What is it? Boss OD-2 Turbo Overdrive from Boss Compact series. Made in japan, march 1986. The OD-2 was apparent attempt to create a follower for the classic OD-1 which already had a vast user base with lots of hype going for it. In all its simplicity, the OD-1 was pretty much Boss’ venture to…
Month: August 2014
Boss OC-2 Octave
What is it? Boss OC-2 Octave from compact series. Made in taiwan, april 2001. Another classic from the Boss compact catalog. The OC-2s were originally housed in much lighter brown enclosure with the label “Octaver” on them. The name changed to “Octave” in 1984, meaning that the original ones were manufactured in japan from 1982…
Boss ML-2 Metal Core
What is it? Boss ML-2 Metal Core from compact series. Made in taiwan in january 2009. Sure, i was interested in this due to its reputation. This is supposedly the meanest metal distortion there is and i’ve heard good things about it from people who i share a lot of opinions on sounds. So i…
Boss RV-3 Digital Reverb/Delay
What is it? Boss RV-3 Digital Reverb/Delay from compact series, made in taiwan. Serial number on grey label points to june 1991. But since the units were apparently manufactured from 1994 to 2002 and the label was changed from pink to grey in early 1999, i think it’s safe to assume this follows similar error…
Colorless writings, part 14 – Overcoming the shortcomings
So what shortcomings are we talking about this time? Shortcomings of a classic fuzz circuits. Sure i could rave on about hundreds and hundreds of boosters, overdrives and distortions that simply can’t overcome the unity level of your guitar. In my books that’s a shortcoming. But maybe i’ll reserve those for another part of my…
Boss PSM-5 Power Supply & Master Switch
What is it? Boss PSM-5 Power Supplu & Master Switch. Made in japan, november 1982. There has been a time place for everything. Daisy chaining, or dedicated power supplies were both practically unheard of until this new and exciting device hit the market. What surprises me more is that the pedal was actively sold from…
Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner
What is it? Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner from compact series. Made in taiwan, june 2004 The workhorse. I’ve heard stories that these nearly didn’t make it to production at all, since the designers were sure that there would be no market for a pedal tuner. Well. I do get it. After all, the Arion and…
Boss HM-3 Hyper Metal
What is it? Boss HM-3 Hyper Metal from Boss Compact series. Made in taiwan, march 1993. The younger brother of since discontinued HM-2. Similar controls and expectance for similar sounds was high to say at least. This time there is some symmetry on the board design and even those machine like autorouted traces do not…
Boss HF-2 Hi-Band Flanger
What is it? Boss HF-2 HiBand Flanger from compact series. Made in japan, august 1988. Japan made HF-2 is probably the most praised flanger, not only in Boss catalog, but otherwise too. While the “standard” Boss flanger may be and have been the BF-2 for decades, the HF-2 operates in slightly different manner. While most…
Boss CE-3 Chorus
What is it? Boss CE-3 Chorus, made in taiwan, august 1988. Boss choruses are all praised, even though the CE-3 has less reputation if compared the obvious classics like CE-1 and CE-2. With less reputation comes a less numbers on the price tag on auction listings. This particular unit is one of the very first…