Boss PW-2 Power Driver

I bought this when i got my new guitar about 1 month ago. It was $300 rrp but i got it for $250. (aussie dollars)

The sound i can get out of this pedal is unbelivable. I can make my stratocaster sound like a beefy gibson sg! highly recommed any guitarist getting it!

The price is a little high for a single effect unit, but it's worth it. apart from that i can't think of anything!

This is a boss pedal! need i say more? the build is like a tank - even if you threw it on the floor it would still go!

Awesome little pedal for "beefing" up guitars. and producing an awesome sound

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

This is another of Boss's standard stompboxes as far as the layout. This one was designed to capture a share of the burgeoning grunge/alternative rock movement of the late nineties. It's basically a very grainy and heavy distortion unit. It proved to be not so popular and was discontinued after only a few months of production.

It is equipped with four controls. There is a level control, a "fat" control (low end frequencies), a "muscle" control (midrange frequencies) and a drive control. There is also the standard PSA adaptor jack and 1/4" input/output jacks.

UTILIZATION

Setting up this pedal was not difficult to do. I purchased it from a local music store at the age of 9 and took it home and plugged in and was riffing right away. It was designed for the purpose of getting very thick and grainy chord tones for Nirvana or Smashing Pumpkins style music. I was using it for a combination of that as well as some older punk and it held up very well. It took me a little while to realize that "fat" meant bass and "muscle" meant middle as far as the controls went (I didn't have a manual for it) but I usually just set them at about noon and went from there.

SOUND QUALITY

I was primarily using this pedal with a G&L Tribute S-500 and various Yamaha electrics. I found it worked very well for the punk/grunge stuff that I was playing at the time. It's harder to give an exact opinion since it was many years ago that I owned and used this pedal regularly, but I remember being very happy with the pedal for about a year. However, at some point, something in the circuitry went awry and it failed to sound good from then on, so it went into the closet and I eventually traded it away. I'm not exactly sure what happened but it went from sounding very fat and chunky to oddly thin and weak. I replaced the battery numerous times, tried other cables, etc, but nothing changed it. Perhaps the pedal was discontinued due to reliability problems?

OVERALL OPINION

All in all I thought this was a great pedal for the purpose that it was designed. I heard a clip of it on a CD demoing various Boss pedals and thought it sounded stellar, so I was elated to track down "the rarest" Boss pedal about three months later. It worked quite well and gave me a nice grunge tone when I was using it. However, when it failed to work correctly after about a year, my interest wore off and eventually I got into more hard rock and metal music and this pedal fell by the wayside and I traded it after a couple years of it doing nothing in my closet. I wouldn't mind tracking another one down to try it again, but since they were only made for a few months, they are harder to find than most Boss pedals.

The Boss PW-2 Power Driver is a distortion and overdrive pedal designed for use with electric guitar. It has a 1/4 inch input and a 1/4 inch output and as powered by either of a nine volt power supply or battery. It isn't a rackable piece of gear as it is a stomp box.


UTILIZATION

Using the Boss PW-2 is a relatively easy thing to do as it only has four separate parameters to control different things. It has knobs for level, fat, muscle, and drive. While these parameters aren't named the traditional things that you would see them called, they are basic controls and after you play around with them a little bit you will understand exactly what everything does. There isn't too much to this pedal beyond this and for this reason the manual isn't a necessary thing to have.


SOUND QUALITY

The tone quality heard from the Boss PW-2 isn't all that impressive in my opinion. While it does have its moments and I do find it useful some of the times, I don't find enough uses for this pedal to be able to declare it a great sounding pedal. The overdrive is pretty full sounding, but I only find that it works in certain situations and isn't all that versatile of a guitar pedal. I have used this pedal with a Fender Stratocaster and a '76 Fender Twin Reverb amplifier, so I'm getting pretty accurate results of what this pedal truly sounds like. I do however like to use this pedal for harder rock as it I feel it works best for this type of music.


OVERALL OPINION

I've been using the Boss PW-2 Power Driver pedal for about a year and while it is a decent guitar pedal, I can't really say that I would recommend it to any professional. The price of this pedal makes it a very attractive option, and it will certainly work fine for begineers and even for intermediate players, but isn't up to par in terms of sound quality for professionals. There are other distortion and overdrive pedals out there for similar prices that I would rather use than this, including Boss' own DS-1. I would recommend checking on the Boss PW-2 on your own, but don't hold your expectations too high.

It's an overdrive pedal boss from home (analog)
with an input and an output jack metal (that costau)
the form of all the Boss y'as nothing to repeat the above

UTILIZATION

There is a level four pots, one that serves a Fat boost the bass, a muscle that boosts the mids, and a gain for the rate of saturaturation

SOUND QUALITY

You will all tell me it's the boss, and synthetic cold!

AND NON BAH! frankly it sounds great with this pedal I found the sound I was looking for APRS have tried several pedals diffrent (DS7, XT-2, MT-2 ...) and I 'm crazy!
it's a fairly "old" ideal for heavy rhythm or Trash (like the first Slayer!)

but it is also versatile, with a slight gain was a crunch of the most beautiful ...

OVERALL OPINION

I have for some time ...
as I say it's the pedal I needed (and now I know that Boss makes good pedals)
I try to pedal more and more I realize that I needed it!
it must be worth 115 new (them it was worth because of APRS I know it is no longer manufactured)

I would do without hesitate ... this choice because I found my sound with this pedal ...