Boss BF-3

Easy to use, 5 knobs, not too difficult

great sound quality, not a big fan of flange though. My neighbor said to get one so i did. You get the airplane sound, some weirdo techno sounds. Not to my taste.

Boss, last longer than you.

never dealt with em

As I said above, pedal is not for me. I play rock and metal. I have next to no use for it. Only thing I could use it for is if I was doing some sort of riff in harmonics. BF-3 sounds awesome in ultra mode with harmonics. But other than that, it'll just collect dust. If you know your gonna use it and want a great flanger, buy it. If you play rock mostly, not Incubus spacey rock, don't buy it. Save your money.
Great tone, easy to use. If its what your into, good investment.

This is a great pedal. Its simple to say, its also easy to get different amounts of swirl and sparkle ot of it. The settings are easy to distinguish as you change them. I dont know what everyone is talking about when they say the tap tempo setting is hard to grasp. Its as easy as hold, release, tap twice and hold again.

The sound can go from bright and sparkly to deeper and very juicy.
The manual and ultra can enhance the sound to get a very rich and swirly Flange. The effect itself is a quiet type. it goes great with multi-picked bar chord sorta stuff. Tve mostly used this with a strat and ashton 40 watt thing. Clear and crisp sound is achieved with every amp and guitar ive used sofar.

Same old Boss pedal quality. they give a warranty cos they know u wont need it. Simple. Most expensive and best sounding electric BRICK ive ever played really.
No backup would be needed. just keep an eye on battery power if u dont have a pack.

never needed it

I dont really have a set style. But this is a fairly flexible pedal anyway.
If it were stolen and i had the money i would replace it, but as far as im concerned they would have to prize it out of my fingers to get it.
I love the depth u can swirl with this pedal. i dont have any gripes. The ultra boost has got to be my favorite. It gives that bit more depth.
as far as flangers are i dont think its missing anything.
This pedal is a plus if your knocking up songs, it gives a tone that u otherwise wouldnt have. It can really fill up the background.

This pedal is a must For Flange Fans, anyone who likes the Flange
sound, or anyone who just likes a good pedal. Recommended for softer parts of songs mostly.

I'm a real pedal fanatic and Boss was my first choice i had looked at the market and tried loads but this was the one for me. The ease of use is great its soo simple and easy to change with the different modes although the tap tempo is difficult to get used to. But there is so much to do on it and spent and 1hour and a half playing around with and it also works for bass and has a double output. The manual is pretty helpful as well.

The sound on this is great, my guitar isn't to good but it goes great with my amp (Laney TF300) it works great with distrtion and you even mix it in with other effects and if you do it rite u don't get one big blur of sounds. And its great set with the gate mode and the swirling chorus, and good sound to tweak those rhythem guitar riffs as well.

This baby is tough you can step on it a 100 thousand times and it still won't break, and it won't break in a gig or even you u smash your guitar to it. However a big down point is if u don't have a power pack the batteries will run out very quicklly. So u always need a back up.

I've never had to deal with the company or send it back, but its a great upgrade from the BF2 i'm just waiting for the next one now.

Over in England it was great value, and it great for people hwo like getting Tom Morrello type solos and Incubus type riffs. If i ever lost it it would be worth getting again, compared to other Flangers its the best by far. However it would be nice if the gate and pan effects were seperate modes, becuase if u won't to change between the two u have change the outputs.

The BF-3 is just as easy to use as the other Boss pedals, although it does require a little tweaking to get a good tone. Like everyone else stated the tap mode is a little hard to use, but the manual did a great job of explaining the mode.

I've never tried any other Flanger, except messing with the BF-2 a bit, but this is a far step above the BF-2. I like combining the ultra mode with the Metal Zone for an awesome jet plane effect. The swirling chorus is cool as well. This will give you the sound of about any artist, especially for you Incubus fans. (Although personally I don't like Incubus or any other band that uses effects as a crutch. Learn how to play, then apply the bells and whistles.)

I dropped it in the parking lot today. Seriously. It still works great.

Never needed it.

This is a great flanger pedal, although right now I'm beginning to question why exactly I bought it. It's a cool effect, but unless you like the spacey new school rock, (which I do, but prefer straight hard rock and metal), I recommend saving your money. I have yet to find a practical use for the effect in a song I've written. I enjoy writing my own music rather than covering other songs. Despite the infrequent use this pedal gets, I'm sure once I find a cool riff to use a flanger for it will become awesome.

