New BOSS pedals!

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BearBoy
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by BearBoy » Wed Nov 13, 2024 9:56 pm

That DF-2 looks great, Pepe!

zentropa
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by zentropa » Thu Nov 14, 2024 3:51 pm

BearBoy wrote:
Wed Nov 13, 2024 9:55 pm
That's strange. They made quite a big deal in all the marketing blurb about it supposedly having the same modulation/chorus as the original. e.g. here.

Was intending to pick one of these up but might have to do a bit more research. I wonder if the SDE-3000D is the same?
I only spent a bit of time with the SDE-3000D, but my memory tells me the modulation was different, very 80s sounding.

The SDE-3 does that sort of "seasick out of tune warble" on its modulation if you have the depth above 9 o'clock or so and immediately made me think of the common modern tape delay algorithms. I have only given it a basic test run but that is what my ears have told me so far.

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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by Pepe » Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:15 pm

A few days ago I received a Taiwanese BOSS BF-2 Flanger in good condition and a BOSS ST-2 Power Stack in near-mint condition. The pair was too cheap to let it slip away and I always wanted to try the ST-2.

I have a Japanese BF-2 and even without a direct comparison (that I'm going to do later once the newly arrived pedal is cleaned and assembled again) I think that it sounds better than the MIT version. But I have had another MIJ version that I sold a few weeks ago and I must admit that I wasn't able to make both flangers sound the same, no matter how much I tried to tweak the trimpots. Somehow there seem to be better sounding versions of this model.

And the ST-2 ... as I almost expected, I don't like it. Digital BOSS dirt pedals have always disappointed me and this one is definitely the worst of them, even worse than the digital DN-2 Dyna Drive. I don't believe that I only think that it sounds bad, because I play it through a 50W tube amp with a single speaker. Yes, to some degree it mimicks the tonal characteristics of a large-sized speaker cabinet, but the overall sound is not how I know 4x10 or 4x12 amps. Especially with the "Sound" (gain) knob above 10:00 everything sounds heavily over-compressed and muddy. It totally lacks clarity and really no decent overdrive tone is possible with this thing. Even worse, everything past 12:00 is sounding too artificial and fret noise becomes ear-piercing and shrill. I simply don't get how this thing was able to leave the think tank of BOSS and why it is still in production.

Pictures to follow in the next days.
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laurie
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by laurie » Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:27 pm

Interesting.....

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Pepe
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by Pepe » Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:30 pm

Have you tried out the ST-2, laurie? It came out at around the same time (2010) as the BC-2 Combo Drive (2011) that you regarded as sounding "like arse", if I remember it correctly.
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laurie
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by laurie » Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:16 pm

Yeah. They both sounded bad.

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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by Pepe » Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:36 pm

I can truly confirm that this is the case with the ST-2. I have no high hopes in getting a VOX-in-a-box with the BC-2. So I stuck to my KORG ToneWorks 105od, the only digital dirt pedal that I really, really like. And it mimicks the VOX AC sound in a great way. When I activate it, it doesn't sound like a mere overdrive - to me it sounds like a totally different amp.

laurie wrote:
Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:27 pm
Interesting.....
I guess that was due to the tonal differences of the two MIJ BF-2 models? Maybe they had sounded identically after a recap and the same calibration.
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laurie
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by laurie » Sun Dec 22, 2024 2:56 pm

Pepe wrote:
Sat Dec 21, 2024 10:36 pm
I can truly confirm that this is the case with the ST-2. I have no high hopes in getting a VOX-in-a-box with the BC-2. So I stuck to my KORG ToneWorks 105od, the only digital dirt pedal that I really, really like. And it mimicks the VOX AC sound in a great way. When I activate it, it doesn't sound like a mere overdrive - to me it sounds like a totally different amp.

laurie wrote:
Sat Dec 21, 2024 8:27 pm
Interesting.....
I guess that was due to the tonal differences of the two MIJ BF-2 models? Maybe they had sounded identically after a recap and the same calibration.
Theoretically... they should be really similar. Must be component drift/calibration?

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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by Pepe » Sun Dec 22, 2024 6:29 pm

I bet on the component drift. The model that I sold a few weeks ago had a broken zener diode, so maybe something had suffered at some point because of too high voltage? I don't know. I just know that I had serious trouble to calibrate it to make it sound similar to the MIJ model that I kept.
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Re: New BOSS pedals!

Post by Pepe » Mon Dec 23, 2024 12:51 am

Here are the pictures. The flanger cleaned up very nicely, much better than expected:

Image

Image
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