Monte Allums Boss BD-2 Mod

This is a multi faceted question. As far as ease of the pedal (after modding), is pretty similar to how it worked before, although you now have a greater range within the tone and gain.

And on the ease of modding it, It was relatively simple for me. All you really need is a soldering iron and patience. Monte Really thought of everything, from detailed diagrams to soldier and de-solder wick. I had fun doing this mod, because it was so well thought out and complete.

My gear: 1957 Fender Stratocaster, Fender Twin Reverb, GHS David Gilmour Signature strings and a Monster Cables Rock Cable. And of course a plethora of pedals...

The pedal itself is quiet, but since I have a vintage strat, it hums like crazy...

What I love about the pedal is its far more feedback sensitive now. even if i turn up the gain, if i play soft or with low feedback, it will still produce clean tones. If I crank the feedback or just play hard, the pedal roars back at me with some balls. The advangage is you dont need to be fumbling with pedals and settings on stage. I love the control the tone knob has now, it is more authoritative.

Its a boss, nothing more to say.

I originally went to Monte's site to look at guitar sheilding supplies (dont worry, not for my '57, that thing is untouched). I found his mod page and began listening to the mos sound clips. I fell in love with the BD-2 H20 Plus kit and immeadetly ordered one. I did some research and read nothing but great reviews on his work and service.

The original package ended up being lost by USPS, Another one was shipped out and went to the next address. I emailed Monte and he shipped one the next day, and it came in 2 days. All the while (about a months time frame) Monte was very responsive to my emails. Some times within the hour, but always the same day. Very caring and helpful. Which is EXTREMELY rare these days, everyone is a ****.

What style of music do you play?: I play a wide range, focusing on the stylings of Dagid Gilmour, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Buckethead. Just bluesy melodic Rock.

Did you compare it to other products? : I use my tube distortion alot and my TS-9. The ts-9 has more of that grungy zz-top kinda dist, sounds great especially on humbuckers. The BD-2 H20 is nice and transparent, reactive and great for soloing, and just havin fun with the guitar. I use each for diff types of music. It is Definately worth it to liven up your bd-2. And a must to have in your arsenal of tone. I would definitely redo this mod if lost. Its just so inexpensive but effective.

Rock ON!

Very easy to use. The pedal still retains it same knobs: Drive, Tone, Level.

This has got to be my all time favorite pedal. It is very transparent and dynamic and can go from a mild OD to a cranked Marshall sound. The character of the OD is not harsh at all and it cleans up well. I use this pedal for a more medium gain OD or sometimes as a bosst into my Fulltone OCD.

I got this pedal in a trade and am very glad for it. If you like ODs on the more transparent side this one fits the buill very well. It is so dynamic and usable that I really have made it my main OD for mild to medium gain rock tones.

Like all Monte Allum mods, pretty easy. Take your time, read/follow all instructions, and it's a piece of cake. Any questions, check his website or email him. He'll respond almost immediately.

I got the H2O mod. This thing really shines with these mods. I was especially impressed on how much the noise is reduced when turning up the gain. I already liked this pedal, and now even more so. Great for playing blues. I use it with my Fender Twin. I get a nice overdriven, blues sound without waking up the neighborhood. A pretty good pedal just got a whole lot better. I'm very pleased at the sound of this mod. I won't repeat all the improvements. Go to the Monte Allum web page to hear for yourself. This thing performs exactly as described on that site.

Boss stomp box. 'Nuf said.

Awesome. Immediate responses. Hard to find this kind of support out there these days.

Been playing for almost 40 years. All styles of music, but fave the blues. I play a Fender Roadhouse Strat thru a TU-2 tuner, Boss CS-3 (Monte Allum mod), Boss BD-2 (Monte Allum mod), Boss CE-2 (Monte Allum mod) and Fender Pro Twin amp. My setup is now quiet as a mouse, believe it or not. Sound is superb. Still tweaking knobs, getting used to things, but I like what I hear. No regrets with any of these mods. I hear a noticeable improvement. Since I'm tired giving Monte Allum all 10's for a rating, I'll knock off a point here, just for a change. I'll say it's because the led is way too bright. It blinds me when reacing down to make a knob adjustment. I come up seeing "spots", if you know what I mean. I like the brighter led's on the other two mods, as the stock ones are weak. But this one is an overkill.

Mod was fairly easy and fun to install. Not a "begginers" project though. Better yet it produces a GREAT improvment in the tone of this pedal.

I use this pedal w/ stock Les Paul, Strat, Tele, 335 into fender, vox, mesa (all tube amps). The mod let's my guitar and amp do the job. Just adds a sweatness or spice to the pot. Pretty HI-FI and transparent which produces VERY useable sounds.

After many months of frequent gig use. So far so good. Pedals are working fine and always sound consistant.

Good response via email.

