Boss MD-2

How can a distortion pedal not be easy to use? Any idiot can twist a knob.

Only one word can describe this pedal...MUDDY! It does not matter if the tone knob is all the way up, the mega distortion still sounds muffled. I thought the gain boost would give the sound extra shred, instead it just garbled it. The sound was grainy, much like cheap single coils played through a pawn shop practice amp with a blown speaker. Palm mutes were lost in the pedals own grind. This pedal would be great for a super grungey alternative band, but terrible for metal/hard rock. The only good thing I can say about it is it had killer sustain.

It's a Boss! After a nuclear war only three things will be left, cockroaches, scorpions, and Boss effects pedals!!! They're invincible!!!

Due to their reilability, I've never had to deal with Boss customer support.

I play in a hard rock/metal band. I put this up against a Boss Metal Zone. The Metal Zone sounded much, much better. Don't let the advertising fool you. The extra gain that this pedal gets is not impressive. The Metal Zone gets just as much distortion and it sounds much better!

Typical Boss compact pedal. One of the newer models, which means slightly too many functions and an attempt to cover too many bases with a single pedal. Combined Bass/Treble EQ is fiddly and impossible to adjust on the fly.

I normally play through a DeArmond Jetstar, using a Behringer V Amp to connect to my PC, and have far too many overdrive/distortion pedals (who doesn't?).

Boss are misrepresenting this pedal by trying to make out its some kind of nu-metal pedal. It's not. If you want that kind of mid-scooped, wildly over-fuzzed sound, then buy the Metal Zone MT-2, because this pedal will be a disappointment.

Having got that out of the way - I like this pedal a lot. I don't want the Metal Zone sound I mentioned above: just a powerful, warm, distortion. My local guitar shop were kind enough to allow me to try the full range of Boss Distortions (DS-1, Turbo Distortion, MT-2) and this pedal came out as my favourite. It sounds great at low distortion settings, and judicious use of the very powerful EQ means I can get some very pleasing sounds. Cranked up, the MT-2 adds a lot of drive and compression, but stays away from fizzy transistorised sounds. It cleans up nicely with the guitar's volume control, and sits well in a mix with other distortion pedal sounds.

A great pedal for the right application - always try before you buy!

Boss pedals deserve their reputation. Nothing to beat it for the price.

Haven't needed to talk to Roland UK recently, but I hear good things about them.

A good pedal, much more versatile and subtle than the screaming red paint job would suggest. Not for the nu-metal crowd, or for people who turn everything up to 10 and then wonder why everything sounds bad.... but recommended for rock, blues and alternative styles.

The pedal is overall extremely easy to use, and its equally as easy to dial up a great sounding distortion. The extra gain boost is almost useless, cause it adds tons of hum and muddifies the distortion pretty bad, but over all it sounds amazing.

As i said before, the gain boost makes the distortion sound really muddy. But im a massive fan of bottom end distortion(incubus,linkin park, limp bizkit), and htis thing totally delivers. It can be a lil hummy whith the volume up and gain maxed out....but you wont hear it during the song.

Boss=Tank

N/A

Ive been playing guitar for about 6 years and i run a schecter c-1 elite into a morley volume, a dunlop wah, and a boss noise suppressor, delay, phaser, tremolo, mega distortion, and blues overdrive. Then my amp is a crate 4x10. I love incubus, muse, kutless, and thousand foot krutch. This pedal delivers the best distortion ever, heavy but still distinguishable.

Straight forward.

I play a les paul with an SH-5 duncan custom pickup into a JCM 900 and 4x12 quad. It's a good pedal but i found it very muddy with the bass turned up which is exactly what i bought it for, more chunk down low. Tons of gain and distortion but only muddies it up more when up too high, basically everything needs to be backed off quite a bit. Nice sustain just no clarity, more of a dull thump than chunk when muted

It's a boss it has to be reliable.

I was dissapointed and diddn't get at all what i was looking for, it's a little too dark for my liking. Something added to bring out some clarity in the hard thumping bass might work, bass up full was just overkill and backed off a little was only slightly better. I play hard rock to metal and often tune down, i spent a day trying to get a good sound then decided to take it back and order in a bassier pickup instead. Ive no doubt it has it's place for some people it just diddn't work for me and my rig. I wont right it off it just wasn't for me, perhaps i should have tried the MT-2 instead. The MD-2 sounded better on the boss website. Try it before you buy it which is what i should have done, intead i took the advise of some comments in here and the boss sound samples. Worth giving a go, don't forget i play a les paul which is already a darkish warm sound...... Good luck.

