The world's most disappointing pedal?

Jeremiah

The accelerator in my dad's car

bbill335

Kebabkid said:

Sassafras said:

bbill335 said:

Way Huge Pork Loin. Somehow either too boomy or too harsh, baffling not-clean-clean-blend. Probably kicks ass on bass but for six string, no thanks.

I understand the boomy bit, they do kick out a lot of bass, but harsh?

What amp and guitar? I've never found it to be harsh and bass can be tamed.

Have you checked the internal dip switches to see where they're set, if it's still with you?

Moved it on. I bought it on a whim as the Broadcast is everything I need, everything else is luxury.

Tried it with a LP copy, strat, tele, mustang into a Traynor YGM3, which has powerful treble/bass controls. Tried stacking it, tried all the internal controls. The best setting I found was to dirty up the clean signal and use that with the overdrive circuit turned all the way down.

frank1985

Tonal Recall was quite disappointing...sounded flat to me, but I hear the mk2 is an improvement. 

Teetonetal

frank1985 said:

Tonal Recall was quite disappointing...sounded flat to me, but I hear the mk2 is an improvement. 

Agree - not worth the money by a long, long shot. compared to the DOD Rubberneck, it is very lacking. Not tried the red version.

Sporky

bbill335 said:

I feel like the Metal Zone isn't a disappointment as it would (probably) meet my every (low) expectation

The MetalZone is excellent. Anything from mild just-breaking up to fantastic paint-stripping fuzz.

You just need to use your ears and the controls together. Massively underrated pedal.

kjdowd

BBBlues said:

Lazy J Crusier deuce for me. Fizzy top end dirt. 

Possibly the most ‘amp dependent’ OD I’ve owned. 

mbe

Our singer used one of those Behringer Acoustic pedals to feed a piezo pickup in a cheap Tanglewood without preamp into the PA.   

Sounded really good, no problems or distortion. There's either something wrong with your Behringer pedal or the way you are using it.

My vote for World's worst pedal is Boss Blues Driver. It's the FX pedal equivalent of a Phil Collins album.

AlexC

Boss. Disappointing in the sense that they’re not worth the price. They’re existing off the fact that they’re ‘a name’. Would it hurt to upgrade those 1980s tones? Oh, sorry... it’s a classic sound. That’s alright then. Here’s £95 for some distortion.

ICBM

AlexC said:

Boss. Disappointing in the sense that they’re not worth the price. They’re existing off the fact that they’re ‘a name’. Would it hurt to upgrade those 1980s tones? Oh, sorry... it’s a classic sound. That’s alright then. Here’s £95 for some distortion.

They’re much better value for money than almost any other pedals. Better-made, more reliable and usually better-sounding than anything cheaper, and cheaper and usually more reliable than anything that sounds better.

There is a reason why most pro musicians still use them - a few almost exclusively.

richardhomer

ICBM said:
They’re much better value for money than almost any other pedals. Better-made, more reliable and usually better-sounding than anything cheaper, and cheaper and usually more reliable than anything that sounds better.

There is a reason why most pro musicians still use them - a few almost exclusively.

Apart from my volume pedal, every pedal I now own is Boss. Some are older classics (a couple of CE-2s and a CS-2) - along with newer models (TU2 & 3, DD-7).

They are brilliantly ergonomic, very robust, very reliable - I’ve only had one fail in 30+ years of using Boss pedals. No other range is as consistently good in my view.

Fez

I haven't bought any pedals that I have been really disappointed with. The Behringer OD I got free with a magazine subscription is a bit crap but not a whole lot worse than some more expensive pedals. 

UnclePsychosis

AlexC said:

Boss. Disappointing in the sense that they’re not worth the price. They’re existing off the fact that they’re ‘a name’. Would it hurt to upgrade those 1980s tones? Oh, sorry... it’s a classic sound. That’s alright then. Here’s £95 for some distortion.

-1980s tones? it's really terrible when guitar sounds are stuck in the past.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to play my telecaster through my fuzz face and bassman. 

gearaddict

I don't really get on with Boss either. I really wanted to because they are iconic and just so neat. But I've always found the sounds average and they are often noisy. And quite expensive. I tried the Boss delays but found them sterile-sounding and very hissy. My Marshall echohead is just as well built, sounds loads better and was a lot cheaper. The graphic equaliser (GE7?) is so noisy as to be virtually unusable. Having been advised on here to get one, as soon as I did get one the same people said "ok, now you need to mod it to get rid of the hiss". Lols.

