Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor

Easy to use; play with the threshold and delay knobs to find your "tolerance" (how much cut off vs. noise still coming through). No manual, bought used. No upgrades. You can use it at the end of the signal chain or with the integrated effects loop (which is the way I use it). Sturdy, typical Boss design.

Doesn't color my sound like certain other players might say; unless you are a real tone freak, with hyper precise criteria for your sound, I don't think you'll find any tone sucking (maybe a vintage setup might suffer). I play through a Marshall TSL 100, Lone Star Strat, Tele and Tokai Les Paul. Effects chain is: Guitar, NS-2, (looped in the NS-2: BBE Opto Stomp, CryBaby 535Q, BBE Green Screamer, MXR ZW-44, CE-5). DD-20 through amp effects loop. No noise (it is a noise suppressor !).

Very dependable. Trust it on a gig. It is a Boss; they're hard to kill !

Didn't have anything to gripe for. Although, since the pedal was used and didn't have a manual, I easily found a PDF version through the Boss web site, which was great.

I play hard rock, and I do a lot of soloing and jamming. The NS-2 has changed my perspective on the use of external effects pedals. Before I purchased it, I was worried that I would always have to deal with hum and static from pedals. I hate noise, to the point where I was willing to sacrifice my ideal tone to cut down on noise. I had put up my ZW-44 for sale, since it is a noisy pedal. With the NS-2, the noise cut is dramatic. The ZW-44 can now be used to give me a great cutting lead tone without the noise. I like to take breaks in my phrasing, so when I'm not playing, it's almost like the amp was on standby. I see a lot of professionnals use the NS-2 in their setups (Check the setups at the end of Guitar World issues).Would buy again if stolen. Must have for pedals through a high gain setup. I'm also considering a DC Brick or Voodoo Lab Pedal Power to reduce noise even more (batteries aren't practical, although give out less noise.)

Its pretty easy to use. It took me a few hours to get a hang of it. Ive never really messed around with a noise suppressor before. It comes with a manual which seems informative enough. I actually looked at it more than once.

It deffinatly does the job it says it does. Because I never owned a suppressor before, it took me a while to grasp the working concept of the thing. Once figured out,,easy enough. I have found that it isnt a one setting for everything pedal. If you set it up correctly for one channel of gain and change to another with more gain or use another guitar with hotter pups you will find you will need to adjust it. I only use it with extemely high gain applications so once I have it set for my gain channel its good to go. When I bought this pedal I thought I would try running it like any other pedal in my chain of effects,input-output and so on.. Nope it doesnt work like that. I tried and it just doesnt work at all like that. You cant even get a sound out of it. It comes with a send and return jacks for a loop. You must use it like that. Place your distortin,OD, compression type pedals in the NS-2's loop and your good to go...Works great like this. It really does make your rig quiet. It comes with an additional light that is off when you are playing but after you stop and your sustained note fades you see the light slowly come on. Once your sustain is gone the light shines bright showing you its got a hold on your noise,,,pretty cool. The pedal comes with a knob named decay and its useful if you find the pedal kicking in too fast,,,cutting off your sustain. Im running it first in my chain straight into my amp,,,NS-2, barber tone press,bb preamp, mi audio blues pro, mi audio crunch box,,,to give you an idea Im able to have my boogie recotoverb on high gain channel 2 with the compressor on max and the bb preamp overdriving my preamp and it still can keep it relatively quiet. I dont ever use that much gain and compression in front but its nice to know you could,,,when I turn off the ns-2 at these settings the noise is uncontrollable.. so it works.
P.S. the threshold knob doesnt need to be maxed for everything,,you will get a better result from it if you slowly turn that knob clockwise until the noise is gone. thats were you should have it.

its a boss

dont know

I play everything from blues to all out metal,,,I only use it for extremely high gain,,otherwise its off. So far its done me well so I really have no complaints at all,,,if it went missing I probably would replace it again,,,but because ive never owned another,,,who knows. I bought this pedal because of the rave reviews on this sight,,,I wanted to originally try the ISP decimator but the reviews werent as good and you had to order that one online.. With the NS-2 not being an effect type pedal I was willing to give it a try,,,I just wanted the noise to go away and it did.

It is very easy to understand. The only thing thats not so cool is that the send and return jacks are positioned at the wrong side, because you would have put the send to an input of an pedal and a return to output of a pedal(Go look at a picture and see!),it would be O.K. if you had longer patch leads!

other than that it is very easy to use, that is if you read the manual!

