I purchased this from a guitar center for more than half off, and I wasn't expecting much because of the price and all the bad things I've hears about this pedal; but, let me say this... I absolutely love it!!! I've played a Marshall jcm-800, a mesa duel-rectifier, and a orange dual dark, but I've gotten rid of all of them, and eventually settled on a orange micro dark, which is awesome! I use the orange micro dark as clean as I can get it, and set the volume and shape knobs accordingly. My entire rhythm sound is this pedal, and it is amazing! I play a lot of heavy metal, (Metallica, MegadetH, Slayer, trivium, bullet for my valentine, etc) and also 80's heavy metal and classic rock, (poison, skid row, whitesnake, quiet riot, def leopard, etc) and this Pedal, with a little understand about sound and compression, makes everything sound massive! A lot of people complaining about the pedal simply are using it wrong, or just genuinely don't like it, but the majority use it wrong. If you dime the gain, you get an unsettling amount of compression. So I usually back it off until I hear the compression fade away. I set the tone know to the 11:00-11:30 position, depending on the pickups I use, and the level knob is Dependant on how loud my clean signal is. For rhythm, it's a beast, but for leads... Kind of lacking, run a boss sd-1 and you've got all your bases covered! Clean, crunch, rhythm, and lead, with use of your volume knob.