Boss BD-2 Blues Driver

Very easy... three knobs as descrived previously.

This is a very versatile box. I use it a booster and it retains the cleasn sound and also it can go dirty and fat, very fat. It is a little bit tight though and so it is good for rhythm but solos (not on its own). I run it in series with OS-2 and they make a good team then. Very powerful.

Very realiable... For a while I supplied 15V instead of 9V and it works fine.

Never dealt with them

A useful pedal for any sort of music because of its versatility.

Pretty straight forward. Has level, gain and tone. Gain is what gives you the overdrive (DUH!). I set it to minimum to just slightly more than minimum to get the tone I want. I'm a blues player and it servers me quite well. Finally getting some nice bell like tones from my rig. The manual is ok but not very comprehensive. Experiment and you'll find your tone.

I use an Epiphone Sheraton II with stock pickups (need to changes these) going through a Seymour Duncan 84-50 amp. Also use a noise gate, compressor and EQ. The box is somewhat noisy but the noise gate takes care of that. I'm not trying for a sound of any artist. I'm trying to find a sound that I like and want to present.

It would withstand a nuclear bomb. Yes, I'd use it without backup. However, get an AC adapter. It will eat up batteries.

Don't know. Haven't had to get any support.

I play blues and this is a great match. I wouldn't recommend it for heavy metal or grunge but if you want a nice blues crunch (or even a bit more) it is great.

Volume, Tone and Gain. It's almost as easy as it sounds, but I've found that there are many different sounds to try out on this blue beauty. The manual is reliable just as any Boss manual out there.

I've used it whith a Laney 50 watt amp and a Marshall Valvestate 100 watt amp. It sounds great on both of them. The thick gain sounds fine and it is not that noisy even if the gain and tone are up much.

It's like a Nirvana album. Don't leave home without it!

I play hard rock n'roll punkrock music (Nirvana is the gods), but i also like soft rock like radiohead and smashin pumpkins. Even if my sound often is very crunchy and noisy I like when I have a sound which is not so "super distorted". This pedal is the greatest one I've ever had. I've had a Zoom 505 before and it sucked! This one is 10 times better in sound, reliability, ease of use, and personality. I have also tried several others of pedals like Metal Zone or DS-1 but this is THE pedal for me. It's not that expensive, and I would have bought it even if it was twice as expensive. I really recommend it!

The manuals pretty crap, its suggested settings arent too great, but the pedal's easy enough to use that the manual is irrelevent. 3 knobs, level, tone, gain, very simple.

I use this pedal with a Fender Roadhouse strat and my backup, a squier strat, with a crybaby wah and a fender deluxe 112 plus amp. The pedal's great for producing a good lead tone, its well suited for the sort of hard driving blues stuff I play (SRV, Buddy Guy, Albert King)

Its a boss, its built to withstand nuclear explosions. I use it on gigs without a backup, just got to be sure the battery still has juice in it before a gig.

never dealt with em

its a great pedal for giving some oomph to blues leads, SRV, Buddy Guy type lead tones.

i would say it takes a bit of time to dial in what is right for your personal tastes. it is layed out in the all familiar volume, tone and gain knobs.

i use this pedal with alongside a t.c. chorus, z. vex fuzz factory,z.vex seek wah, and a voodoo labs micro vibe. i run these through a matchless sc 30.no noise added by the blues driver. i find it to be extremely transparent. i spent literally hours testing it along a ts9, a modified ts9, a boss od1, and a fulldrive 2 and the only pedal that beats it,probably, is the fulltone. the gain boost is extraordinary. sounds a billion times more like your guitar and amp than a ts9

everthing seems o.k. i'm not worried about it.

Iv'e never had to.