WoW! Try putting a very noisy pedal in the loop of the Boss ns-2, and you will know what a noise suppressor does(Something like an MXR Dime). A very clear sound can be heard, it wont change the tone at all, Set the decay time to the far left, and threshold at about 12'0 clock.
It is important to use this with pedals in the send and return loop of noise suppressor, it wont be that effective when using it with amp distortion, because you cannot it only eliminates noise within the loop and before the pedal(your guitar).

I have played a few gigs with the noise suppressor, and people cant understand why my sound has no noise. And it is almost indestructable, when a jack is inserted it stays there.

Well i live in South Africa, so i was a big struggle find a boss dealer with the ns-2, after a few months I found one.

This is for an active musician, playing the blues,neo classical or even black death metal. Without this pedal you would sound very crap. This pedal is wort every penny.
Currently I am using the Boss ds-1 and Digitech metal master, it makes it sound like a studio produced sound.

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!

This pedal couldn't be more easy to use. The manual helped a little too.

My setup: Peavey Bandit 112 >> NS-2 >> TU-2 >> Epiphone Les Paul

This pedal works so fine! It cuts out all of the feedback and unwanted noise I have from my amp, especially at high volume.

I've had it for a while and I doesn't even have a scratch on it.

Boss fo' life!

I play a lot of Metal and HArd Rock. If it were stolen I'd beat up the person taking it and if it were lost yes I'd buy another one. It's great just to jam alone, with friends, record and even live!

Wow, I had to read the manual otherwise, I would have returned it!

This thing operates really unusually and at first I hooked it up like I thought it should be used and it worked but really killed the treble response.
Once I read the manual and learned that my guitar and only my guitar should be plugged into the input jack everything sounded wonderful.
I do use Dimarzio YJM humbuckers in my 2000 American series Fender Stratocaster and they have a very low output and so I found out that the NS-2 workes best with the threshold all the way to the left. I little to insensitive I suppose but it does work great there.
The NS-2 kills all the noise, 100%, before the amp.

I use this with small Fender Champ tube amps and with vintage Marshall stacks. It's all good.

In an amps effects loop the NS-2 would be tricky to hook up. Guitar to input, send to amp input, effects send to NS-2's return, Ns-2 output to amps return....lots of cables....

It sure would quiet one of the those noisy B-52 stacks

My friends NS-2 burned up using a non boss ac adapter. I have been using Ibanez adapters for over 10 years with no problems.

I've been shredding metal since Michael Schenker hit the scene in UFO back in the 70's.

I think $100 is pretty steep when you consider the Boss ME-50 can be had for just over $200.

Top musicians everywhere rely on the NS-2.

It's perfect if you can afford it.

Fairly simple if you're just going in and out, if you're using the loop it's slightly more complicated. But still as easy as it could be.

I'm using a Cort G290>TU-2>Whammy>Wah>NS-2>OD-20>Zoom PD-01>CH-1>PH-3>BF-3>DD-6 into a Marshall MG100DFX. This thing gets rid of pretty much all the noise, even when using heavily distorted modes on the OD-20, as well as modulation noise. I notice no real loss of sustain, although when I use the loop i lose a bit of sustain, but my rig isn't noisy enough to warrant using it.

I've had it for nearly a year now, and although there have been one or two paint chips it's fine.

N/A

I play alternative rock, a bit of jazz, a bit of metal and this removes 90% of the noise, the other 10% I can live with. I find that mine worked best BEFORE my OD-20 and other effects. So before giving this a bad review try it EVERYWHERE in your setup, and if that fails try the loop function. If that doesn't solve your problems, reduce the gain on your 3 Metal Zone pedals. ;)

For my style of music (Metal) I had an easy time setting it up. Very easy to use in my oppinion, Im no rocket scientist. Got the hum out of my triple rec and 5150 II in nothin flat.

Im currently using this with my ESP mh 400nt plugged directly in and then from the pedal to either of the amps. (Triple Rectifer or 5150 II). Not noisy at all anymore, now that I have this little ns-2. I didnt losse any gain or sustain at all. People that say that about this pedal need to spend a little more time tweeking the 2 knobs. Distortion is not affected at all.

I havent taken it on stage yet, but all boss pedals are as rugged as they get. Mine was bought used from a touring musician and it looks very clean and works great still.

Never dealt with boss directly so Im not the guy to talk to about this subject.

