Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor

Easy to use, basically a 'no brainer' with just three knobs. It took me a while to figure out how to set it up though, thank god I have the boss guitar tuner, using send and return from that with all my pedals.

Doesn't affect sound quality at all, trust me, after playing for 35 years, I would know if sound quality was affected. Some problems with a clean sound (which I rarely use), but it is just a case of changing the settings a little is all, but, hate to do that during a 'live' gig.

It's a boss pedal!.. reliable as hell!

Do Boss even have customer support?.. can't imagine it would be needed?

I play Classic Rock, I use distortion, overdrive, compression, a wah, a uni-vibe and a boss super shifter, I have three strats so you can imagine the hiss and hum I get. I should have gotten this years ago, but I was put off because the noise gates in the 70's silenced the first note played, not so with this, because of the neat litle delay button. I use a lot of hendrix-like controled feedback and this doesnt interfere with that or my style.. the guys in my band love me now!! -- so quiet!!

I didn't have any trouble setting it up, it was pretty straight forward. It might take some others a bit longer and that would depend on the type of noise they're experiencing.

In my opinion it improved the overall sound of distortion boxes because it didn't contain the noise and hiss that pedals sometimes create. It's a real thrill to get perfect silence when the guitar is idle. This is an absolute must for live players and it couldn't hurt in the studio either. I have a Boss GE-7 pedal and it's great as an equalizer but creates some hissing when I try to push it a little. The NS-2 eliminates all the noise so I can take full advantage of all my other devices.

It's a Boss for Pete's sake.

I play funk and R&B mostly but a cover band has to do it all to get gigs. I have 5 different amp rigs to suit the gig I'm playing. Rivera full stack, Mesa Stiletto duece, Bassman combo, Fender Super Sonic and my 5w Epiphone practice amp. If it were stolen it would be replaced immediately.

Quite easy to use. On the Boss-Site I found a diagramm explaining the placement of several effects (before/after the NS-2, into the loop... ) which was really useful.

A must-have for high gain seetings. It reduces feed-back and hum without altering the tone (...I cannot hear the difference). You only have to mute the strings and the NS-2 kills the signal/noise for instance.
I have a phaser and a cry-baby running over the internal effect-loop of the NS-2. I just love it how quiet they get when they're just turned on (but not played). Before I had the NS-2 I could hear the phase-rotation (in the distorted channel of the amp of course) even with the guitar's volume knob completely turned down. No more.

But unfortunately...
if turn the guitar's volume-knob down the NS-2 will start to suck your tone. The tone will start to fade in/out. It seems to me that the NS-2 cannot differentiate the actual signal from noise any more. In order to avoid that you have to pick harder or turn the NS-2 off... and that's an unacceptable solution.

Seems very solid to me (like all BOSS pedals).

Never had to contact them.

All in all a great pedal IF you don't play with turned down volume knob. It works for me because I mostly play with fully turned up. In other cases I turn the unit off (yes, it can be that simple ;-) ). I didn't notice any tone sucks at all.

you got a couple of knobe to mess around with doesnt get easier then that! sounds easy to me.

This is by far the best noise reduction i have used so far. It does't suck tone like some other noise reducions. I owned a rocktron hush super c before and that thing sucked all my tone away and left the noise. So I have gone to use only the boss ns-2. I have 3 of these on all my amps. i run a Carvin V3, Peavey JSX, and a Roland JC-120, and it gets rid of all the hum and leaves the tone.

works great never had a problem with it.

never had to deal with them.

This unit works great. If it can get rid of all my hum through my amps and leave my original sound without messing it up it, It would be good for someone else to.

Very easy to use, for anyone that can't figure it out straight away there are clear instructions.