For me installing the Monte ALum mods resulted in great tonal and response improvments to several of my pedals. I am VERY pleased.

Your basic three knob setup.

This pedal works very well with already gainy amps like my tweed Super clone. I like the H2O version better than stock. It IS much more "transparent." I set the level where needed to match my amp or maybe slightly louder (usually about 10 O'clock) then the tone and gain at high noon. Result? KILLER blues tone.

Boss pedals are bulletproof.

It does everything I need it to. The TS-9 and Rat didn't like my tweed amp. I had a Barber Slver Ltd. that worked well. This makes the BD-2 comparable with a tweed amp. Though I would maybe give a slight edge to the Silver. By far the worst thing about this pedal/mod is the white light is so bright you can't see the frickin controls! What's up with that?

This review is for the h2o mod, which really should have a seperate page.

It is as easy to use as the stock bd2. Volume, Tone, and Gain. Screw this up and you need to be playing the drums.

The mod itself took about an hour and a half to do. Its not that hard, just take your time, read the instructions, and it helps to know a little about soldering before you start.

My setup is as follows: Alder tele with GFS bigmouths - effects, including the bd2 h2o - Vox Ac30cc1.

Sound quality is excellent. The stock bd2 was part of my setup for about 8 years. I loved the sound of it through my old fender amp. However, I recently switched to the Vox Ac30 after falling in love with its tone, and couldn't seem to get the bd2 to mesh with its sound. I was considering selling it when I saw the h2o mod on monte's website. I figures for 20 dollars I couldn't go wrong, so I tried it.

The bd2 now has its mojo back.

It seems far, far, far more transparent, although not completely (try setting the tone at noon, the gain all the way off, and volume to taste, than listen to how it changes your sound. Its not much, but there is a little bit color added). Better than anything else even close to its price range.

The tone knob now controls a lot more. It seems to sweep the signal, instead of simply adding more treble. And the structure of the gain and the clipping is much smoother and natural sounding.

Also, as a bonus, the noise floor seems significantly lower than before. Totally worth my time and money.

I was surprised when I opened the bd2 up to make the mod at the mess of soldering that Boss does. It looks rather sad. I figured I relied on Boss's product for this long, I can really rely on it now that I retouched some of their solder points and cleaned it up a bit. As for my work, I feel like I did a great job (I've built several pedals and have a good handand eye for soldering).

I do have one issue, and I'm not sure where to put this, so I'll put it here. I had a lot of trouble getting the new LED to work correctly (bright white). I was getting a faint blue light. Turns out it was a voltage problem with the battery(brand new, but not working correctly). Fixing that, the led works correctly now with a battery, but not when I power the unit using an adapter. The circuit still works, however, the LED won't light. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I almost never use it with an adapter, so it isn't a big deal. I keep trying to fix it though.

I origianlly emailed monteallums about the LED, and he promply answered back to check the voltage. Very nice, fast, and helpful.

I've been playing for 9 years. I play mostly in the church now, but I do occasionaly get out to play in the community.

This is a nice pedal, it always was, its just more usable now. Not a hard rock pedal, or metal, or anything like that, but more a natural sounding overdrive that gentally clips your signal. Pretty nice and totally worth the money.

Very easy to use. The knobs operate pretty much as labeled. Mine is the original mod, not the H2O. I had Chad do the work, have no reason to doubt it was done properly. Didn't let a child or a rocket scientist that acts like one work on it...

Well... This happens to be the first review I've written for Harmony Central's user revews. I felt somewhat motivated by the previous review trashing the sound quality of the pedal. Harmony Central's pop up menus to choose the 1 - 10 rating for this category are labeled: 1=it sounds terrible, 10=pristine sound quality. After the mod it certainly does sound very, very good to me, maybe even "pristine" as I would use the word. I can't see how anyone would say it sounds "terrible". Maybe not appealing to one's personal tastes... Perhaps it's not as "transparent" as a Creation Audio Mk.4.23 boost, but then again, it's NOT a straight boost, it's an overdrive pedal (or so a simple-minded musician like myself has been told...). For those of you who are musicians and use the word transparent to mean it doesn't mess with your guitar tone--I would say yes, it is arguably pretty transparent. Not being an engineer, I use my ears to determine sound quality. Not the number of components or an oscilloscope readout.
By the way, I'm not comparing this to any cheap, poorly made pedals. I own and use, or have owned in the past, fairly decent pedals including models from: Hermida Audio, HAO, G2D, Siegmund, Barber, Keeley, Analogman and others. This mod gives you a very serviceable, musical pedal at a very reasonable price, and it simply is NOT hype that it can sit well among "boutique" pedals, and might be considered to have, well... pristine sound quality.

Started playing guitar in 1971, played professionally for over a decade during that time and have owned and used a fair number of BOSS pedals. Never (EVER) had one fail on me. If the modification work is done properly, it should be as reliable as any fairly robust pedal.