It's pretty easy to use. To tell you the truth, It sounded the way I expected it to when I plugged it in, so didn't have to fiddle with it much.

I use a guitar I put together into a Mesa/Boogie DC-3 and a Music man 212. This pedal has a good shred vibe to it. If it were a little less fake sounding, then it would sound better for really fast stuff. When playing really fast lines it tends to just make them sound a little bit messy.

It's a boss, as you can tell, everybody knows a Boss never breaks.

Luckily, I have not had to deal with them

I play what my band calls Jazzed-up Funkjamrock. It's always nice to get a hard rock deal going on when we play once in a while, This pedal is just a little bit overkill. I just like going through my SD-1 and my small clone, that setup doesn't muddy up my sound. If your going for a thrash, slayer kind of vibe then get the Metal Zone, It doesn't sound as nu-metaly. This is just a really dark sounding pedal that may be good for some, just not my style... I'm keeping none-the-less... You never know.

Fairly easy to use. Lots of combinations are possible with the distortion and gain controls.

I agree with other reviewers who say this pedal is basically an upgraded DS-1. The exception is the MD-2 has slightly more compression which is evident at any setting. It's not quite as open sounding as a DS-1 but has tons more gain. One thing I notice, is how many different opinions I've read about the sound quality of this unit. Many people think it sounds buzzy, but I've found this more related to the amp your using. Through my Mesa 50 Caliber, this pedal sounds like buzzy crap. However, when I run it into my Laney GH50L, it's amazingly warm and toneful. Very close to the amps natural distortion which is wonderful. It's all about finding the right gear combinations. Although my DS-1 sounds great, I love having the extra gain at my disposal when I need it. This pedal is especially good with Strats, giving them huge rhino balls with tons of distortion!

C'mon, Boss is legendary in this category.

Ha!

A great pedal for the arsenal. I also recommend the DS-1 which is a little more natural and tube-like. I've spent thousands on various distortion pedals and the MD-2 is one of the best. Tons 0' gain = tons o' fun!

This pedal isn't really hard to use, but it can take a little while to get the right sound, simply because I find after adjusting the pedal, the amp's eq needs to be adjusted to finish off shaping the proper tone. Otherwise, its very easy to use.

I'm using a Jackson PS-4 (alder body, maple neck, rosewood fretboard, Floyd Rose lic. trem, H-S-H jackson pickups) and a Schecter S-1 Elite (mahogany body and neck (set neck) with figured maple top, and two Duncan Design Humbuckers, HB102s). I have a Marshall MG30RCD I never really use, and a Peavey Classic 30 all-tube amp, which is what I use this through.
This pedal is quite noisy if all the gain is turned up on both knobs, but that is somewhat expected, given the ridiculous amount of gain this can achieve. I mostly got the pedal to get a powerful, dramatic sounding solid-state distortion for chords on the heavier parts of songs. The bottom knob really adds to the sound a lot, I generally like a pretty bassy rhythm tone, and this has it. The tone knob (inner knob on the concentric knob) is a bit harsh if cranked, almost painfully high treble, but I think that was their point with it. The natural sound of the pedal, with no eq-ing, sounds a little more rectified and smushed (not really compressed too much though) than your average dist. pedal, but again, I think that's what they were aiming for - and definitely what I was looking for. Surprisingly, it makes a decent lead distortion as a change from tube overdrive; it has a ridiculous amount of sustain and compression if the gain is cranked, and harmonics and feedback are all over the place. This might not apeal to some, but another selling point of this pedal to me was just how high you could crank the gain - I consistently play with all the gain I can get, or a clean channel, with occasional in-betweens. Overall, its rather impressive, but still isn't enough to get a 10, simply because the tone can be a bit stale and lifeless on half the settings.

haven't had this one to long, but my other boss pedal has held up very well for about 3.5 years, so I'll assume that the metal casing on this one is just as good.

never dealt with them

I play every kind of music, metal, techno, classical, rock, pop, whatever - but a lot of original stuff too. This suits the need I had for it - a huge, crushing distortion for large chords. However, I can say that it sounds terrible if played through a solid-state amp - when I tried it in the Marshall MG30, it was just a terrible mess, kinda of like if you overdrive a home stereo pre-amp by plugging straight into it... ugh...
but it sounds quite good through my tube amp, the 12" speaker probably helps with the bass as well.
If you want this pedal for the right reasons, you'll like it - but if you expect a solid-state amp to morph into a mesa-boogie, you'll find it actually sounds WORSE than the built in distortion in your amp - needs a tube amp.