I play mostly metal, metalcore, hardcore, and my sound. This pedal is a perfect match for my situation. Maybe not for the Eric Clapton fan who doesnt have much tube gain hum in his setup. I have been playing for ten years and have been kicking myself for 2 days since I bought this for not buying it years before. I dont use many effects but I got a thing for high gain tube amps and active EMG's and this is a must for that setup. If it were lost or stolen, give that dude props that stole it from me because hes got taste, no for real though, he does. No, I would buy another one ASAP. I love the simplicitly of it and ease of use. I also like its effectiveness alot to. I havent found anything to dislike about it yet, but bear with me I have only had it 2 days. My favorite feature about it is that it is capable of powering other pedals by boss. I think it can power 5 more at the same time. It helps me in my music by taking that hum/hiss out of my setup. Nothing is more annoying than hearing that noise when you are trying to discuss/write a song or structure. Get one quick...

Ease of use depends on what your setup is. If you just have this pedal between your guitar and amp, then just reduce the decay all the way to the left (minimum) and put the selector to reduction instead of mute. Then start turning the threshold knob clockwise. Around 12:00 position, all your noise must have disappeared. Over the 12:00, you could lose a bit of sustain in your guitar. This is when you need to use the decay knob. If you feel you are losing sustain, just start increasing the decay...

however, if you have more noisy effects, and you want to make the best possible use of this pedal, this is my setup.
I had a noisy 1.7 AMPS power adapter. I plugged it into the "IN" of the NS2 and made a chain of 5 plugs and plugged it into the "OUT" of the NS2. The NS2 is now being used to power 4 other noisy pedals. I think it eliminates noise in the power to the 4 other pedals. Although I could not find any mention if the NS2 reduced noise while powering other pedals, I think it was helpful though.
Then I put the noisy pedals in the effects loop of the NS2.
I dont know if there is any pedal out there that gives so much versatility. My only gripe is that each time I turn on the power to the entire setup, the NS2 has to be kicked on manually.

What the NS2 does needs to be understood before jumping to conclusions. This just reduces noise when you are not playing. When you are playing it assumes that the noise cannot be heard. The moment you stop playing, based on the threshold you have set, and the decay time, it kicks in! That is why I mentioned, if you find yourself setting the threshold beyond 12:00 position, and you see that you are losing some sustain, then start messing with the decay. Also, if you find that your distortion setup is the noisy one and your clean sound is, well, clean, then you might suffer a lot of sustain when you are playing clean. So, you got to play with the settings a while before you find the right match for both your distortion and clean sounds. This can be quite a challenge. I've had it for almost 2 years and i still mess with it sometimes. Not to mention the problem you will have if you are using more than 1 guitar especially with varying levels of output in their pickups!
I have been told by a pro-gear seller that the only way to acheive studio level noise reduction is to remove it professionally after recording and studio quality setup. So, the NS2 is a quick and dirty solution for all you bedroom players and small time garage band guitarists. Dont get me wrong, other distortion pedals also have the same reviews.

So far works well. I guess it can be gigged without a backup.

Did not deal with them yet.

I play mostly Metal. Any metal, you name it. Death, Doom, progressive, 80's. This pedal suits me just fine and eliminates most of my noise. but I do use quality ( noise-free and less expensive ) guitars and amps so I dont suffer much.

The most important thing everyone should keep in mind is "Garbage in, garbage out". So, if you are plugging shitty squier strats with single coils into high gain cheap noisy pedals, then no amount of noise supressors will help you. First take a look at your setup. Then remember the greatest guitarist of all time ( in my opinion ) Joe Satriani's words "The real tone is in your fingers" what he means is, the way you play makes a world of difference. Again, that means, the way you mute the strings, your palm mutes, the way your fingers mutes when you are going down the fretboard, your skill at picking, everything matters! So, dont blame the setup or the amp or guitar, if you are not good enough. Again, I have learnt this lesson the hard way but every beginner and every pro for that matter has walked that road too. So, be patient and practise hard and you can play like your hero!!

Overall, this is a good pedal for its features and price. Go for it. you will appreciate it for a long long time. Rock on, and dont forget to, Rock HARD !!

Its very easy to use, simple operation and helped by a clear instruction booklet.

In my opinion, its not half as good as the reviews say it is.

I bought this in a hurry, I needed a noise supressor in about 48 hours and didn't spend too much time looking at the rather hard to get and more expensive competition (MXR, Rocktron, ISP). Tip, spend more and look harder, don't be fooled by the big name. I run this infront of an all valve Marshall set-up and it takes the "punch" straight out of my set-up which is probably the most annoying thing about this pedal. Now, I know what you're thinking "What do you expect for the money?" but really, I expected a little better than that. It does suck tone.