Monte and Chad both responded quickly and professionally to emails. I haven't needed any extensive customer service.

For what it does it's a really good value, in my opinion. I didn't care for the Boss BD-2 in stock form, but I like this pedal just fine. I'm currently using it with a Strat with Kinman pickups, as a "fairly" clean boost for solos, just adding a hint of overdrive (just barely detectable when you really punch a chord). I think it sounds nice when using it at much higher overdrive settings, as well. If I wanted something different, I'd use a different pedal, but that's just me. :-)
If you have an old BD-2 kicking around and you would like it "reborn" as a quiet, clean, versatile overdrive, I think you would be pleased with the value in this mod. I'll give it a 10 just for fun...

Bits, pretty easy to do. I am an Electronics Engineering Technologist so it was childsplay.

I can't believe all these 10's. What a crock!! I have had two of these kits and the BD-2 H2O mod is in NO WAY TRANSPARENT to your tone!! It might sound transparent to Monte since he doesn't use his with the gain over half, and his sound samples use a strat into a fender but at what volume??

When you think about it of course it isn't transparent, only the cleanest of clean boosts comes anywhere near to being transparent. This thing has a tone control and RC filters all through it.

It is smoother yes, it is less gritty, but it is not transparent. It doesn't come anywhere near to what it claims in terms of being a transparent overdrive pedal so it must be a 1.

My first pedal was a boss BF-2 flanger silver screw back in 1985. Guess what the only pedal I ever had blow up was? Yep that Boss pedal. I have owned a heap of boss pedals. I came to the conclussion that they are cheaply made, very expensive, noisey mass produced garbage. There is no longer any Boss on my pedal board.

His support is excellent, answers emails etc.

I actually bought a BD-2 just for this mod. I sold this thing as soon as posible after I heard it. Transparent? oh pleeez save your bucks and by a Crunch Box. You've been warned. The reviews on here are from those who imagine they have improved a terrible pedal into something boutique, well you can imagine all sorts of rubbish -- just look at organised religion!! ;P

Very detailed instructions with the board label number for each part to be replaced. Tricky part is figuring out which nodes to unsolder. His tip about marking all the nodes first with a marker is spot on. I have limited soldering experience and it was still fairly easy. DO AS MONTE SAYS: 'Check after every mod'. Wearing 1.5x magnifying glasses is a must to make tight solder points. Another great Monte tip! Sound is amazing!

Unbelievable difference in sound! Stock BD-2 only had a few settings that sounded good. Most were either too thin or too harsh. Now this pedal sounds good anywhere you turn the dial. Acts more like an amp and the overdrive can be controlled using the guitar volume. The sound is so full, I don't need to use any other pedals! I play a '67 SG through a 70's Fender Twin Reverb using multiple Boss effects. Now I only want to use this pedal by itself!

The pedal is a rock. My soldering skills .... we'll see!

Instructions sent immediately. Parts came in a couple days. Did as Monte said and checked after each mod. After last mod, pedal didn't work! One of the wires to the input jack had come off through all the rangling. Soldered it back on and put it all back together. Monte created a monster!

I'm mainly a blues/rock player. Playing since 12 (48 now). Like another reviewer wrote, I have to keep myself from buying another stock BD-2 so I can do this mod again! It was fun and very satisfying! My only problem is now I'm at work, but all I think about is going home and playing through my new BD-H20 pedal! Frantically searching for other pedals to buy that Monte has mods for!

This review is for the standard BD-2 Mod, not the H2O one. This is my first crack at modding a pedal, and it was such a breeze, I'd recommend it for anyone with opposable thumbs. I would definitely go with a 15w soldering iron though, as i've read elsewhere that a 30w will melt your PCB traces.

This has turned my ok Blues Driver into a Tweed-in-a-box. I did all the mods, I wasn't sure about including the 808 mod,for fear of turning something unique into something samey, but I'm quite happy with the result...it definitely doesn't sound like a TS-808, it's got it's own thing going on.
This box makes my Valve Jr. Head through 2 ceramic 12's sound like my friend's alnico equipped Bassman. Totally compressed and spitting. There are more sounds to be had, but I've got this dialed in and I love it.

That's all down to me, Monte's componts are top notch, so if there's a problem it's to do with my soldering. Seems pretty good so far.

Shipped in a few days, excellent instructions, and if you follow Monte's advice about checking the pedal with every mod sequentially, he's at your disposal via telephone. Can't beat that.

To think I almost sold this pedal...all it needed was a little bit of effort and $20. I don't know why anyone would spend $200 on a boutique pedal, when they can get sounds like this out of a standard box with some easy changes.
If stolen, I would do it all over again...in fact, I might just pick up an SD-1 to mod as well. Thanks Monte.