All user reviews of 3/5 for the Boss BF-2 Flanger

This is a simple digital flanger in the standard boss stomp enclosure. It has 1/4" input and outputs (mono) 9 volt DC jack, and controls for manual (sweep), depth, speed, and resonance. It can also run from a 9 volt battery but mine killed batteries a little too quick.

UTILIZATION

This pedal is as easy as it gets for flange. Everything is layed out in typical boss fashion where what you see is what you get. The only knobs that may need a little explaining are the "manual" and "resonance". The user manual does a good enough job explaining what they do and how it effects the other parameters.

SOUND QUALITY

As with other boss stomp boxes this pedal has the ever active buffer. The pros and cons of the buffer have been discussed for years but I will say I found it to be useful when running a long chain of effects. I did not notice a great deal of tonal degradation with this pedal. The flange itself is very metallic sounding and pretty easy to identify. Pop in a record from the cure or machine head and you can hear the sound of this pedal. It works good for some sounds but was always a bit too over bearing for much use. It can be dialed down to some extent with the resonance knob but the high end flanging is always there. Because of this I used it mainly for the over the top sounds. Cranking the speed and depth gets a sea sick sound that works great for interlude stuff and noise music. There are also some internal trim pots that can turn this pedal into a siren making noise machine. There is no mention of these in the manual because I don't believe boss intended on users altering their factory settings. If you are in love with this pedal you probably shouldn't screw with these as they are very tiny and small adjustments can make a world of difference. For me it actually made the pedal more useful as I had been using it for noise purposes anyway.

OVERALL OPINION

There are much better flangers out there, even in the boss price range. I think overall boss just is not that good at the modulation effects. I have managed to acquire two of these for free and gotten some use out of them but I doubt I would ever actually buy one. The sound is just too thin and pingy where modulation should be able to add warmth.