Iv'e been playing for 16 years. I'm in a band that plays quite a bit around the state. I of course, have purchased a million amps, a million pedals and so on. I can't believe how well this one works for me. it maintains the entegrity of my matchless amp. when i step on it, it sounds like my beautiful matchless with a beautiful drive on top. Not like a gain mixed with my inherent amp sound. I have to admit, i first felt it was just o.k. As an excercise, try this.... It seems most people test an overdrive by listening to their clean sound and then kicking in the overdrive to hear unwanted coloration. sometimes they may listen to what the pedal sounds like regardless of how it might change their overall tone. What i do is set my overdrive the way i like,play for a bit, and then turn it off quickly and listen to the difference between it and the clean sound. It's kind of a backwards way of doing it. but what i find by doing this is that the bluesdriver is very, very transparent. It simply needs to be set properly. I do love the sound of a tubescreamer but it is one sound! the bluesdriver to me beats the tubescreamer. It beas it at mild gain to big sustain.

Keep the tone knob shy of 12 o'clock and your set. Crank up gain for crunch. Crank up volume for power boost. Hit the switch to turn on, hit the switch to turn off. It's simple and it works.

I've got a strat with lace sensors into the blues driver into a peavey classic combo. It's great to use in combination with the gain channel, but only use it for opposites. Combining high pedal gain with high amp gain gave some wacky assymetrical distortion. Not good stuff. I like to use it to overdrive the preamp tubes or to add crunch with the power tubes humming. With the gain past 12 o'clock, it takes on a bit of fuzz. Not like a fuzzface, not a tubescreamer, but somewhere in between. I'd say it's a healthy dose of page and clapton, with a little stevie and jimi thrown in for good measure. Oh yeah, when the tone knob passes 12, some unholy trebly nastiness shows up - avoid at all costs.

I've got a paint chip after a month of use. That's about as bad as its gonna get. If Boss only made tube amps and guitars, we'd all be set.

Not a clue.

Great gain channel imitator. Not quite as warm as a 12AX7, but about as good as it gets. Don't get it if you want a cheaper tubescreamer. This is a mild distortion pedal rather than an overdrive pedal. It is versatile enough to do overdrive duties, but it rocks doing the distortion thing.

Three knobs, didn't need the manual but read it anyway for something to do. Extremely easy to set up.

I'm playing a Rick 620 with vintage/SC's into a Peavey studio pro 122 amp. This pedal definitely warms up that too-clean transistor sound! It's not noisy at all, and definitely gives a blusey tone. I am really impressed with this unit! I run the volume at 9:oo, tone at 2:00 and gain at 1:00. This gives me what I need for break-through leads or blusey chording. I hardly ever use just one pickup, as the vintage single-coils are a bit thin. I adjust the BD-2 to give me my leads when I step on the pedal. One less thing to do or go wrong!

I won't dignify this with an answer!

Not applicable!

I can see this pedal being used for almost any style of music. It can be used for a nice moderate distortion or as a clean boost for leads. This was my second Boss pedal, the first being an OD-3. I liked the OD-3 until I got the BD-2, and then I wasn't quite so enamored with the OD-3. I considered selling the OD-3 to buy a DS-1 for a harder-type distrotion until I tried running the BD-2 into the OD-3. WOW! I have no need for a heavier distortion pedal. This combination will peel the paint off the walls! Now this works out as a very nice combination. The BD-2 for blusey chording and lead boost, the OD-3 for heavier overdrive in the background and the two together for a really heavy, nice sounding distortion. Sometimes you just get lucky! Would I buy it again? Does a squirrel have climbing gear? I play a mixture of country, country rock, vintage rock (50,60, up to about 1970 when all the good music stopped! I may sell other pedals, but I'd never, ever sell this one. It's become my most-used effects pedal and I just love it!

I find the Blues Driver easy to use; the instruction booklet is useful, but the workings are rather intuitive. I have always liked the straight-forward Boss approach to switching...no nonsense here.

Primarily I use the Blues Driver with my strats thru a fender tube amp (Super Reverb, a Vibrolux, or a Deluxe, depending on the size of the club). It should be noted that my strats are customized with P90s in one and Rio Grandes Muy Grandes in the other (with a P90 in the neck). The BD really needs different settings for these pickups, depending how you want to use it. I learned that the BD really didn't get the sound I wanted for leads, but it was great for boosting my rhythm work (I primarily play rhythm and 2nd lead in our band).
For me, turning the tone and gain over 12 noon produced a harsh, muddled, and messy sound without a real tone or sustain. I didn't like it, although I kept working with it. I eventually got another pedal for my lead work. But I use the BD to boost up my gain and tone for rhythm. Typically, I set the level about 10 to 11 am, and the tone and gain just shy of 12 noon. It works well with my other effects this way (delay, chorus, tubescreamer).

