KMA Audio Machines Guardian of the Wurm Dist.

When I plug first in my direct setup pedal. It was good feeling when I play power chords. My first thought was, did I summon Satan? It gives death metal sound in my simple and cheap setup. It is my first HM-2 clone pedal. I connect the KMA Guardian into Joyo American(bypass cab sim) and IR pedal. I don't own similar to this. It is better to stacked this pedal with preamp distortion/crunch instead of clean or FX loop to achieve metal sound. IMO.
EQ: The LOW and HI-MID are responsive. You can achieve chainsaw sound with LOW is 90% and max HI-MID. But I notice the mud with my setup if the LOW and VOLUME are maxed. After randomly play with the settings. I find that the volume is best with noon and gain is 9 o’clock. The L-MID can scooped or boost the mid depends on the band and HIGH can tame the trebly amplifier.
Features: There are plenty of options using the combinations of EQ and switches. It is versatile that you can play any rock genre. The gate is useable in less than 75% because it cuts the guitar sound if more than that.
Hardware: I like the regular size knob, it feels smooth and the slider EQ also has lock in the middle. After randomly experiment with footswitch. When I try to turn OFF the footswitch, the switch is turn ON again. But that is rarely occasion. The soft footswitch is nice because you don’t need to push harder to turning on.
Handling: It takes 4 business days in my country to arrive and it arrives with deformed box. Luckily, the package and item was not harm.
Design: In my taste, it is cool looking pedal. It is not big at all. It is twice the size of regular pedal. It looks boutique pedal at first look.
Downside: The LED in gate is slightly brighter when turned on. It is slightly lower gain that the Boss HM-2 but in a good way. Because you can use higher gain amplifier without making noisier. I notice the volume difference when switching into another voice. The A-S is the loudest in three of them.
After playing for a month. I think It is best to use the blend option when using higher distortion to retain the flavor of your amplifier. I recently bought the Revv G3, it is best combine with the KMA Wurm of the Guardian. It screams with rage, the sound is mid-focused due to G3 and heavy when using blend. The gate is nicely removes the noise without making tone suck. It is very fast compare with noise gate built-in to my compressor. I will update this after I try the FX-loop. I like the Wurm EQ options too, it is different chainsaw type but it is more bass-y and less gain. Maybe it is for bass guitar? The clip changes the gain types, I like the Si(Silicon) for riffing and the A-S(Asymmetric) for soloing.
Conclusion: It is completely versatile pedal and it does the job. But it is still expensive for some. Overall this surpassed my expectations.

Combines the original HM-2 sounds with additional features that perfectly complement the rig. The gate is great for being able to be placed after the FX loop of the pedal in the FX loop of my amp. I already had a gate at the beginning of my board but needed this to remove the preamp noise too. Also being able to trigger the gate from the DI of the guitar is great. However, the gate itself is very sensitive to any movement on the guitar and is slow to mute the sound as it likes to gradually lower the volume to a mute. This gate alone isn't enough, but with an ISP Decimator upfront to gate your DI and then a splitter to feed the key input of the GOTW gate it will compensate for this slowness. I guess the slowness is to allow some sustain to fade out more naturally. Love the clipping modes and EQ modes, also the internal DIP switch options, especially the input low cut.

Simply incredible pedal in all aspects, both in utility and aesthetic. The design is beautiful and it's the prettiest pedal in my collection by far. You can create all kinds of distortion sounds from it with the different clippings and EQ styles and not only chainsaw grindy stuff. It does the chainsaw pretty well though, which I am very font of. Also, the Blend knob does its magic and the noise gate is amazing.

Interesting to note here, is that in all amps I tried, I prefer to connect it to the dirty channel of the amp than the clean channel. I don't really know if it's intended to be connected this way.

The only downside is that it is so beautiful that it makes you not want to step on it and keep it as clean as possible... Unlike my other rugged and heavily used pedals!