Boss BF-2 Flanger

Easy to use, except if you're trying to re-create a specific sound. The controls tend to affect one another and it takes quite a bit of tweaking to really get it right.

Unlike most BF-2's out there, this one was used with synthesisers, especially with digital ones which lacked internal effects. An analogue pedal like this can spice up the sound very well, though the BF-2 is perhaps not the best choice for this.

Even on light settings, you can tell that the flanger is doing its job and it can emulate a "filter sweep" effect very well. On the downside, it is quite noisy and it colours the sound considerably. Things can get problematic if you have to switch it on or off somewhere in the middle - the change in level of the sound is very noticeable and abrupt.

Very good. Never had any problems with it and it performed flawlessly.

I haven't dealt with Boss/Roland regarding the BF-2, but they Slovenian branch is generally very helpful and knowledgeable.

The BF-2 does breathe life into boring, sterile sounds, but not quite enough to justify its presence in my set-up. For an analogue pedal, it sounds surprisingly cold and uninspiring. Also, the flanging rate wasn't slow enough for me. This is why I sold it after nine months. It did make it on some of my songs - please e-mail me at "sartre@siol.net" to hear it in action.

easy to get the hang of, just turn the knobs til you find what you want.

i use a gordon-smith sg> ds1>phaser/flanger>50top head. i play heavy dirt-rock (sabbath/stooges). i like to keep it simple and play loud. i bought this pedal cos i love my ds1 so much, i figured boss are pretty much the business. im afraid i found this pedal pretty dissappointing, especially after i tried a danelectro hash-browns and compared the two. i dig phase more than flange really, but this pedal dissappoints on two levels: it colours your sound , and its very processed-sounding.

totally relaible, it's a boss.

never dealt with them

i guess it depends what you are after, and if nu-metal is your thing then this probably is a decent flanger. i just found it really sterile sounding, with a nasty metallic edge. i'm looking for smooth analogue swoosh sounds (which i have found with my old Ross phaser), and this just doesnt cut it. i tried a boss phaser too, and i have the same complaints about it too. even my #20 dano flanger sounds better than this!!! i suggest you shop around before going for this pedal, it just wasnt for me.

4 knobs, fairly eay to get a good sound. Just mess with it for a little bit and you're set.

OK sounding flanger. I'm not too big on flanger, but it did its job. I played this through either a Boss DS-1 or an 80s ProCo Rat. It sounded pretty good with them. The only problem was that this pedal was noisy, even with humbuckers (mustang w/ JB jr). The flange is definately NOT weak; however, it was a bit too much. No matter how I adjusted the level, the flange seemed to overpower my sound when I didnt want it to.

An atmoic bomb could go off and all that would be left would be everyones' Boss pedals and roaches.

Never dealt with Roland/Boss

If you're looking for a pretty good flanger, this is fine. I got this one cause it was fairly cheap. I sold this pedal months ago, because it ended up collecting dust. If someone had stole it (or if I wanted another flange), I'd probably look at some other companies like Electro-Harmonix or MXR.

quite simple., versatile & fun.

Quite versatile. Thinking about running two with 2 different sounds preset on it, so i dont' have to bend over & change knobs from song to song. not really "transparent".

this is why i'm posting! PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THAT I BROKE A BOSS PEDAL! I STOMPED IT SO HARD IN A BOUNCE/JUMP AT A GIG THAT ONE OF THE SCREWS FLEW OUT OF THE COVER PLATE ON THE LEFT SIDE & THE COVER FELL IN, CRUSHING THE SWITCH INSIDE! BUILT LIKE A TANK? MY 150LB ASS BUSTED IT! of course, it lasted for like 5 years first.... i'll just replace it soon.

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Four knobs... Only difficult if you dont know what to do with a flanger... The knobs have weird names, but if you look in the instructions it explains it to you well, and you can dial in any flange sound you want with it...

Im playing a Gibson SG Special into a Peavey Revolution 112... seriously, you can make any sound you want with this pedal, but I bought it in search of the sound Adam Jones from Tool gets, and it took me about 5 minutes flat to figure it out... also a great bass pedal...

You could take a hammer to this thing, then throw it out your window and drive over it in a MAC truck, and then plug it back in, and chances are, it will sound as good, or better... Boss Pedals are built to last...

For any style of music that uses flange sounds, this pedal will do the job... I would absolutely replace this if anything happened to it... The only pedals I can really compare it to out of experience are the Ibanez Chorus/Flange, which is a great pedal, but the Boss BLOWS IT AWAY... UNQUESTIONED... GET A BOSS FLANGER NOW

Easy as anything else

Good in a word, but the main point of this review is to enlighten people to the fact you can tweak plastic screws inside of the flanger, find the bit marked resonance and tweak it and you will find sounds you have not heard, increase it too much and you'll just get wild feedback, this must be the case with one of the reviewers who said this was happening, ther are two other plastic tweakables I think one does gain; anyway I've had fun experimenting, I stupidly didn't remember the original settings when I first started tampering, so the bf2 stayed "broken" "out of control sounding" on a shelf for a while, but today I fiddled with it to get it back to its original state, the results are that it doesn't sound like it did from the box, it sounds better: I can now get this cool sitar effect as well as the good flange, wild vibrato, chorus sounds, it doesn't add any gain when its on and the bass stays the same. all in all I recommend that you also fiddle with the bf2 if it sounds a bit tame and you can customize your pedal.
I'll give it a 8 for its bossness; mxr,ehx good analog flangers are always going to sound best

I trust this pedal, I tell it everything about myself,

never had the pleasure

8 on a 10 scale, which is good enough for anybody

It was kind of difficult for me to find an actual sound out of the pedal that i liked, but when i did, it was a great one. four knobs: Manual, Depth, Rate, and Resonance. I have the Manual around 53%, the Depth around 30%, the Rate around 80%, and the Resonance around 47%.

