Boss BF-2 Flanger

Four knobs, and about 2 1/2 hours to get a good sound, along with the muddiness at low res settings(Mainly in the off position). no volume drop, or spike for that matter. didn't get a manual with it.

for an analog flange it sounds pretty good. there is some noise with it (but analog is always a little noisy) Mine is MIT, and i know that ppl don't like MIT's but come on ppl even the japanese outsource work to taiwan. i use an ibanez GAX 70>>DOD Compressor>>TS7>>Ibanez DS10 Distortion>>BF2>>DD3>>Ibanez SC10 Chorus>>Boss EH2 Enhancer>>Amp.When I first bought this pedal i felt that it was kind of weak, but after finding settings on this site I was happier with it but it was still missing something. After i bought the Enhancer that's when i was finally content with the sound. the enhancer brought the sound to the forefront, very lush with just a hint of that often bitched about metallic sound. soundwise with effects 9 (nothings perfect)butwithout the enhancer i'm gonna give it a 8. P.S a compressor will bring out nice tones too, but the enhancer is my personal choice.

It's a tough pedal! i would gig without a backup.

n/a

a great but tough to set pedal, i can see why alot of ppl don't like this but for my needs (rock, metal, some alt rock)it works! if it were lost or stolen i would off the person who took it and use his head as a hood ornament, or i would just cut my losses and try to buy a new one.

To get the classic flange sound, you have to really play with the "Manual"and "Res" controls. This is not the easiest thing to do.

I'm into blues, funk, fusion and straight ahead jazz. I own about a dozen guitars and about a half dozen amps from solid state to boutique tubes.

I own a made in Japan version of this pedal, purchased new in the mid 80's. For the most part, I have never used this pedal, since classic flanging was really never my thing. Recently I decided to unload gear that I didn't use anymore and decided to fire it up one last time and made some interesting discoveries.

This first thing I noticed was this pedal produced a very respectable chorus sound. The depth of the chorus was very impressive and comparable to my Analogman Clone Chorus. The Analogman is a bit more transparent and provided more note detail, but also cost a lot more. I was pleasantly surprised.

One of the other reviewers mentioned Ernie Isley used this pedal to get his sound. So I tried to replicate this and in the process discovered I could get Santana's sound on the cut called "Taboo," from his Santana 3 LP. It's not a classic flange sound, but a rich 3 dimensional effect that was kind of a cross between a touch of slow chorus and a hint of flanging. The depth of the tone was what caught my attention.

The pedal sucked a bit of highs, but the overall effect using overdrive was very nice. I found I could pretty much replicate Ernie Isley's tone and the Santana tone mentioned above. I ended up noodling around with this for quite some time and had a lot of fun with it. In the end, I've decided to keep this pedal (at least for now).

The classic chorus sound can be had by setting the "Manual" and "Res" controls to zero and setting the Depth and Rate at approximately 12 o'clock.

To get the Ernie Isley and Santana tones from above, I set the manual between 10 and 2 o'clock, while keeping the rate and depth at approxiately 12 o'clock and the "Res" at "0."

My pedal did not cause a volume boast as some of the other reviewers had indicated. Where the pedal lacks in transparency and detail, it made up for in richness and depth in sound. Used in the context described above, this pedal is hard to beat for the money.

From day one this particular pedal had a slight problem with the on-off switch. I may have to step on the pedal a couple of times to either turn it on or off. Aside from that I'm assuming it with hold up.

Never contacted customer support.

This pedal allowed me to rediscover nostalgic sounds from the past and I'm currently having a lot of fun with it. If it was lost, I will probably not buy another. It appears there were a lot of inconsistencies in the production quality of this pedal, judging from the many comments that the pedal caused a huge jump in volume when activated. I'm keeping the pedal for the sounds I discovered and not for the clasic flange effect. For that, I'm sure there are better alternatives.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions. I've been playing guitar for over 30 years and fairly picky about my tone.

This flanger is easy to use, but getting a good sound out of it is hard. The controls have a good range of sounds - I'll miss that variety, but that's it. The sound itslef is horrid. I'm not a fan of metallic hollow sounding flange, and the BF2 is the king of metallic and hollow sounding flangers. Ick!

I was looking for an analog flange and I was warned not to get one of these, but I didn't listen to anyone's advice. I should have. Mine was a NOS made in Taiwan version. I hear that the older made in Japan's are better. I now have played both versions and should have got the Japanese one. Mine had a HUGE volume boost when switched on that made it not sit well with the rest of my band. The boost was so big that I couldn't stand practicing alone with this thing. Non-musicians even noticed that it wasn't right. I could have just used the volume knob on my guitar to counter-act the volume boost, but I shouldn't have to do that! Your pedals should not dictate your dynamics or how you play. The boost was worse with any level of gain no matter where I put it in the signal chain, what guitar used, patch cords, or amps.

