Boss BD-2 Blues Driver

3 knobs, on off switch, if you screw this up you got problems...

I used to own most of the 1998-2001 boss line up, plus a few older favs (PH2, HF2). And this (along with the TU-2 Tuner) are the only two pedals I still own from my 'Boss days'. In fact, I purchased the BD2 four times since I originally sold my collection...

The sound is why I've always came back. Being my FIRST ever pedal when I was a kid, the sound of this box through my Fender Twin has always been the basis for overdrive tones to me. Sure my tastes have evolved, simplified, and moved on, but the BD2 has rentered my line up, and I'll tell you why.

First off, the tone. It's transparent (once you get rid of some of the tone sucking resistors found on the input and output sections of this little box) and has a lot of play. I'm not one on the search for high-gain solutions, I need something a bit beefier than a Maxon OD808 Tube Screamer, smaller than a VoodooLab Sparkle Drive, but something that retains the top end. The BD2 is currently my solution.

It's tone is thick, and inviting, but not messy and missunderstood. I'm running this through an 1970's AC30TB/6 and I'm very happy how it can get a smilar tone to the amp being overdriven on it's own. I turned up the tone control to 3:00, the gains sitting just around 1:00, and level around 12:00. The tone I got is semi-growly, just on the verge of breakup with 'normal' playing. When I start digging it it really provides some good dirty breakup. This is great because I find I'm a dynamic player that demands a pedal that can respond to picking dynamics.

The best part is when playing more complex chords higher up the neck (being raised as a keyboard player I can't stand playing powerchords and think of the guitar the way a keyboard player thinks of a keyboard) the tone never gets muddy or congested. It's thick, but bright, and ever note rings through.

My basic setup with this is: Gibson SG Supreme or ES-335 -> BD2 -> AC30TB

My more complex setup: Gibson SG Supreme or ES-335 into Sennisher G2 wirless -> Radial Dragster -> Voodoolab amp switcher -> BD2 -> Alesis MEQ230 -> AC30TB

Both setups give me the tone's I want, the first is more a jam session rig, the second is just a small part of my live/recording rig.

Pedal gets a 7 because it's noisy, and sucks tone when bypassed. I also find it seems to naturally compress my signal, and take out some of the high and low frequencys. The BD2 also has too much lowend to really use this pedal without boosting top end. (hence my EQ in my main rig)

My last two BD2s died on me. I'm probably one of the few that have had bad Boss pedals. I often have been in contact with failures with various peices of their gear. Give me a Crowther Audio, Maxon, or MXR pedal anyday for reliability over this Boss stuff

Being friends with people within the company helps. I've been to Rolands BC facility a few times and have leared a lot about their products. Before this it was murder getting replacement parts or other supplies to fix these pedals.

Now they just toss me a replacement when I need. Or when I gig in Vancouver and I need a flanger, I'll just ask them and deal with one of the worst Flangers I've ever used. :P

Out of all the boss pedals I've owned the BD2 and TU2 are the only ones I can currently say i'll be hanging onto for a while. But when I find an Analoug Delay I'll be picking that up... I reget ever getting rid of the damn thing!

The only pedal I'll be purchasing to replace this box is the Maxon OD808 that I sold a few weeks ago. Now with my EQ's I'll be able to get the bottom back that I've wanted for a while.

Level, Tone, Gain controls. Everyone knows how this works, right?

I dont know why anyone would need to mod these.

I use this as almost like a preamp for couple of different heads.
Level @ 3oclock, Tone @ 1, Gain @ 2. Perfect sound - roll back the
volume to clean up, hit it harder to get even more crunk. Dynamic
overdrive that seems to cut through anything. Goes from a nearly
clean boost to almost fuzzy distortion. I don't understand the
complaints about the tone control. Sure, it can get bright, but
thats a good thing. I'd rather have something be too bright and have
to dial it back than have it be too muddy. Definitely has enough
bass. Perfect with any of my guitars, no rolloff at all. Works well
with my J and MM basses, but not my P or 5's.

I don't believe in the Boss=indestructible cliche, but it IS a Boss.
I've broken a couple, but I'm also very hard on my gear. Lets say
that they arent easy to kill.

Never dealt with Boss directly. They are a big multinational
whatever, so they shouldnt be entirely trusted.

