BOSS MT-2 (vs. Digitech Grunge)

Today we're going to talk about my favourite BOSS pedal of all time, which also happens to be one of their best selling pedals, as well as the first BOSS stompbox I've ever got hold of.

This pedal is just so amazing that you have to see it and try it on your own, live.
You can get this baby for about 50$-75$ on ebay and it is so worth the money.

The things I hate about distortion pedals is that after a while, when your ear gets better at... well, hearing things, guitar-wise, you tend to see bad tone, thus, beginning to question the quality of your pedal. It happened just a few days a ago to a very talented friend of mine who has kind of the starter-gear-set-up: a Roland 15-watt amp (gotta love them 15-watters), an Ibanez guitar and a pedal that he and I BOTH liked in the beginning: the Digitech Grunge, formerly DOD, yes, that lovely purple pedal.
As he doesn't live in the same city that I live in, we used to see each other at an interval of about 5-6 months, and each time I heard that pedal, it seemed worse. I think this is something you really need to avoid when choosing your gear. The best way you can go about it is having a guitar player that has heard, let's say, most of the effects in a price range. No, not the clerk, they'll probably bullshit you to death, trying to make you buy anything with the "they're all good" paradigm.

The Digitech grunge is a pedal that I would firstly NOT PLAY GRUNGE through, and secondly, although describable as a good BUY, not describable as a good INVESTMENT. The distortion tends to get too crummy, too artificial and you'll finally revert to your amp's distortion (which, if you're using a practice amp is pretty drastic).

This event lead me to directing me friend, and all like him to try the BOSS MT-2 Metal Zone which is an amazing pedal that still impresses me with it's gruesome range of tones.

It, of course is CRUSHING. It has 6 knobs that equalize, control the gain and the level. 6 knobs dare I say? Yes, 6 knobs, because if you'll look closely in the picture you'll see how the middle knobs are actually two pairs of knobs: an inner knob and an outer knob.

The first outer knob controls the LOW frequencies, the first inner knob controls the HIGH frequencies, the second outer knob controls the MID frequencies (MID FREQ - which I would label as the MIDs) and the amazing, tone warping second inner knob, "MID" which REALLY makes the difference. This last knob basically CONTROLS your tone, it is the one most IMPORTANT knob on this pedal.

On my tube amp, I use the following settings, although I got a BETTER sound on my bass player's solid-state amp:
-LOW: 11 'o clock
-HIGH: dimed (5 'o clock)
-MID FREQ: dimed (5 'o clock)
-MID: 3.5 'o clock.

The MID will be SO decisive in your tone in the fortunate event that you will buy this pedal.

The gain on this thing is extremely dynamic, and if you want to play some blues, you can EASILY make it SING. What I did was roll the gain down, select my neck pickup and, because I had active pick-ups, I rolled my tone knob exactly halfway down. It got me a great neck pickup Gibson tone that was really full and you could really feel the tons of body the tone had.

The tones coming out of this little black box are biting, aggressive, crunchy, bluesy... in one word AWESOME.
You've definitely gotta try this one!

Here's a sound sample of the pedal. Later one, I'll post the videos about this pedal, but as they all cover, many other pedals, I want you to know what the video is about.

BOSS RC-2

Today we're gonna talk about a type of pedal that can really kick your playing to the next level. I'm talking about the loop-station, more precisely, the BOSS RC-2. Yeah, a compact pedal again, I want to get to review them ALL, and even better, post my own videos demoing them. These being said, the RC-2 is a magnificent tool holding no less than 16 minutes recording time. In my opinion, when talking about such a small tool, this is IMPRESSIVE. This is topped by some really GOOD drum patterns, way better and more realistic than what you'd find in your cheapo guitar effects processor's drum machine; an auxiliary input, to record signal from an external source (like, for example, other drum patterns, a backing track, etc.); undo/redo; footswitchable with an external BOSS controller to navigate through phrases etc.; 11 phrases can be stored and recalled.

Here's it's demo, hosted by none other than Johnny DeMarco. Unfortunately, it's one of his sloppy demos (actually, the first sloppy DeMarco demo I've seen):

BOSS DD-3

The BOSS DD-3 is a remarkable digital delay pedal with three delay modes and a very interesting hold mode. It's the entry level stompbox in the BOSS DD series.
So what's it all about?
If you've looked at the photo, you'd probably figured: the "MODE" knob, the last one, controls the delay time range that the "D. TIME" knob controls. The first position allows the "D. TIME" knob to control a range between 12.5ms and 50ms, the second position allows for the control of the 50ms - 200ms range, lastly, the third position allows for control in the 200ms - 800ms range. The "HOLD" option holds your delay forever allowing you to create some interesting effects.
The feedback knob controls the intensity of the delay.
Finally, the level knob is quite self explanatory.

Here's BOSS' mp3 demo of the stompbox:

BOSS TU-2

The BOSS TU-2 is a stompbox chromatic tuner (a tuner in a pedal!) that delivers all that you'd expect from it.

Here are some of the features:
-BIG BRIGHT LEDS YOU CAN SEE ON STAGE (really important for a tuner!)
-special BOSS tuning system: the LEDs move slower as the string reaches perfect pitch, and faster if you get farther away from it
-adjustable reference pitch: from 438Hz to 445Hz
-a wide tuning range of 8 octaves
-several tuning modes including: chromatic, guitar regular, guitar flat, guitar double flat, bass regular, bass flat, bass double flat (personally, I prefer chromatic ALWAYS)
-the tuning modes and display style are stored in the memory of the device
-footswitch mutes, bypasses and shuts off LEDs to preserve power.

It doesn't have:
-BOSS' AccuPitch (some BOSS tuners have this, the tuner beeps when the string is perfectly in tune so that you may "maintain eye contact with your fellow bandmates"; even if it did, it wouldn't have been of much use)
-a mic (nor would anyone expect it)
-a beep to a reference pitch (ex: A440)
-a metronome

The things it doesn't cover are covered BETTER in the other BOSS tuners, the TU range being: BOSS TU-2, BOSS TU-12, BOSS TU-12H, BOSS TU-15 and, finally the TU-80 (which also has a nifty little metronome).