It's a great flange, but the only complaint i have with this pedal is that when it's on, the volume is noticably increased. I'm not sure of how to solve this problem, without using my volume pedal anyway, and that's kind of a pain. I'm looking foward to the release of the new BOSS BF-3 Flanger. For those who don't know about that, it has all of the same knobs except a mode knob, with 4 modes, including a standard mode, which i'm assuming would be the same as the BF-2 flange. The BF-3 has a tap tempo feature too, which i'm looking foward to, and hopefully BOSS has fixed the whole volume thing, but who knows? I can't complain much anyway, especially with how much i use the pedal...

what else is there to say?

I've heard them get bashed a lot from many many people, but they were pretty helpful to me when i called about the operation specs on some pedals i don't yet have on several occassions. I assume they're pretty crappy with other aspects of customer services, since about everyone else who's talked to them will disagree with me, but here's the way i see it: if i made it a point to make pedals as reliable as BOSS makes theirs, and i spent my time making them with the quality that BOSS does, i wouldn't spend too much time worried about the three that do break out of the thousands and thousands made. I would rather have a reliable pedal that will close-to-never die and talk to a wall than have a pedal that would break down and have customer service console me about the money i wasted. Anyway, they've helped me for what i needed them for, so there you have it.

It's a great flanger, but the only complaint i have with it is the volume change when it's on, like i said above. Hopefully with the release of the BF-3 the volume problem will be fixed, along with other little things to tool around with.

Flangers kick ass. All kinds of sounds can be made by fiddling with the knobs. No matter how you set it it sounds cool.

I use a Peavey Fury Bass, this BF-2, sometimes a Boss DS-2, and then my Peavey TKO 115 amp. Sounds great with my bass, especially with the distortion going. Does not destroy the low end as some boxes do. Also has a wide range of sounds: flanger, phaser, vibrato, and something that sounds kinda like a crappy chorus pedal.

This is a Boss. End of story.

? Never dealt with them, never will need to.

This is a fun pedal to just mess around with, and can [and will] find its way into any type of music you play. I set it to sort of a vibrato and play "Bullet with butterfly wings", then I move it on over to the flange for "Come As You Are" and i can use it on any song and it sounds awesome. Would i buy it again? Hell yes. I'd like to have two, one to put on display and one to totally stomp the crap out of. Don't spend that check from Grandma on GI Joes, go out and get you a BF-2. Right now.

It's a stomp-box flanger, how damn difficult can it be!

Seriously, same controls as any other flanger out there. For those of you who have written in about the "RES" knob, it's regeneration. The more clock-wise you turn the more intens the down-sweep is.

The B-F2 I have; my wife bought it as a X-mas present for me on Ebay for $45. So there was no manual. But anybody with half a musical ear should be able to dial great flange tones in time without the manual.

I found that the less regeneration turned in, the more useable and musical the sound

I think it's one of much better stomp box flangers on the market. (once again, mines a japanese made unit that's probably 10 years old.)

Most of the tones are very useable and don't suck the tone from your guitar. I'm able to nail the tone Robin Trower used on "A Little Bit of Sympathy" running my strat plus through a Tech21 XXL distortion into my BF-2 flanger into a Peavy classic 50.

The reason I did not give this a 10 is because I used to own a late 70's MXR grey flanger. The Boss was close on some sounds, but fell shy on the leslie/univibe thang. The MXR was also a little deeper sounding.

I had a cat piss on my old Boss CH-3 chorus a couple of times at the old gig house. It still worked great (never did get rid of the smell though). And having freinds drunkenly help you tear down at the end of the night and drop your pedal board down a flight of steps onto concrete.....the Boss's survived for the next night.

Never tried

Overall this is as good as flanger as you can get for under a couple hundred bucks, including analog rack mount. The reissue MXR grey flangers are an embarresment to the vintage 70's units. That's kind of what it boils down to for most of us...$45-$80 for a flanger that works great and sounds really good or $175-$250 (depending on the market) for a original MXR grey box.

In recently disbanded group of 10 years, we did everrything from Collective soul and Nirvana to the Beatles and STP plus originals and I know from some of the situations we got into, you don't want to take vintage gear onto postage stamp sized stages where drunks want to REALLY get involved with your music.

Tell you what, with the extra $130 bucks saved, I bought a 1980 DOD 690 stereo analog chorus (yummy!!!!) 20 pack of CD-R's and two cases of Killian's Red and had a hell of a good time!

If you can't figure it out...you shouldn't be allowed to drive a car.

Put it after your distortion and it is amazing. If you don't think it has a good sound, it is just hard to believe. Also if you think it is "noisy" go play with your digital "effects" which are whisper quiet, but are a joke to listed to. This is the real deal. I run Metal Zone to Flanger to Tremolo to Super Phaser to Chorus to GE-7 to DD-5 to Tu-2 and it is the best pedal setup ever. My amp is a Crate VC-50, which is also an amazing amp. For all the people who are like Crate sucks...play a VC-50 and tell me how sweet the clean is (which is all you need to base you pedal collection on). The tube distortion is sweet as well, it just growl like a Marshall. This pedal is amazing!

BOSS enough said

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Like I said before it is an awesome flanger. I read the reviews for this pedal and a whole bunch of wankers were bad mouthing this pedal...I just don't understand how you couldn't rank this perfect. So that is my opinion...I'm pretty opinionated about this topic, Sorry if I offended anyone with my remarks.