I have found the BD to be wonderfully predictable. This is another reason why I keep working with it. It retains the sound of the pickup and the amp, enhances it nicely in the way I want, and it does so consistently. Like your standard Boss pedal, it is rugged and made to last. I run it from a power supply and have never had a problem with it. I routinely gig without a backup, other than the other effects that I use.

I have never had to work with Boss for support or repairs.

I like the Blues Driver. For me, I like using it for my rhythm and an occasional lead here and there, but it is not well suited for the tones I want when I am to step up and carry a solo. My band is primarily blues/southern/roots oriented, and a vintage, soulful tone is what I want. I love the dependability of it and carry it as standard gear for my work. It is the first pedal in my chain, right beside the power supply!

Its really easy to get a good sound out of this box. There are 3 knobs. Level, Tone, Gain. There is a manual included, and there are some useful settings. But you dont really need the manual to get the sound you want.

I have a Strat with two single coils and a DiMarzio Air-Zone hunbucker at the bridge. I run the strat into a Marshall Valvestate. This pedal is absolutely great. Its the best overdrive pedal I've ever owned. I tried the Danelectro Daddy-O, and it doesn't even come close to the BluesDriver. The BD-2 gives me the fat overdrive I need. Its great as a booster, or you can use it as a regular overdrive. In both ways, this pedal can give you a good sound for playing Blues/Rock. It's definitely not a fuzzy pedal as some people say it is. It's not particularly noisy, and if you're using humbuckers, it's not noisy at all. You can get a variety of sounds out of this baby, everything from warm overdrive to rock lead overdrive.

If it's a Boss, you can definitely depend on it. I would use it without a backup on a gig.

Never dealt with the company.

I play Rock/Blues. This pedal is the one and only overdrive pedal I have. Its all I need. I also own a Digitech RP-6, and a Daddy-O. BluesDriver is the only overdrive I use. Nothing else I tried can compete with this pedal. If it was stolen or lost, I would definitely buy it again.

Three knobs and a footswitch. How hard could that be? The Gain knob covers a lot of range, and it is nearly impossible to get a bad sound out of this little box. The battery is well concealed, but it's still relatively easy to get at. All in all very nice.

I use this pedal between my guitars (Strat w. Texas Specials and a stock Les Paul) and my amp (Marshall Valvestate). I also use it to get a nice overdrive on my battery-powered portable amp, and occasionally on other people's amps. This pedal is ideal for pushing a crunchy sounding amp into a wailing lead sound, or crunching up a hyper-clean amp such as my portable. The BD seems to have been designed with all-tube combos in mind, since it does a really nice job of driving something like a Fender Bassman into sweet overdrive.
The actual tone that comes out of this pedal is amazing! Plugged into my Marshall (set at a moderate gain level), I can get that wailing "Comfortably Numb" lead sound on the Strat. The gain is smooth and round, with no harshness whatsoever. This pedal works great as a solo boost box with the gain set relatively low and the volume up a bit. If you're looking for any sort of heavy distortion out of a pedal, this is not your cup of tea. The BD is at its best as an enhancement to existing gain, or a driver for a clean tube amp. Very very impressive.
Noise is a minor factor when the pedal is on, but a decent noise gate should clear this up (something every serious player should have). However, it should be noted that BOSS kicks butt when it comes to static, so this is probably as good as you can get in an overdrive pedal.

All the BOSS pedals are indestructible, and this one is no exception. An AC adapter is a must-have if you don't want to keep buying batteries, but in general battery consumption is pretty good. I have had no problems with this unit and I don't expect to anytime soon.

Never dealt with them for reasons explained above.

This is the most solid, reliable, useful piece of gear I own. I would definitely buy it again. The sound is second to none, and the overall quality of the pedal is superb. I only wish all gear were designed this well; maybe I wouldn't spend so much money replacing disappointing products.