I've been through more TS clones and variants than I care to
remember, most of the boss product line, Proco Rats, and some of the
more expensive ODs (Klon, Fulltone, a few LovePedal), but I always
come back to the BD-2. I dont know why anyone would feel the need to
mod these. I've tried some of the mods and they all get too muddy or
lose some of that touch sensitive thing that makes the stock version
so great. Definitely the best of Boss' OD offerings, and a great
first pedal for someone just starting out. Even better last pedal
for those of us that have been around, and know how to listen with
our ears and hear something other than hype.

very easy. It came with a manual that was ok. In the long run I found my settings ( gain fairly low ) and leave it alone.

MY SET-UP IS:

I plug my guitar into a s**tload of pedals which I change around all the time. Then I plug these into a guitar amplifier.

Mostly I use a clean strat sound ( just a tiny amount of compression using a Carl Martin box ) - but I need something to make my bridge PU thicken up when I'm using my tweed bassman for rock covers.
( with my lower watt class A amp I don't even need this ) - anyway this Boss pedal has been my favorite - I tried TS9, TS10 ( both Keeley moded ), Maxon 820, Budda Phatman, real tube, voodoo sparkle drive, fulltone distortion plus thing, and others - the Boss is my favorite - not noisy - I leave my gain at 8:00 and volume up to give slight increase overall - I sent it in for a Keeley mod but it was pretty decent straight up.

more than a year - heavy use

OTHER GEAR I OWN:

everything - my kitchen cabinets are stuffed with pedals.


Have played 40 yrs - past 10 in cover band - gig twice per month - this is what I need for that bridge PU.

I play electric violin.
As long as I don't use too much gain it's not too hard.
It's nice to experiment a little.
I'm sure there are still some hidden treasures to be discovered.
It's versatile enough for that.

I use it with a Yamaha 60W solid state amplifier for strings.
Bd-2 is capable of providing beautiful crunch.
Most distortion pedals use too much compression for a violin.
This one is very well useable!

I play pop/rock/jazz/fusion.
I only use reverb, delay and bd-2.
I Play the violin for almost 25 years.
Almost 15 years of them electric.

Bd2 helps me to make music. Chicken skin when I hear it.
For violin it's the best boss distortion pedal I have tested (o3, ds2, you name it).
I only didn't test the ds-1 by the way, but I trust the bd2 to make a better match with my way of playing the violin.
I've also tested some boutique pedals and a lot of modeled distortions by different brands.
What works for guitar doesn't always work for violin.

Easy to use and turning a knob really changes the sound completely.

It produces loads of sounds from tweaking the knobs. You turn the drive knob and you can go from a very clean boost to a MASSIVE drive sound, it really does have loads of drive on offer. Turning the tone knob anticlockwise takes you to a mild blues lead tone which is actually great for thumping HARD ROCK chords. Turn the tone knob clockwise and you go into fuzz like territory, and also trebely lead tones. There is about 17 million tones available out of this pedal and it is one of the most versitile pedals I have ever used. The only niggle is the slight loss of bypassed tone as this is not true bypass.

Built like a brick. Throw it through a window.

It won't ever break as it has BOSS invincibility.

The pedal does a mighty fine job at producing any overdrive/distortion/fuzz tone required. If you are after an unbelievable versitile drive pedal get a Boss Blues Driver. Mine was a bargain a #36 second hand.

Easy if you got fingers

Excellent
Either solidstate or tube it retains the quality of sound
unlike Govener 2 - which got too muddy with Bassman 59
especially for rhythm the Guvnor was poor whereas with solidstate amps the Guvnor was excellent
now, BD-2 perfomred with equal results both with solidstates and tubes
I sold the Govner and kept BD-2 and a proco rat-2 for my distortion needs
these are the best,
as to ts-9
it's okey but no real distortion here

10

-

10
just play it
buy good guitar, amp and cables
that's all boys
just guitar and cables
and bd-2 for instance to push it
taht's all

but buy a GOOD guitar and AMP

like everyone else says three knobs, level , tone , gain... it preatty easy...