Oh dear.
2 things:
1/ Be prepared to lose all the bite from your sound. It sucks tone down to a muddy, playing on the other side of a brick wall, mess. It will also compress any dynamics right out of our playing, mainly because you need to hit each string at full force just to hear your signal, which leads me to...
2/ If I'd wanted a volume swell effect, I would have bought a volume pedal. A noise reducer should work on the tail end of what you're playing, but for some reason this graduates the start too. It reduces the volume of your entire signal, then very gradually brings the volume up. I would've thought anyone could figure out that it should stop reducing the second it hits the threshold, but apparently BOSS thought otherwise. So if you want to kick into a good riff, forget it with this thing on: you have to kepp playing hard and fast for a good 10 seconds before it gets up to volume (which is still not good, see No.1), so palm muted riffs are also not gonna happen (which is where you need one of these most).
You wanted crisp, clean sound without signal noise? No chance.
Having said this, it is very good for getting rid of signal noise when you're not playing, and as a mute switch. But that's not really worth ??59 is it?
And no, none of this is down to my other equpment or set-up etc...

It's really well built and solid, and doubtful it'll break. You wouldn't need a back up (assuming you could bring yourself to gig with it in the first place).

It does, however, lose a couple points for the unreliability of the effect itself.

Not needed support for it.

I really don't see how this is good for anyone. If you're playing with the kind of high-gain stuff that warrants this pedal in the first place, then the degree to which it screws your sound makes it a complete waste of time.
I'm playing an EMG equipped ESP, with a DigiTech ToneDriver and Death Metal and a Crybaby From Hell (which has a volume boost) needing the noise suppressor. With all/some of these on I do get noise, and the NS-2 kills it dead. But then I start playing... Oh dear. According to BOSS' description it sorts the noise from the guitar and doesn't affect tone. Flat-out lie. It takes about 10-20 seconds to realise you've started playing, and completely destroys your tone (get going then switch the NS-2 off halfway through, you'll see what I mean).
And don't get me started on how annoying it is that the send/receive jacks are the wrong way around...

ridiculously easy. plug in whatever you want to be quiter and fiddle with the threshold.

Does exactly what you want it to do. just gotta find the right level of threshold and if you want, decay (i have it set to zero). it does compress your tone ever so slightly but i actually found it to be an improvement!

yup, boss are about as dependable as it gets.

haha not a clue, its probably awful.

i play rock and roll with my Les paul junior and P90's. this pedal gets rid of unwanted noise. what more can you ask for?

Simple enough to use. It took a while to figure out what the difference was between "mute" and "reduction" modes because the manual was obviously translated from another language by someone who doesn't have a complete command of English. However, it is pretty simple to figure out that you dial up the threshold until the hum goes away. I have not found that I need to adjust the decay. I use it in "reduction" mode rather than "mute" mode so that I can switch between having the noise reduction on vs. off. In "Mute" mode, the effect is always on and engaging the pedal will mute serve as a mute. I already have this feature in my pedal tuner so it's not necessary to have another mute switch. Plus, I like being able to turn off the noise reduction when I actually do want noise and feedback.

I agree with the previous reviewer, to some extent, in that there is some gain loss and a compressed sound, especially more perceivable at gigging volume. However, I still find the tone to be pleasing. No loss in treble response. I played a gig with it recently. With a weaker Tele, I wasn't able to get long sustained notes but perhaps could have dialed up the distortion a little higher. With a higher output guitar (an SG with Kent Armstrong P90's), I was able to get really creamy sustained leads with no interference or pre-mature gating by this effect.

I've never had to replace a Boss pedal.

Never needed to contact them.

I've been playing classic rock semi-professionaly since the late 80's. The pay-off of being able to stick P90 retrofits back into my SG and have no hum, vs. a little drop in gain, is invaluable. At one time, I had been playing "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC without a noise gate and was ready to chuck my guitar out the window. All that buzz and hum in between the sharp chord changes was killing me. Even the solo got eaten up by hum. Same song at another gig with the NS-2 and it was night and day. If you ever thought of shelving your single coil pickups, or guitar for that matter, due to noise problems, I'd seriously recommend you invest in this product, especially if you like how single coils sound. I might consider trying out other noise gates like the MXR smart gate to see if there's something out there that doesn't compress your gain.