The BF-3 is really easy to get a great sound out of it. I only dropped the rating a little because the tap mode is a little tricky and tough to do while playing live. I plugged it in with all knobs at 12 o'clock and it sounded beatiful... so imagine how much better it was after some tweaking!

Very rich and full flange! The Ultra mode is really rockin'! I never tried the BF-2, so I cannot compare, but it does sound much better than the DOD that I tried. I am very impressed with this pedal. It's very quiet. I love Boss pedals, they don't hum, buzz, or hiss... ever!

Rock solid!

I use it my effects loop of my Fender Princeton Chorus. It sound very sweet, especially when running the stereo returns. The gate/pan sounds awesome and so does the Ultra mode. Excellent stereo effect. There is not a thing that I hate about... not even the raspberry color.

I don't have much time, but Boss has done me right for years, and I have a lot of experience with playing, recording, effects in general. I feel like I owe it to them and you to review this incredible flanger. It's not that easy to use on the tap mode, and getting a particular sound takes a little tweaking, but once you've dialed in the sound you're looking for, this Flanger makes it happen.

Set-up - Modded Fender Strat, modded Fender amp, a handful of Boss pedals and a Dunlop wah.

It seems like Boss made the BF-3 more transparent than its predecessors. It still does the jet plane if you've got a lot of distortion, but don't all flanges.

Man, I've tried a lot of flanges, and owned a lot (see below). This thing kicks ass on every setting. It doesn't seem like it has weak spots unlike its predecessors. I can get a chorus sound, a deep chorus sound, a Jimmy Page fast and deep chorus, and all sorts of flange sounds, and this flanger kicks ass on all of them. It kicks ass. It's the best flanger I've ever had by far.

This Flanger can do a lot of different sounds nicely. I have had Boss effects for years, I've owned 2 of their flanges - one from the ME-5 multi-effects unit and the BF-2. I didn't like either one of them, and I would call them passible at best. I also owned an Ibanez Flanger which sounded like a jet plane all the time. I also have tried the Electro-harmonix version out, and it's none of these are even close to this one. I wonder if boss will take it off the market because it's so good. I don't see them in the 2002 catalog.

Boss kicks ass on reliability. I could run over it with my car and it would work. I've thrown these pedals down on the floor at gigs for years while I'm setting up, and they have never ever failed me. You could throw it out of the window of a 10 story building and I bet it would still work.

With my ME-5, I had to change out some switches, and Boss is set up through their dealers to take care of you.

Anyone in the market for a flange should consider or buy this. The only reason I wouldn't buy this one over another brand is if I was looking for a specific and distinct sound, a certain wave form which translates into a certain sound. But a pedal like that isn't going to take you far. The BF-3 will do just about any chorus or flanging very nicely. No weird shit. It's way better than the past versions of Boss flangers.

Duh it's a stompbox. Twist knobs and step on it. I've only had one previously flanger, the DodFX72 which sucked. It took me a while to get the right sound, a slow sweep that didn't vary to extremes, but that 'while' was only like half an hour at the most.

I have little experience with 'high end' flangers, but it sounds great to my ears. You can make all sorts of sounds with it, and the options are there to boot. Though tap tempo is tricky, at least it's there. I wish it had an exp/ctrl jack for the FS-5U to do tap tempo on the fly like the PH-3 does. However, I am VERY thankful for the bass input (as I play bass). Very useful. I'm sure the stereo outs would be too, but i have a mono setup. Which renders the gate/pan feature useless, but it's nice to know it's there in case i want to use it someday. Ultra and Standard sound very different to me, and it's cool to have that 'extreme' option. Also i would consider buying another just for the momentary feature - i like the sound of cranking all 4 knobs and using the momentary switch just for the end of a riff. However for now i'm sticking with the slow sweepy flange, i have everything set at 12:00 and it sounds good to me.

Duh it's a boss. Never broke on me unlike crappy DOD pedals. Boss to me seems like the perfect middle road - not cheapo crap like danelectro, the tones are actual worthwhile, tweakable and readily available, the options are there, the features are there, and the prices aren't ridiculous compared to some other companies. However i think the ibanez toneloks are tough competition, as they seem just as solid if not more (except for the switches) and the PD7 i own sounds much much better than the boss odb3. Back to the point anyway it's reliable.