Next, the noise supression itself. It is very decent. But there is much room for improvement. It doesn't completely cancel out that excess noise. Instead, it'll cut about 60-70%. Again I expected better considering the company.

Now, don't get me wrong, it does do what its supposed to and it does a fair job of it BUT it has faults as stated.
It does get rid of noise.
The mute control works quite well.
In all honesty, it does what it says on the tin. The only downside being, it doesn't really do it all that well.


I give it 5, its not that great but at the same time not awful. The tone sucking for me is a major issue.

I've gigged a few times with it and its still here in once piece.

However, I did have to tighten the mute/reduction switch and input jack on purchase as they were quite loose straight out of the box. Fine since.


Because of that, 8.

You can see my main opinion in the sound section.
My major beef with the pedal is that it will suck your tone. I could live with the fact that it won't fully get rid of noise but the other issue really gets to me.

If it were stolen or lost? I'd buy something that will really get the job done. I'd not buy it again, not worth the price tag.

Its hard to judge this pedal first hand, you can't really try it out till you've bought it without pulling your own set-up into the music shop. As far as I'm concerned, considering the hype and brand reputation it leaves a disapointing feeling.

Extreamly easy to use.

Im running a Gibson melody maker with a Jason Lollar P90 pickup into NS-2 into a analogman DS-1pro Dist into a Blues JR. Fantastic !Very quiet and works like a charm.

Tough!

Never needed it.

I play Rock,old metal,jazz,blues and bluegrass.Ive been playing 25 years.If it were lost or stolen I definately would buy another.I only wish I got one much earlier. Really improves sound in high gain situations.Excellent I never new silence was so nice !

It doesn't affect tone since it's a noise gate but it's very easy to turn the two knobs on it and quell your noise if you make sure you hook it up properly in your chain (I'll write more on this below).

The manual for it is very user friendly and well written like all Boss manuals. I highly recommend going to the Boss website and downloading yourself a copy of their effects guidebook too. Very well thought out.

The way that it works the best for me and probably others as well is to do the following IMPORTANT: guitar into input of gate then output of gate into head or pre amp then all pedals go in the loop of the gate ('send' from gate to input of first pedal in chain then from last pedal in chain into 'return' on gate). That's what makes it so great is that it gets rid of noise at two points! Very well thought out! I've never seen a gate with that feature.

My setup-Wah, clean boost, dist. pedal, guitar rack with pre amp, efx, and power amp.

It's not noisy at all it's a friggin' noise gate lol

As far as sound quality goes this is the best noise gate I've ever owned and I've owned a few.

I can absolutely depend on it and I would proudly gig with it anytime without the benefit of a backup. Boss pedals never let anyone down. The distortions they make sound like crap to me but I've always loved their other pedals.

never needed any kind of customer support from boss other than downloading a couple of manuals and on their website you fill in some stuff and they get back to you very fast with what you need.

I play classic rock, prog rock, metal. This is a perfect match. If it can get rid of my noise it can get rid of anyone's noise. Hell Yngwie uses it and we all know he has a ton of gain.

I've been playing the guitar for 15 years and I own all kinds of pedals and rack gear.

If it were stolen or lost I'd pray that the bastard would get hit by a hummer while running away from me then I'd order another one.

It's perfect for me in every way hell it even acts as a power source for other boss pedals with the right stuff. I have a very noisy pre amp and i'm boosting it even further so it was the only thing that solved both my pre amp noise and pedal noise. Get it now!! Any questions? email me.

Threshhold, Decay, and Mode adjustments. Pretty easy to use. Manuals are downloadable at www.bossus.com. Very easy to set up and get going. It has inputs/outputs for running in front of the amp or through an effects loop. I give it a 9 because it's not a no brainer, but would you expect it to be?

Running it at the end of my pedal chain in front of a Fender Super Reverb, playing with a US Fender strat w/texas special pickups. Anyone who plays with single coils knows that you get some hum when you put and overdrive pedal in the loop. This little box is one of my best investments, it squashes the buzz before it comes in to play. The decay feature works perfect for my application. It slowly fades out the sound very natually and before the buzz comes though. I couldn't have asked for better. I'd have to say it works equal to or better than the gate on my rack mount Alesis 3630. There is a slight boost when it's engaged but nothing to whine about. It doesn't affect my tone a bit. I'm not sure if it's 'studio worthy' but for live, it works great.

Bought it used, hasn't broken yet.

Haven't had to deal with them directly, but the website has all the info I need. Easy to surf and find the manuals download page that I was looking for.

