Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal vs Mad Professor Mad-Rbo
The Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal and the Mad Professor Mad-Rbo are both pedals sharing full, bright. The Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal leans scooped and aggressive. The Mad Professor Mad-Rbo leans transparent and edge of breakup. Current prices: $95 vs $185.11.
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Blended from circuit-archetype lineage, dynamic feel, tone-signal overlap and tone-vector distance — the tone vector itself is derived from editorial description text, not a measured acoustic signal, so this reflects how similarly the catalog copy describes the two, not a lab measurement. Shown only within a gear class, and only where there's enough evidence to be meaningful.44% — somewhat different
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Genres both listings are associated with.- Rock
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Derived from overlapping tonal signals across both listings.- full
- bright
Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal
Boss · pedal
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Citation/mention fame — how often this gear is cited across artist rigs and gear discussion.$95via Reverb
$185.11via Reverb
The Boss HM-2 Heavy Metal is a distortion pedal known for a scooped, sizzling, buzzsaw-like saturation that, with all four knobs maxed, became the defining chainsaw tone of Swedish death metal. Entombed's 1990 debut Left Hand Path popularized this dimed HM-2 sound, and producer Tomas Skogsberg championed it at Sunlight Studios in Stockholm, where it also shaped the guitar tone of Dismember, Carnage, and Grotesque. At more moderate settings it can deliver milder, more usable distortion for mainstream rock and even shoegaze, but its real character and cult reputation come from the aggressive, harmonically dense, buzzing wall of gain at full saturation. It suits death metal and extreme metal players chasing that specific, instantly recognizable Sunlight Studios buzzsaw sound.
The Mad Professor Royal Blue Overdrive covers a wide range from light overdrive into full distortion, with Volume, Distortion, Treble, and Bass controls. At its lowest Distortion setting the pedal behaves almost like an EQ stage, adding minimal filtering for a transparent boost. Turning the Distortion knob up moves it into a crunchy, tube-amp-like breakup and eventually into heavier gain. Both Treble and Bass are boost/cut shelving controls, giving broad tonal shaping rather than a single fixed voicing. It is built to go from subtle amp-like grit to genuine distortion within one pedal, and forms the basis of Mad Professor's Supreme A-side circuit.
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Genres this gear is documented as being used in.- Hard Rock
- Shoegaze
- Metal
- Death Metal
- Classic Rock
- Blues
- scooped
- aggressive
- transparent
- edge of breakup