Boss BD-2 Blues Driver

I fell in love with this unit the minute I plugged it into my Mesa Boogie .50 Caliber.I hardly tweeked it kept most of the controls dead center and got a great blues/southern rock tone from my 79 Fender Strat.I hardly refer to manuals at the best of times but haning read it I guess its as clear as a manual should be.

not particularly noisy unless your pickups are unshielded or your amps earthing is screwed up. I find this more silent than the Boss Od 2 and the Sans Amp 9 (original) which has to be gated heavily when I plug into a mixing board. What I really love about the BD 2 is that you can back off your guitars volume pot to about 7 or 8 to get that semi clean rhythm/ lead sound and then kick the volume to full for that "rip out solo sound ".The controls respond excellently.

I,ve used the BD 2 on quite a few gigs now and its been extremely dependable I'd like to get one more for backup just incase I loose it.I'd also like to explore the possibility of using 2 BD 2's on different settings.

Ive never had a problem with Boss / Roland products so Ive never had to call them ( my trustworthy GP 8 still gives me a killer chorus sound in the studio.

I ddefinitelty buy one again, actually I wish Boss had made the BD 2 earlier so I wouldn't have wasted money buying the assortment of overdrive/ distortion pedals that I have. I play the blues and this really helps me dig and 'squeeze out the tone from my guitar(s)."Blues guitarists this pedal is a must."

This is one of the easiest pedals to use. There are three knobs (level, tone, and gain) and two jacks (input and output). That's it. At any setting, this pedal gives you a great tone. Adjusting the knobs merely changes the color of the tone. With the gain up high, and a high tone, you get ripping leads, and with a medium to low tone and almost no gain, you get a fat, deep, crunchy blues tone for rhythms. The manual is quite helpful; it gives you a few useful settings, but some of the coolest ones aren't in there. You need to play with the knobs for the sound that you like.

The sound on this pedal is outstanding! No matter how you adjust it, you always get a great tone. When you combine the different colors and sounds you can get from adjusting your pickups and your amp with this pedal, you can attain anything from a screaming yet full Hendrix tone to a mellow, lightly crunchy, deep, tubey BB King sound. You can also play with the volume knob on your guitar in accordance with the level knob to get different amounts of "gruffiness."

It's a Boss. These things could be dropped off a building and still work.

Never needed 'em, so I couldn't tell ya!

If you like rhythm and blues, mellow crunchy tones, full sounds, or flexibility in tone, this is the BEST pedal out there! GET IT! You can get a bassy, fat rhythm sound, with little distortion, or you can get a wailing lead sound with great sustain (or anything in between).

Three knobs -- Very easy

Does exactly what it is advertised to do. Has a ton of gain available if needed! Does everything from slight crunch distortion a Marshall Stack, although I am feeding it with a compressor, which increases the distortion and sustain. Great for a basic Rock and Roll Guitar sound, but best when used for subtle overdrive, leaving the heavy distortion for pedal designed for heavy distortion. As advertised, all picking nuance is preserved, even at higher gain settings.

BOSS says it all

Being a customer rep at Boss must be a very relaxing job.

It's a Strat player "gotta have". Works very well with my explorer as well, if a limiter is used as a pre. A metal player with a light touch might be disappointed though.

The pedal is easy to use. Three knobs, one for output level, another for tone and one for gain. The manual is simple to understand and recommends a few settings for you to try.

Firstly , the level control has lots of guts. To get the effect level to match the clean signal level the knob has to be put at about 11 o'clock. If you put it any more clock wise you get quite a large signal boost. I reackon that if you even had the gain at zero (ie no distortion) you'd overdrive a valve preamp into distortion easily. Secondly, the tone control is very treblely. I found it painful to have it set past 12 o'clock. I think the pedal must of been designed by an old rocker who had spent too much time in front of 200W stacks. Personally , I found I had to have the tone control turned to 10 o'clock or less to get warmth out of the effect. Lastly, the gain control has a nice wide width of effect. at 11 o'clock it gives an edge of disortion to chords and to the more agressively picked lead solos. If it is turned much past 12 o'clock it makes the guitar wail with a very bluesy feel. Also the sustain significantly increases so there must be some compression in there somwhere. The tone produced when I use the neck pick up (S. Duncan vintage staggered) of my strat when the pedal was set with tone at about 10 oclock and gain at 2 o'clock was magical. It sounded like I was playing through a stack of melting marshalls. And I only have a 20 watt transistor amp!! Overall, the effect is really amazing. So long as you don't have the gain turned up full, you keep the quality of your tone. ie you keep the unique sound quality of the neck, middle or bridge pickups. At intermediate gain settings, You control the level of distortion by how hard you treat the strings. Gentle picking gives clean tone, harder picking increases the distortion. The higher the gain setting, the earlier the distortion sets in for a given strength of picking. The unit certainly gives out a valve sound.

It's you typical boss contruction. I've only had the effect for a couple of weeks so I can't comment on it's long term reliablity.

Never had to use them.

I compared this pedal with an ibenz tube screamer (TS-5) and I thought the boss was much better. The tube screamer sounded weak with little warmth by comparison with the boss. Since buying the effect, I wish I had tried the Mesa V valve foot preamp (it has 2 x 12AX7s) but it is a lot more expensive ( ca AUD$ 600-700 vs AUD$ 200 for the boss). But that's not to say I'm unhappy with the effect. I think its great stuff as it lets the tone of guitar come through unlike many distortion devices. I think it boosts the high frequencies a bit too much but turning down the tone control on the unit solves that.

It overall very very easy to use.

The sound is perfect except that it is hard to find a very smooth but still distorted sound

Every time I pluged it into my guitar it worked so I haven't seen any problems with it yet.

I never had a problem with this pedal

This pedal works for me on any song my band plays

I haven't got it that long, but I assume it will be the same quality as other Boss pedals, and that's pretty good

It's a great overdrive/distortion unit. It's a bit like the old yellow OD-1 overdrive for low settings of drive, more like a distortion unit for higher settings. It doesn't lose as much bass as the OD-1, with a neck pickup and a low drive setting you can get a very warm, full tone, with just a hint of overdrive/distortion if you pluck lightly, then hit the strings hard and you get a nice crunch. Very responsive. The best overdrive pedal I've had so far.