I found out that I could open the pedal up and mess with the trimpots to bring it to unity gain. I could lower the volume, but it messed with the flage sweep. For two hours I slowly turned the trimpot, "V6 Bias" or whatever it was called I forgot now, and going both clockwise or counter clockwise it either turned the effect off completely or really distorted the sweep. The flange sounds best where it was factorty set at about horizontal. Adjusting the other two trimpots did not help. Besides, it should not be neccasssry to spend that much time tweaking a Boss pedal. I don't want to sacrifice the sound quality just to have a good volume level. Whatever Boss did to the circuitry this late in BF2 production was really stupid. The older ones sound better.

I have one Boss pedal. A DF2 that I got used in 1989 for maybe $30 and it is still kicking ass! If I kept the BF2 I'm sure it would provide many years of crappy sound!

Never dealt with them.

I tried really hard to like this pedal and justify keeping it. But with all the other flanger options out there it seemed a joke to keep it especially since I don't use flange often. It would just sit collecting dust. I returned this pedal and got a Rocktron Hypnotic Flange which has an Effect Level control!!!! That is something I wish the BF2 had. The Hypnotic Flange also is a warmer flanger. I thought about getting the BF3, but it's digital and I wanted an analog flanger. I have never rated any of my gear so low, but I was actually embarassed that I had this pedal.

This pedal is mysterious to me-it appears so simple to use, yet it takes a LONG TIME to get that sound you were looking for. It really does take some tweaking to get a good sound out of it; it's not one of those pedals that sounds good at every setting. But be patient, and you will probably like it.

Pretty good-it's not a deep whoosing flanger, but it has a very very nice subtle flange if that's what you're after. You can also dial in some really metallic pingy sounding stuff too. Place some fuzz in front of it and you can get a deeper sound. The speed range is very good, but I docked it two points for lacking depth, but hey, very few flangers do have a lot of depth, and this one is pretty affordable.

It's a Boss.

Very nice-for the money, you can't go wrong. It will last you forever, so that's well worth some of the money right there. It's no MXR, but it's a very nice subtle flanger that you can get some great swirly sounds out of if you monkey with it.

How easy is it to get a good sound out of it?

Hard. It's really dynamic. I actually put it away a year ago thinking it was junk. I pulled it out recently and to my chagrin have found it's quite good.

I use it to get a Frank Zappa Shut up and play type sound. (Post fuzz)I also use it clean to get an "In the metal bucket" sound and a clean double. Very effictive.

Mine came out of a pawn shop. The body is busted up and it's held together with duct tape. I gig with out back up.

This is a cool box. But I think is comes from an era when there was a need for lots of flexibility. Hence it's pretty wierd for modern (young) players who have a limited idea of what you can do with flange.

It;s a bit hard to get your head around at first but after some tweaking of knobs you get the hang of the whole thing quite easily.

I use a 1969 Stock Fender Stratocaster and an original Marshall JTM45 and the sonic possibilitys with the my setup and this pedal are amazing.
Anything from subtle tremolo, twangy morphed spaceed out sounds, chorus and even a tiny bit of delay can be had if you know how to set it. I has a bit to much volume boost when it's turned on though.

when i got if off a friend the switch woulden't stay on but this was fixed by some spray contact cleaner and it has never failed me since. And i have been using it for about 2 stage hours and 5 practice hours a week for 2 years. this pedal only needs a backup if someone dropps sumthin' really heavy on it. You cant kill it.

Never needed any CS

I play Jazz, Funk, Blues and a bit of 80's rock. This effect adds some nice depth to your sound and realy brings out your picking technique on some settings. I wish it had a volume control to adjust that boost when it's turned on.

Mine is a Green Label Made-In-Japan model about 18 years old by the serial number. Inside it has two JRC4558D's. I don't know how the chips affect the sound in this pedal but they're REALY sought after in the old Tube Screamers.

I'm always looking for more hints on cool settings for this so please email me if you have some tips!

Very easy to use. The manual is pretty good.

I'm using mostly super strats with DiMarzio super distortions, and Seymour Duncan JBs etc. at the bridge, into Marshall amps. It's not noisy because it's a Boss. Boss makes great stuff. It sounds better through a clean amp. It sounds pretty good through a distorted amp too. This effect is kind of hard to describe. It's a spacey kind of sound. It's more intense than a phaser. I sometimes add a Boss DD-5 digital delay to this effect to make it even more out there. Sometimes it sounds thunderous. I played a DOD flanger years ago and I think it sounded better. But then again that was about fourteen years ago, so who knows? I've read that Malmsteen owns one of these. And he's one of my favorite artists so I'll keep it. It's a fun effect. But I get tired of it after about fifteen minutes. My cousin heard me playing it once and said that the effect sounded like Heart.

