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Hatsubai « The more versatile BD-2 »
Published on 11/26/11 at 18:47The Boss BD-2 is a great boost alone. It can be used with a clean amp to give it some nice grit, and it can also be used a fairly transparent sounding boost to help give you a little more tightness and compression to your overall tone. However, it has a few drawbacks. For one, it's a bit bright in its stock form. The tone knob really needs to be fixed, and it could be thickened up. Keeley's mod does that and then some. This mod not only gives the pedal a revoicing, but it also adds a special switch so you can select the thickness of the actual pedal.
UTILIZATION
First of all, the pedal is mostly Boss' creation. That means we're talking about Boss reliability and overall setup. Thankfully, Boss is one of the best pedal companies out there when it comes to both those things. These are crazy reliable and rarely ever break. I've toured with these things for ages without any issues at all. The pedal only has three knobs, and it's laid out like a tubescreamer, so anybody can figure out how to use this. The manual is now kinda useless thanks to Keeley's mod, but it can still help if you want some ballpark tones. The switch is in a nice location to where you can select it easily, but it won't be knocked by accident.
SOUND QUALITY
The stock pedal sounded pretty good for what it was, but it had some issues. The Keeley mod fixes those issues, and it also gives you some additional tone controls to help further shape the tone. This pedal should really be used as a clean style boost, in my opinion. It works best when you want that transparent sounding overdrive to help push the amp just a touch but don't want that tubescreamer flavor sound. It's awesome on leads to give you a bit more sustain. If you find yourself needing more thickness, just flick the switch, and you'll get a nice bass boost with this thing. Perfect for single coils and those brighter amps out there.
OVERALL OPINION
This is probably one of my favorite mods for the BD-2. Monty, Analogman and a few other guys out there offer great mods for these as well, so don't discount them. Keeley can be expensive, but he's been in the business for a long time, and his mods are proven. If you're good with a soldering iron, however, you can find out how to do these mods yourself.
UTILIZATION
First of all, the pedal is mostly Boss' creation. That means we're talking about Boss reliability and overall setup. Thankfully, Boss is one of the best pedal companies out there when it comes to both those things. These are crazy reliable and rarely ever break. I've toured with these things for ages without any issues at all. The pedal only has three knobs, and it's laid out like a tubescreamer, so anybody can figure out how to use this. The manual is now kinda useless thanks to Keeley's mod, but it can still help if you want some ballpark tones. The switch is in a nice location to where you can select it easily, but it won't be knocked by accident.
SOUND QUALITY
The stock pedal sounded pretty good for what it was, but it had some issues. The Keeley mod fixes those issues, and it also gives you some additional tone controls to help further shape the tone. This pedal should really be used as a clean style boost, in my opinion. It works best when you want that transparent sounding overdrive to help push the amp just a touch but don't want that tubescreamer flavor sound. It's awesome on leads to give you a bit more sustain. If you find yourself needing more thickness, just flick the switch, and you'll get a nice bass boost with this thing. Perfect for single coils and those brighter amps out there.
OVERALL OPINION
This is probably one of my favorite mods for the BD-2. Monty, Analogman and a few other guys out there offer great mods for these as well, so don't discount them. Keeley can be expensive, but he's been in the business for a long time, and his mods are proven. If you're good with a soldering iron, however, you can find out how to do these mods yourself.