It's very simple to set-up and use, but I give it a "9" because you actually need to look at the manual, heh. Manual is great though, they show you a diagram of how everything gets connected, very easy to understand.

Like all noise gates/suppressors, it is going to affect your tone.
As someone else mentioned, it does add a bit of compression and seems to boost the mids. You can work around this by tweaking your EQ (on amp or pedal/processor) and if you're using a compressor, tone down the settings on that a little. I would say it's a fair trade-off though (better than hiss!)

I have the settings at - Threshold: 11 o'clock, Decay: min, Mode: Reduction and this is enough to make it totally silent! I've even turned the Thresh down to 10 o'clock to let a little bit of noise it just to make it sound more realistic, but it's still damn quiet!

I've only had it for a few hours, but it's built tough like all Boss pedals and those will hold out for YEARS as long as you don't abuse it too much.

No need for it now and hope I won't later.

Ok, now get this...
I've had the MXR SmartGate for about a year, and while I love MXR pedals, this one sucked! It only eliminated about 70% of the noise, but added LOTS of compression and the note sustain was a joke. I looked into other options and the NS-2 looked interesting because of the built-in "send/return loop". Figured I'd give it a try, and if it was no good, would just return it to the store.

The NS-2 is amazingly effective, blows away the MXR SmartGate!
I couldn't believe how well it worked, I even went and double-checked my pedals just to make sure everything was on, lol. It's kinda creepy how quiet this thing is!

I have a fairly hi-gain rig for metal:
Gibson Explorer w/ EMG 81/85's >> NS-2 >> Boss TU-15 tuner >> MXR DynaComp >> MXR Phase 90 >> MXR Wylde Overdrive >> MXR 10-band EQ all going in to a Marshall AVT150 head w/ a 1960a 4x12 cab.

It ain't rocket science...

The ns-2 does remove hiss from hi-gain amps, but at a price, IT SUCKS TONE. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be deaf, or playing at bedroom levels.

As soon as you turn this on, you will get a drop in volume and a compression on your sound. I have tried all wiring configurations with the same drop in volume/compression thing happening. I have tried it with only the ns-2 between the guitar and amp and the same thing happens.

I use QUALITY equipment, all cables are hand wired using the best quality cable and neutrik jacks. Guitar is usually a RH4 Blade, plugged into a very high end amp, a Cornford MK5011. Guitar straight into the amp is the best guitar sound, clean or dirty, you will EVER hear.

It's a useable pedal for some applications, but I mainly switch it off at the begin of a song and on at the end ?????

Boss pedals have never let me down in over 25 years

never needed them

It's OK, it may well be on ebay within a couple of months...

Boss have got a very good rep, and they don't really deserve it. Sure they're pedals last forever, but of all the Boss pedals I've got(5), I've had to modify 4 of them to get them up to scratch sound wise, and these mods are always replacing shite quality components with better ones. Why Boss don't use better quality components in the first place is beyond me. The cost of the components is usually a couple of quid !

Super easy to use. Put threshold to max, delay to min, and mode to reduction... thats it.

This thing is awesome. It doesn't take away any of your guitar's natural sound. All it does is take away ALL unwanted feedback. Your guitar still sounds exactly the same, just without unwanted feedback.

Yes, you can depend on it. And yes, i would use it on a gig without backup.

dont know

It doesn't matter what kind of music you play... at all. This is a must for anyone, especially someone who uses heavy metal distortion (like me). I've had this for a while, and it never has failed me. It never will. But if for some reason it does, I will replace it. The thing that I love about it the most is that it has an output jack to supply a power source to your other effects pedals. All you need is one power adapter. I wouldn't spend any other time looking for any other noise suppressors. This is it. Boss makes so many good effects pedals, but this is probably the most useful and most versatilve one there is. GREAT BUY!