New Boss IR-2 Amp & Cabinet

[laurie]

Awwww. GAS. I now have GAS

[BearBoy]

It certainly is a fun one

I set mine up as a headphone rig with a JB-2 in front of it and a CE-2w and DM-2w in the send/return loop. After a quick bash through the various amp types I settled on a clean Twin on the green channel and a mildly driven Tweed on the red.

I cannot comment with any authority on the accuracy of the majority of the amp models compared to the real thing, and I have no experience with the higher end amp modellers from companies like Kemper or Fractal etc, but as a first impression everything kind of sounded how I thought it should. If that makes any sense.

As a headphone practice set up it is pretty much exactly what I was after. I had an iRig thing for my phone some years ago but never really got on with it tbh, a lot of which I think was because I couldn't really use any of my pedals with it. The fact I can easily swap in any of my other pedals with the IR-2 is fantastic. Really easy to get some sounds I like whilst sat on the sofa of a evening and then connect the board into my PC to record at a later date if I want.

I need to do a bit of research into connecting my phone into the IR-2 so I can play along with backing tracks. I think I need to buy a camera adaptor or something.

I found that drastic EQ settings (like I do on actual Marshalls and black/silver Fenders) doesn't sound as good on the IR2 models. Little tweaks go a long way...

Yeah the controls seem to have a fair amount of range and, due to their relatively small size, you don't have to move them too much to make quite a difference to the tone.

I also need to get my head around the fact that the position of the knobs doesn't necessarily reflect what you're hearing. For example, I set up the Green channel how I wanted it then switched to Red and got that set up. When I went back to Green, however, I thought it needed a little more level, or a tad less treble/whatever but when you touch the controls, which now reflect the Red settings, the sound sometimes changed in an unexpected way (e.g. turning the level up initially made the sound quieter). I'm sure it won't take me long to get used to it. Probably didn't help that it was late and I had had a couple of beers

Using a momentary switch for the channel selection is handy, too.

Is that so you've got the option of switching quickly between Green/Red/Bypass without having to hold down the pedal for 2 seconds to select the latter? I think I'm okay just flicking between Green and Red tbh but can always hook up a footswitch if needed.