Originally posted by PonyOne
it's funny, my experience in shreddding, rythm playing and distortion is exactly the opposite from what everyone i saying, unless I'm just putting things in the wrong context...

When I play lead, I play my SG through my metal zone, and shred with reasonably heavy distortion. Perhaps it's my settings or playing style, but it sounds a-okay.

When I play rythm or lead/solo in blues or vintage stuff, I use my Gretsch over my Blues Driver w/moderate distortion. The metal zone was designed for solos, leas and triads, not general strumming. If you play "hole in my heart" over it, you'll get a haze of indecipherable noise, but if you play "be quick or be dead" you'll be dead-on.

well, if you are playing through a pantera like rhythm distortion, I'm dead sure you'll have problems to play smooth lead sounds using the same pedal or amp settings... although some people (including me) like to play some leads with a very heavy distortion... but usualy, a good lead sound should be smooth for easy shredding ,clear sweeping and most of all the sound of the lead everybody is expecting to hear.