Generally, if they sound so great stock then why is there such a healthy modification market? Just saying...

meltedbuzzbox

ICBM said:

AlexC said:

Boss. Disappointing in the sense that they’re not worth the price. They’re existing off the fact that they’re ‘a name’. Would it hurt to upgrade those 1980s tones? Oh, sorry... it’s a classic sound. That’s alright then. Here’s £95 for some distortion.

They’re much better value for money than almost any other pedals. Better-made, more reliable and usually better-sounding than anything cheaper, and cheaper and usually more reliable than anything that sounds better.

There is a reason why most pro musicians still use them - a few almost exclusively.

They're not much better value though are they?
You can get multi fx pedals for the price of one waza pedal.

Sound wise I personally think they are bang average. If they were all conquering as you often make out you wouldn't have the volume of manufacturers that you do now days. Also bare in mind that several pedal manufacturers started life offering mods to boss pedals to make them sound better.

Older musicians, yes they use boss. Like older forum members seem to gravitate to Boss. Newer bands not so much.

I do tend to find it's generally you guys that are into your forties and beyond that bang the boss drum the most.

Now days Boss are a company playing catch up to the likes of strymon, eventide, earthquaker devices etc
They've even dropped their best feature, the big paddle foot switch from their current 500 flagship range and opted for footswitches like everyone else.

They will only go so far on reissuing old pedals.

@AlexC I think you have hit the nail on the head fella. Generally all you get in a boss pedal are 80s tones (although there are some exceptions)

bbill335

Guys on TDPRI and US forums always bang on about how cheap secondhand Boss stomps are but that's never *seemed* to ring true on our eBay.

My favourite Boss stuff is the Roland/Fender modelling stuff like the RE20 and FRV1. Admittedly, I have limited experience with their ODs/Distortions other than the DS1 and DS2, which aren't my thing.

ICBM

gearaddict said:

The graphic equaliser (GE7?) is so noisy as to be virtually unusable.

That's a fair comment, and it baffles me why they've never fixed this very well-known issue - and the SD-1's famous bypass bleed-through as well. Neither would be hard to do.

However, the Marshalls aren't just as well-made - the switches break. Boss ones don't, or at least so rarely it's essentially never compared to anything else, especially anything that uses a mechanical switch. I've replaced only four Boss footswitches in over thirty years of professional repair work.

gearaddict said:

Generally, if they sound so great stock then why is there such a healthy modification market? Just saying...

Because people seem to like to fiddle with stuff. Personally, I've tried a few modded Boss pedals and found them no real improvement over the stock version. (Other than de-hissed GE-7s.)

meltedbuzzbox said:

I do tend to find it's generally you guys that are into your forties and beyond that bang the boss drum the most.

Maybe because they're the pedals we have found most consistent and best over the last thirty years and more... new stuff comes and goes.

meltedbuzzbox said:

They've even dropped their best feature, the big paddle foot switch from their current 500 flagship range and opted for footswitches like everyone else.

This massively annoys me. Admittedly the switches only look like 3PDTs, but I still dislike that they've thought it necessary to do that, and I probably won't buy one.

Boss fixed the problems with mechanical footswitching nearly forty years ago now, and it should have stayed fixed. If the Boss buffered switching isn't perfect - and it isn't - then the right solution should have been to develop buffered switching that is, not reintroduce the crap way of doing it... only with even less reliable switches than the big SPDT/DPDTs of the past.

shaunm

I’m going to vote for the Carbon Copy. 

I understand and why people like them, I should like it (on paper) but it’s just so dark and it really adds too much to my tone. I just want delays. 

I went back to my Boss DD3 for long delays and a Deep Blue Delay for my short slap backs. 

To get involved in the convo, Boss pedals are great but because you can buy them as a teenager I think people perceive that you should grow out of them and buy better. And you can but it’s so marginal in a lot of instances. Take the Tremolo pedal they have, it’s ace and does exactly what it’s meant to do. It’s not especially amp like and Vintage but if that’s not what you’re after it’s perfect.

Sassafras

meltedbuzzbox said:

I do tend to find it's generally you guys that are into your forties and beyond that bang the boss drum the most.

Because with age comes great wisdom.
  

MikkiMcMurderer

Anything branded Jimi Hendrix I have always found to be bad enough to return...

meltedbuzzbox

Sassafras said:

meltedbuzzbox said:

I do tend to find it's generally you guys that are into your forties and beyond that bang the boss drum the most.

Because with age comes great wisdom.
  

Or stubbornness and an unwillingness to change :-p