal IS a bit more bassy than the regular Muff, but someone searching for Jack's sound is probably better off with this one, because I feel some of his low end is probably coming from that hollow-body Res-o-Glass Airline guitar, as they tend to "growl" quite a bit. But most people don't have an Airline.

Anyway, to me this pedal sounds "full," so I'm not complaining at all about any perceived amount of low-end. It's got a sound that I like a lot.

There's no real manual to speak of. The instructions that come with it give a basic overview, and the gist here is that if you plug in an AC adapter, it must be outer-ring positive (like most pedals). EHX didn't supply an adapter with it, but they did include a battery. I've got mine plugged into a Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2 Plus.

It's simple to use by just adjusting the three knobs. The volume, tone, and sustain all seem to have the ability to affect the sound, which is a good thing, because it gives the pedal quite a bit of versatility. I just love the sound I get from it, and it's hard to come up with a combination of settings that doesn't sound good. It does seem to get a bit too bottom-heavy with the tone control set low, but if you like fuzz, it'll be easy to get a satisfying sound out of this pedal.

In my opinion, it's a perfect combination of simplicity and versatility. Very easy to use.

"Sound quality" is an interesting metric for a fuzz pedal. As I said before, I love the sounds from this pedal. It trashes up the signal very nicely, though inevitably there will be people who do not like it for one reason or another. I was actually a bit shocked by how much I liked the pedal. It sounds a lot fuller than the overdrive box I have. I thought maybe the pedal would be redundant seeing as how I had two other fuzz pedals as well. But this pedal seems to have its own character, and a significantly different fuzz sound than the two Effector 13 pedals.

I play a Switch Wild One (single bridge humbucker with coil tap), an Eastwood Corona (SG clone, with excellent Eastwood humbuckers), and a modified Squier Strat through this and the rest of my pedals, and each guitar has some subtle differences that can be heard. It sounds good with all of them. It even cleans up a bit if you put an overdrive after it, but I'm not really liking much of the sounds I'm getting from my overdrive. A Boss DS-1 would probably be more to my taste than the AMT Du Hast pedal that I have now. But that's not the Muff's fault.

My favorite guitar, as far as sound from the Muff is concerned, is the Eastwood Corona, and it sounds so good that I often leave the other pedals turned off. However, a new addition to my pedals is a BBE Sonic Maximizer, and this makes the Muff sound even fuller. You can almost sort of adjust the tone of the Muff even further with this pedal. So while I liked the sound of the Muff by itself, I tend to leave the BBE on at all times.

Hmmmm..let's see... All analog, improved bypass,chip, capacitors,filaments, etc. classic overdrive reissue pedal. Good old fashioned ingredients. Texas Instruments integrated circuit. A buncha other stuff I have no idea about.
Easy knob twisting...no editing software, rack mounting, etc... just a great clean boost and/or overdrive.

Easy, easy, easy. Twist the knobs. Find your tone. No manual required, but the controls do function a bit differently than a stock Ibanez unit. The range of gain is higher, the level has become more of a clean boost...but..um. Honestly, no manual required.

Great overdrive. I mostly use my amps distortion (Voodoo labs Preamp) with this to push it into molten territory. Adds searing harmonics and "hair" to the signal... On a clean channel, this does add grit...giving a tweed overdrive characteristic...in front of my rhythm channel..all the way from Stevie Ray Vaughn to Eddie Van Halen. Lead channel...well, VH to whatever. This pedal is a bit geared toward mid tones, but won't impact your tone negatively if you have dialed your amp into a scooped metal sound.
Using this with a Strat, Les Paul, Telecaster, and some other humbucker equipped guitars, this offers something different with each. My favorite combination is using this with my Strat.. I have a Dimarzio HS-3 stacked humbucker in the bridge for this guitar. You don't typically think of a Strat as a screaming guitar..but this setup rocks. It adds harmonic richness and sustain. I am not one to say "notes leap off the fretboard"... but.. this has sure made them more "jumpy" :b

This pedal, even with the mods adds some noise to my signal, but let's face it. It IS an overdrive pedal...it IS noise!

The Zoom Tri Metal is (how surprisingly!) a heavy-rock-oriented analog distortion pedal. Regarding controls we have the usual Gain & Level knobs, plus the classic Treble-Middle-Bass trilogy with a (very efficient) Range control for the mid frequencies. The pedal's case seems sturdy (probably even more than a Boss, which says a lot), the (big) on/off switch looks a bit unusual but seems reliable too.
According to the manual this stompbox was designed to handle the low frequencies of 7-string guitars -- I don't own one to test though.
This model was manufactured in Japan.

Obviously it takes more time to find your sound than it would on a mere Level-Tone-Drive (classic) distortion box... but if you have at least a bit of experience with that kind of settings it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

As usual with distortions the manual provides mostly very basic informations, plus a few examples of settings here and there. Nothing to complain about.

I use this pedal with a (mexican) Fender Fat Strat equipped with a Seymour Duncan SH4JB humbucker, into a SansAmp GT2 in clean (Tweed) setting which goes direct into the board, sometimes with a Small Clone between the Tri-Metal and GT2.

As the name "Tri-Metal" indicates, this box simulates three stages of distortion at once (I'm not too much into tube-amps technical informations but I assume the three stages correspond to two preamp tubes stages distorting plus the traditional crunch provided by power tubes). I can hardly compare it with "the real deal" (hey, I never played on a metal-plated or snake-skinned tube-powered beast!), anyway it provides a thick, mean, heavy and rather dynamic sound. Even with the drive level set low don't expect a clean sound out of it. It definitely sounds WAY hotter and versatile than EHX's Metal Muff, and provides a more "modern", tight sound compared with the Mesa (California) or Marshall (British) simulations on Tech 21's SansAmp GT2. As long as you want a modern distortion sound it will do the job, not only for metal but also punk, grunge, power pop and most certainly several other styles -- well, at least, that's as long as you concentrate on rhythm sounds...

Indeed, Zoom came up with what could have been a brilliant idea but in the end proves itself a major source of disappointment: they included a sort of internal noise reducer, which indeed succeeds in providing a surprisingly noise-free and hiss-free sound (I don't even need to use my ISP Decimator when the TM-01 is on), BUT in the same time it tends to reduce dramatically the sustain... had the circuit been equipped with an on/off switch so as to control this factor this might have been the PERFECT pedal for huge distortion sounds, but unfortunately it seems to me that this pedal will hardly be useful for soloing, even with a compressor or booster/overdrive in front of it.