I couldn't do without it. If you got buzz, it's a must have item.

Well, never seen anything easier to use! Just plug your guitar, put your effect chain and/or overdrive/distortion/preamp into the loop and run into the amp. Set Decay to 0 and tune the Threshold according to the noise level and that's it!
IT WORKS!!! The manual? You don't need it!

I use it with an Electroharmonix LPB-2BE tube preamp pedal into the loop and with my Strat Plus (Seymour Duncan loaded!) and I run into a Line6 Flextone II XL (set as a Marshall JCM 800): TONS OF TONE! The NS-2 adds a litte compression but it doesn't affect your tone at all. I can get from that stuff the sound I LOVE!!! And ALL the noise and hiss from pickups and preamp gain are cutted off...
NOISY??? IT QUIETS THE BEAST!

Yes, I cannot do without it now that I have it! I use it at home, in the studio and when I play live....at home I put it between the guitar and a Line6 GuitarPort and it does its job as well.

I bought the pedal used from a friend, no manual.
I asked Customer Support for the manual and some schemas and I had everything in a few minutes...so...
And it's a Boss pedal...you don't need more Customer Support or repairings!

I play Deep Purple and Whitesnake covers and some other hard rock stuff, plus I play my heavy stuff at home...the NS-2 is here everytime for everything and it matches my needings!
I needed something to allow me turn up the gain on the preamp without getting too much noise and preserving my sound : now I have it.

Follow the instructions and you're golden. Finding the right settings for theshold and decay may take a few minutes to get but that's about it. I was done setting it up in less than 5 minutes

I play a LP classic with BB2 and BB3 into a morley volume pedal>zakk wylde wah>digitech whammy>yngwie malmsteen overdrive>digitech delay> 1987x marshall halfstack. This unit completely eliminates the noise I was getting. The malmsteen overdrive is way too noisy but gives really good tone. Once the ns2 was in place I was in tonal heaven. It does add some compression, but that's a good thing for me.

never gig without a back up, but boss pedals are tanks.

This is a great pedal for any type of music. I was a bit weary of buying a noise suppressor since I've had nothing but bad expieriences with them, this is an exception though. My overdrive is really noisy but I love the tone I get, this ns2 fixes everything. It even fixes the crazy feedback (bad feedback) I get from my wah. Truly, this pedal is a god send.

Easy easy easy....plug guitar in the Input, and the amp from the Output. The Threshold and Decay settings need some fiddling around with, but anybody can quickly learn the relation between the two controls and get the desired effect within a few minutes.

I must admit, however, the Send and Return jacks were a little confusing at first. I couldn't quite figure out how to use the loop properly until I played around with it considerably. In addition, there were a few times when I mistakenly plugged the guitar into the Return jack and wondered why there was no sound. I think it would have made more sense if the jacks were reversed (the Send jack on the right side of the pedal and Return on the left), as this would have faciliated easier pedalboard wiring, but it's not a huge issue.

I play an Epiphone LP Standard Plus through a Marshall VS100RH, with Boss effects in the fx loop and a Crybaby in the front end.

It's the best noise-reduction unit I've played, bar none. I haven't used a single guitar/effect that this pedal didn't shut the hell up. It can clamp down hard to keep out noise, but it opens up naturally, so it never feels like it's choking your guitar. Admittedly, on extremely high threshold settings, you'll sacrifice some sustain, but playing with the Decay control will allow you to retain most of it.

Sometimes, I use an overdrive in combination with my Marshall's drive channel. This is a noisy technique, since I set the amp and pedal to half gain in order to blend the two for a different distortion character. However, if you throw the overdrive in the loop of the NS-2, there won't be any excess noise from the pedal. Since the NS-2 is busy keeping out the noise from my guitar at the same time, the amp (running on half drive) is almost devoid of excess noise itself. It's perfect!!!

I do have one gripe, however: when switched to Mute mode, the threshold seems a bit less responsive. This might just be me, but I think it feels a lot looser on Mute mode....it will seem to clamp down hard, and then open up at the tinyest movement. But this is not an issue for me, since I never use this feature.

Indestructable. I will probably die before this thing does.

Never dealt with them.

This is one of the most important parts of my rig. If it was stolen, I'd have to stop jamming until I got another one. It's truly that vital.

It tightens up my playing, makes my overdrive chunkier, and keeps everything in check. If I don't want feedback and noise, I won't get it. If I want a bit of noise, it'll let it through. It does EXACTLY what you want it to do, and that's rare for any pedal.