Most of the tone ur gonna get comes from your fingers. a crappy player is a crappy player even on $10,000 worth of gear. practice everything you learn and just work on improving your tone not necessarily the amps. but a good amp and guitar do help and for a thick metal sound u'll need alot of gain but if you feel you still cant get the right sound try a boss mt-2 metal zone pedal. there might be some better ones but thats the one i like.