Riding the Boss Renaissance

[sal paradise]

Wanna talk BOSS?

We’re in a world of endless boutique builders, reissues of classic circuits & clones of any pedal we want… and yet it seems more and more of us are turning back to Boss.

Sure, we’ve been overpaying for mij models since forever. But for me, looking at a DD-8, even though it’s got hundreds of features it feels instantly more intuitive to dial in cool sounds than any comparable Meris/EQD/Walrus/Chase Bliss whatever…

[Telliot]

I'm a huge BOSS fan and always have been. I find I can get almost anything I need with their pedals, although lately I've been diving into the modeler game with the Helix Floor.

[cestlamort]

(I just moved this from the new gear of 2024 thread as it's more applicable here):

I just set up a Boss BCB-30 board of CE-2b > HF-2 > DD-2 > amp (albeit with a non-boss comp first; alternately: CE-2b>DD-2>RV-3). Fun, sounds good, sounds "boss" (in all the right ways). I'd forgotten how conducive the Boss simplicity is to just playing (rather than diving through menus). A nice palate cleanse, and basically as close as I get to plugging straight into an amp.

[OffYourFace]

It's what I started with and I still use a bunch of them.

Currently using (not on the same board):
OD-1, CE-2, BD-2, VB-2w, CE-2w, RV-6, DD-7, DS-1, CS-2

I still have a bunch I don't use on the shelf.

[JSett]

You know my opinion on Boss pedals. They offer something for the working musician to cover almost every sonic desire - and are bulletproof to boot.

Bizarrely my home board has none on it, but my live board is nothing but. That tells a story all in itself.

[sal paradise]

A humble offering to the Gods of tonez*



*Needs more HM-2 / MZ-2

[cestlamort]

Also fun is the Boss ME-5 (which someone on here clued me into).
The matrix editing is kind of the opposite of knob simplicity, but still nice to have the basic effects: comp, od/dist, eq, ch/fl, delay/reverb; albeit with limited parameters but with the ability to save things. Neat as sketchpad for some effect combinations.

[JVG]

I was just commenting earlier today, in another thread, that I’m surprised we don't have a Boss thread.

And here it is!

It provides another opportunity show off my Boss board put together a couple of years ago. I still love it.

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=123800

[BoringPostcards]

Only Boss pedals I’ve ever owned were the chromatic tuner and the DS-1. Not on purpose. Just how it worked out.
I’ve played so few of them, that I don’t really have an opinion on them other than they’re solidly built and sound great in my limited experience.

[zhivago]

I love Boss pedals...my favourite is my old DC-2:



I also have a GE-7 (soon to go to ebay), and an RV2.

[i love sharin foo]

I love Boss stuff. My very first pedal, ever, was an XT-2 Distortion. It wasn’t a very good sounding pedal though. I did use it for years beck in the days when you just used what you had. No chasing different sounds and having 30 pedals strung together. I have a handful of Boss stuff these days, which I am always rotating in and out of use. I too love the simplicity of them. I hate hidden menus, user presets, internal dip switches, etc. I prefer a pedal that has 3 or 4 controls and what you see is what you get.

[Unicorn Warrior]

I just bought a DD-8 myself. And it is exactly as you said in the post. I have complicated pedals, but if I want to make music the Boss dd-8 just does it and fast

[fuzzjunkie]

Also fun is the Boss ME-5 (which someone on here clued me into).
The matrix editing is kind of the opposite of knob simplicity, but still nice to have the basic effects: comp, od/dist, eq, ch/fl, delay/reverb; albeit with limited parameters but with the ability to save things. Neat as sketchpad for some effect combinations.

Will Sargent used the Boss ME-5 during the Electrafixion and Bunnymen revival era.

I was all set to buy a few Boss pedals back in the day. Other than rusty Electro Harmonix pedals in the pawnshop window there was Boss or Ibanez, or a one off pedal like the ProCo Rat.

Instead I got a Roland GP-16 which is, you guessed it, like having 16 analog and digital Boss pedals in a rack mount unit. Roland also made a GP-8 which was 8 of the classic analog Boss circuits.

Both of those were popular with the Pre-Shoegazer crowd. Ride and Lush both used them and I remember Catherine Wheel did as well. The free standing Overdrive and Distortion pedals were easier to use than the circuit versions. For some reason matching gain levels was a problem.

I got around that limitation by mostly using an old Big Muff, a Vox Wah, in front of the GP-16 and then the EQ, Dimension D, Flanger, Digital Delays, and Reverbs. The circuits were from the 2 series, so BF-2, CE-2, DS2, OD-2.

Everything was analog except for the pitch shift and time based effects, and there were several delay and reverb modes to choose from. I liked the pitch shift for detuned flanger and chorus effects. String a few of those together with delay and reverb and it was instant Cocteau Twins.

Add a midi controller and you could switch between your verse and chorus tones with a single click instead of a tap dance.

There was also an early attempt at speaker emulation, so you could use that and record direct without an amplifier.

My favorite comment I ever heard about the simplicity of Boss pedals was from Robert Smith of the Cure. He only played Boss pedals and he said the best settings no matter the pedal were; mostly off, half-way, and full up.

I still have the GP-16, so I don’t have any Boss pedals even though it can sound like I have 16.

[cestlamort]

Exactly.
Funnily, there are tons of anecdotes in Miki Berenyi’s book about Emma fighting the GP-16.

I saw a GP8 at the Trading Musician with the tag “sound like the cure!” And I should have grabbed it. Missed out and then got one on eBay. Good sounds, I maybe should have kept it but it was sacrificed to my Ibanez UE rack era. The GP-8 (like the ME-5) can be all over the place with the volume from patch to patch which maybe surprised me one too many times.

Speaking of Ibanez, I always leaned more that way in the pedals over the boss equivalents: AD80 vs DM2, CS9 vs CE2, CP9 vs CS2, etc. (And the Ibanez ones were always cheaper, especially for the 10/L ones).

[marqueemoon]

I used to have a DC-2. It was not for me. Chorus generally isn’t.

Currently I am running an RV-6 and an ancient TU-2 and hoarding a PN-2.