When I first got this out of the box I didnt need to read the small manual that came with it, its really easy to use.

I use a Vintage VRS, which I've found gives me a nice sound, very good for the price and I've had to use a small Fender Frontman practice amp latey as I was using my mates Line 6 Spider but he needed it back and even on such a poor amp this pedal sounds pretty great. When I first started using it the feedback I got was terrible and I was pretty dissapointed with the quality but now the feedback has completely gone and I have no idea why, but its deffinatly a good thing anyway. I had to fiddle with the pedal for a while to get a nice sound that I wanted out of it, but after some trial and error I've got myself a very nice tone. I play alot of grunge/rock such as Nirvana, Foo Fighters, InMe, R.A.T.M, Tool and absoloutly loads of Silverchair, this pedal got me a sound I can use for nearly all of these bands and Im especialy happy with the sound I can get for playing some earlier Silverchair tracks. One thing is though, I've played a bit of Metallica on it and it didnt sound terrible but I wouldnt use it at a gig if I was playing that kind of metal, because I dont think its really a metal pedal. So if you play alot of Slayer, Pantera, Metallica etc I wouldnt recommed this pedal.

Its well built and hard as a rock.

Havent dealt with the customer support, but Boss is a good company.

Im happy with the sound I get out of this pedal because of the type of music I play, but this IS NOT a metal pedal. So if you play alot of Slayer, Pantera, Metallica etc I wouldnt recommed this pedal. When I was deciding what pedal to get I was looking at this one and the Danelectro Black Paisley Liquid Metal pedal, and this owns it completely. The only other pedal I actualy own is a Digitech RP200 and the distortion on that doesnt even compare to the MD-2.

If it got stolen, I'd probably try a different pedal out, but I might come back to this one.

damm easy to use and it doesnt take a idiot to get to noe the settings well even without the manual.

awesome pedal...although i mus agree that there is realli too much low end...however, it can be fixed by turning the high tone way up and the low tone a bit before the middle...the sound that comes out is real good for leads and crunchy riffs..i like the distortion..it has got a real bit in it and the crunch of the sound is really what i am looking for....lots of vibe in it and i wouldnt say that its lousier than the metal zone .the reason why its cheaper than the meatl zone is because it was relaesed much later...but the sound of the pedal i shld say isnt compremised and it also covers lots of genres...frm hard rock to even metal eg.pantera and metallica...its realli verstile...unless u r a real metalhead, i wld suggest the metal zone but if u are one covering mostly hard rock and stuff , this stompbox is for u.the onli dislike is the colour but thats superficial..if u wan a realli low end boost turn the tone way up and blast the gain...the sound is like a monster truck..but yet as most reviews say,its uncontrollable....turn off the distortion adn u get a real nice overdrive too. basically the pedal is real verstile and it gives lots of substain... much more thatn the metal zone...get this if u wan a cheaper alternative to metal zone or u wanna try and mix new types of distortion...

in truth, boss and digitech is the only real pedals u can trust

i play mostly metal and rock like guns and roses or metallica...i wanted to try sumthing new bec the metal zone is owned by many and decided to try this which is relatively unknown here.. all i can say is , its areal nice pedal nad if it was lost i would buy it again..but of course i will still try other pedals and stuff like that..the sound is also godd and if ure inot nu netal or sum heavy modern new age rock band...the pedal is for u....jus wish that the color would be different and not that much low end...however again tone and sound is subjective

Pretty easy to use if you know what your doing.

Guitar Jackson DK-2 dunlop535Q BOSSmd-2 into Line6 spyder 1x12 mic'ed by my PA system. It holds its own at high volumes. The kinds of distortions you can get on this pedal are amazing!!!!! IF your into the metal , oldschoolrock , wutever go out and pick up this pedal. I can get the sounds of GURRG of MUDVAYNE how that for 85 dollar pedal!

Bulit like a tank.. its a BOSS

NEver delt with them.

I play heavy metal it does very well for this style of music. ive been player for over 6 years this is the best distortion pedal ive come accoss besides the digitech metal master but thats more of a korn sound.. anyway go out and buy this amp if ur into the nu-metal stuff or just wanna create your own sound for your band. Ive compared this too dod, line6, ibanez, mxr, marshall, u name it.