It's a Boss. So it's reliable. No need for a backup.

I've never had to contact them. Hardly anyone ever has to. Making good reliable products is the best customer suport.

I play rock and metal type of tunes. Mostly 70s and 80s stuff. I've been playing for twenty-eight years. I own about seven electric guitars, two Marshall amps, and about seven pedals. I don't know if I'd buy another. I may though, because nothing else sounds like this. You can get all kinds of tones with this pedal. Here's what I named some of my settings: 'outer space', 'the UFO has landed', 'twelve string reverb'. 'laser guitar', 'slow space tunnel', '1950s space movie', 'flange on ice', 'space sitar', etc.. If you want a one of a kind effect, this may be what you're looking for.

This is a big problem with this pedal. It's really hard to understand the effects causeb by turning the knobs. They should give some suggestions on the manual.

I use 2 stratos (american standard and a japanese Ritchie Blackmore). I use a Marshall AVT150H, Marshall Jackhammer, Digitech Whammy, Boss Compressor, Boss super pitch shifter, Boss turbo distortion,line 6 dl4, mxr phase 90, mxr auto Q, Dunlop wha, dunlop uni-vibe, ernie ball volume pedal. I plug the pedal into a rocktron patch mate and I use anArt midi controller. This is the worst pedal i have on my pedal board by far. The effect is very poor and I've been using the phase 90 instead of this (i know that they are different monsters by the mother is the same so we can find some points in common)

No problems until now

i play rock and funk some times. If you are lookin for a real flanger you should try the new BF3. I never plaued with it but I heard a few greats souns at the roland's site.
Forget this one. Waste of time and money.

it's easy to use, once you know what kind of sound you want to get out of it...the knobs are easy to 'tune' if you know what they do,
if you don't just play with 'm and you'll figure it out fast enough!

if saw other reviews that said it has 3 trims on the inside, I haven't found 'm yet, where are they!!!if anybody knows or could make a pic. of it, please E-mail me at: outlaw_torn87@hotmail.com:

ahh.the sound...I have come to find it somewhat weaker than my PH2(which dominates over al the other effects-levels, which sucks!)
and that's a good thing, 'cause this BF2 is just 'loud' enough to get a nice mix of effects, when I use it with distortion(HM3/DS2) it still lets my distortion through!(wonder-f-u-l-l) and that's what I like, I want my distortion to remain distorted, with just a bit(or bit more!)of the effects thrown in. overall the souds is 'really' amazing, just the way i like it.
from a 'nirvana - come as you are'-intro-kinda-sound right to a 747 landing in your backyard. (from sweet melow intro's, to grunge solo's, back to blues to rocking metal)

it's a BOSS duhuh! if you break it, they'd(ROLAND) probably give you a new one just for being able to break it in the first place!(won't happen but you get the idea: indestructable and super gig-able)

read above! (I live in holland so they'd probably do nohing for me anayway...US only I think)

I play mostly metal/punk/grunge...(metallica/nirvana/korn/blink182/more crap..etc.)and as said before, it's great for all of this, I'm very pleased I'd bought it, to be honest I'd never used a flanger before and I got it second hand over Mail(so didn't test it), I played with it a bit in a shop but not excessive.) and when I finally hooked it up, I was amazed, after just a couple of minutes I got a great chorus sound, which sounded even better whith slight distortion.

if you're planning on buying it, do so. if you're not planning, get to it! :>

yeah...great pedal, really awesome!

4 control (Manual, DEpth, Rate, Regen, but become 6 if you look inside!!!). after you know what the knobs do it's quite easy to find the good setting. some people complain about the manual knobs that do nothing, this control the delay time of the effect, which is really short an inudible, but if you look inside there are 3 trim, the one left control the delay time (this is the most usefull to tweak), the one right do nothing (ecept that the effect don't effect the sound if you turn it, it's a mistery what it does), and the third one right on top controlls the maximun feedback (it's better you don't tweak it to much because you're gonna get wooshy sound/noises which are really unmusical and too strong to use with a guitar.... but for noisy peaple works...).

The sound is that of a flanger from metallic sounds too jet planes, but i like to use it for liquid chorus sound ala univibe. somethimes i use it with my Small stone and distortion for noise. nice effect

Boss are solid ones.

-boh?!?

I play a bit of all, mainly metal and heavy stuff, with some reggea/blue/jazzy stuff somethimes. i have this pedal since 5/6 year and i'm happy with it, never broke and works fine. I tried once the BF3(i was a bit curious), but the BF2 is better, analog is better than digital!!!!! I don't want to say say buy it because it sound good, buy if you like it, otherwhise try all the onther pedal you find on the marcket, it the best way to find what suits you better!