New Pedal Day - Boss BD-2 Blues Driver




If you've never owned a Boss Blues Driver, go buy one.

 Now.

 I'll wait.

 I came across one earlier in the week for $70, but in a place that was just a little bit too far out of the way for me to justify. What's more, while I haven't made any big purchase in awhile, I seem to be spending $80 here, there, and everywhere.

 The universe aligned though, and Saturday morning I asked if it was still available.  I assumed that at that price, the poster had just forgotten to take down the listing. Getting a "no" to the question "is this still available?" is a great cure for acute GAS.

 "Yes, it is available."

 Fack.

Better than Amazon Delivery

I asked for the seller's address, and immediately texted my father, who was heading to us that day, and would be (sort of) passing by the sellers house.  I felt a little guilty, but I had recently had success selling his motorcycle on Kijiji, so I felt like he was getting used to this type of thing.

 The exchange was made without incident, though I did get a call to inform me that there was no power supply (of course I knew this). Less than an hour later, I had the pedal in hand, and was ready to give it a go.



Bright Side of the Moon

Having always understood the Blues Driver to an alternative to a Tube Screamer, so I immediately set it up to run like my Noah Sark Green - Drive at 2 o'clock, Tone at noon, and gain at 10 o'clock.

Should be good right?  Ok, here we go...

...Proceeds to be stabbed in the ear by ice picks and dental drills...

Apparently, the Blues Driver is SUPER BRIGHT.

Turning the tone down yielded better results, but it was still pretty uninspiring.  I walked away not disappointed, but sadly unsurprised that yet another pedal had failed to live up to any hype. I returned later after reading on a forum that running the gain all the way up was a thing people do.

So I turned the gain all the way up.

Wowza. What a great pedal.  In fact, with the Blues Driver providing some context, I set up my Wampler Plexi Drive for a very similar sound:

These settings got close

The difference was subtle, with the Wampler having more clarity and sounding more amp-like, but the Blues Driver have more gain that inspired more aggressive riffing a la How the West Was Won (Led Zep in case you didn't know).  

And that was with a Strat. Better still, with the same settings, it sounded great through both the Maz 8 and the Fender '68 DRRI.  In my experience, most drive pedals require a compromise of one or the other.

Needless to say, if you've never tried one of these, go get one.  It isn't an alternative to a Screamer.  It's it's own thing, and very likely the thing you've been looking for but haven't found yet.





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