I use my bd-2 with a couple of other pedals with my gibson les paul std. and a marshall dsl 50 head with stock 1960a marshall cab.I find this pedal works best with tube amps,I previously used it with a marshall avt100 combo and preatty much put the pedal away but since i bought my tube amp it sounds amazing.Really really great rhythem tone.. as long as u hold off on the gain.. even with my equipment i can get a somewhat close SRV tone with this.. a strat would help ofcourse (soon hopefully).. it works great with my other pedals dunlop crybaby and ibanez dE-7, i plan on teaming it up with a ts-808 in the future! overall i rated this an 8 becuz with the right gear and tweaking u can get a great sound out of this from a classic rock tone to a blues one i love this pedal!

I can depend on this pedal totally without backup! boss makes a good pedal!

Never Dealt with the company cuz you ushually don't have problems unless your careless.

I play blues,classic rock,modern rock,pop and i can find a place for this thing everywhere.I've been playing for four years its not much but i know my stuff.if it were stolen or lost id buy another but id definitly upgrade to the keeley model mostly because these pedals arn't perfect, boss is a huge company that sells millions of pedals the gotta keep crankin em out, its shouldn't be expected of them to have super high quality gear.The thing i love about it the most is that it gives me a really great not to heavy rhythem tone.. its not for leads really thats why i want the ts-808 to boost it! when i bought it i actually compaired it to a ts-9 Reissue and im glad i went down this road because the ts-9 wouldn't of given me enough gain back in that era of my playing(don't wanna talk about it.. punk ewww) but now im super glad i have it. it truly is an inspiring pedal. so if it sounds like this pedal fits you chances are it will !

This pedal is awsome. The first time i plugged it in i didn't even
screw around with the knobs and i got a crazy sound.

when i use this, i setup my fender studio reverb with my gibson SG
and there was no kind of a buzz or anything. The effects are not weak
at all, that's why i love this pedal. The tone is so warm. I play a lot of jeff healey and it's awsome.

It's a boss pedal what more could i say.
I would definitly use it without a backup.

really friendly. Boss is just a wonderful company. The Blues driver was my first boss pedal and i never turned back to any other companies.

I play a lot of blues rock and this pedal is perfect. I also own countless Boss pedals.(SD-1,DS-1,DS-2,TU-2,MD-2).
If this pedal was stolen i would definitey go buy another one.

Three knobs, very easy in that regard. Knobs seem to have a wide range of values in terms of sound.

This pedal is very finicky about what amps it likes and doesn't, and also with guitars. It seems to dislike all my humbucking guitars (high output), but really adores the single-coils (low output). With higher output pickups or certain amps, it is thin thin thin, brittle as glass, and fuzzy. Unusably so. With the right combination, it sounds truly incredible. I've never encountered a pedal with such diverse sounds.

And never, EVER go straight to a mixing board with this in the path. The worst sounds you've ever heard. It literally made people cringe and turn their heads. On the other hand, playing out with a Behringer GX212 solid-state and a cheap strat clone, people came up afterward to ask how on earth I was getting "that sound." I guess it's a 0 or it's a 10.

See above.

It's a Boss. Shoot it with a shotgun - it'll still work.

See above.

SUPER, SUPER, SUPER EASY TO USE. THREE KNOBS.

this is a great sounding little blue box. i find that after 9 to 10 o'clock on this little monster's tone knob can sound a bit trebbly...but aside from that, i love that the gain is very usable! shockingly so, i was able to get sooo many sounds by keeping the tone knob low, and dialing up whatever amount of gain i wanted or was appropriate for the song.

its a boss, so far i have yet to have a boss pedal dissappoint me in this category.

i bought this guy about 5 or 6 years ago and used it extensively for the first 2 and half years of owning it and was very pleased....BUT....along came a boutique pedal named the fulldrive 2

for a long time was using the fulltone fulldrive 2, and yes it was warm, but with that warmth came lots of mud...after having used it for about 2 years plus, i realized that i was never fully satisfied with it and came back to this faithful little booger. what everyone is saying is true, more money doesnt necessarily mean better sound...it took me a long time to come to grips with this, because many of us want our pedal boards to be unique or full of boutique pedals. but in the end it always come back to your tone...if that cheap dano pedal makes your tone sound better, then go for it. i found the blues driver to be very forgiving of me having forsaken it for so long...

oh one more thing...i just played a praise and worship session at church and my tone never sounded better.