Never had to deal with boss, or Roland. But as one other reviewer said quite wisely - Boss has the best customer support in that they make their products so finely that you don't NEED customer support, cause they don't break.

Great pedal, i'd recommend it for anyone wanting a flanger, whether it be their first or just a new tone to experiment with. Has all the options i'd want and ever need. However I hope Boss starts making more and more new pedals of the twin pedal type... i like being able to store more than one sound and flip through them like on the CE-20. A phaser like that would be great that could flip through 4, 8, 12 stage, and rise/fall or step. I oughta work for boss or something. Oh well they rock anyway. Great pedal, great sounds, tolerable price.

Like the previous reviewer said, the BF-3 is a BF-2 plus added features. It's very easy to use if you've played a flanger before (especially a Boss), although the gate/pan mode does require more tweaking. Ultra mode is extra thick and dense, standard you've already heard, gate/pan is icing on the cake (as an added effect choice) and momentary lets you kick it on and off by stepping on and off of the pedal. It's also set up to be used in stereo, which the BF-2 didn't allow for.

I've played all sorts of effects (from TC Electronic to Electro Harmonix to Lexicon to Rocktron to Boss) and there's nothing wrong with the way Boss pedals sound. While they may be more of a "garden variety" as effects go, they always sound great, are reliable, durable, and easy to use. The BF-3 is no exception. You can control rate, depth, resonance, and manual to achieve a huge variety of flanging effects. Personally I like a slow deep sweep so once I get it set, I keep it there. But I can tweak it to my heart's desire when I get the bug as well. The flanging effect sounds great clean and also loves distortion. By itself, it's not noisy at all and distortion only adds a slight audible swoosh if you're not playing. I use my Boss effects in an acoustic set up with a Peavey Ecoustic 112 amp and a Takamine LTD 98 acoustic-electric. The effect also does well in an electric rig.

Right now I have a dozen Boss pedals, a loop station, and a BR-8 and have never had a problem.

Great web site but never needed to deal with 'em.

I read reviews from people who rag on Boss gear, but personally I love the tones and ease of use and reliability of Boss. Over 25 years I've used close to everything that's out there and Boss always sounds very good to excellent and has NEVER crapped out on me. I can't say that about all effects companies I've bought from. Sure there are "better" sounding effects available, but for the money you's have to spend to get them ... In other words, how many of us are audiophiles? I like great tone but I'm not willing or able to spend hundreds of dollars for each piece of gear that I want to use. For a fraction of the cost of the "top of the line" gear. I can set myself up with a pedalboard that has everything I want in it that sounds awesome to boot. Boss lets me accomplish that and keeps my set up simple and compact. Listen to everybody's opinion but make up your own mind and use your own ears. Cost doesn't always mean best quality.

ok...
This pedal is essentially a Boss BF-2 with Stereo Out, Bass input, and a mode switch. Pretty easy to figure out in standard and ultra modes, momentary mode is, well, uh, momentary, but Pan/Gate is a bit of a bitch. If you're running mono, it can produce some very strange square-wave tremolo-like effects, since it tries to pan stereo and only gets one output.... weird and pretty useless... but still fun to mess with. The only real complaint is the method for setting tap tempo. The whole "depress pedal for 2 seconds then release and tap again" method drives me nuts. Understandably, you gotta do it somehow with a single pedal stompbox, but I wish there was another way...

Aside from the above weirdness in the pan/gate mode, some great basic flanging sounds. Ultra mode seems to just kick it up a notch. The momentary switch is kinda useless for my situation, but I can see how someone could set this thing to a really strange setting and just kick it in now and then for one of those strange blurbs of sound.

The stereo flange is absolutely beautiful. That's all I have to say.

The true test of any stomp box is this....

Could you use it to crush somebody's skull?

Bricks, Sovtek Big Muffs (only the green ones), Marshall stompboxes, and Boss pedals all pass.

uh....
not that it really applies to this, but I work at a music store, and I deal with Roland regularly.. and they are extremely easy to work with. Helpful beyond belief whenever something gets screwed up... They even let me keep a couple of pieces that they over-shipped once (please don't tell my boss - I'd like to keep my job)...

This is just an upgraded BF-2. If ya liked the BF-2, but wanted to tack on a stereo mode, you'll love it. If you're a bass player who liked the BF-2 but wished it was EQ'd a little better for the bass (like me), you'll love it.