Top 5 Rarest Boss Pedals

MarkGAK

Hello all.

I had a bit of time off recently and wanted to test out my green screen and presenting skills, so I made this video about rare Boss pedals. If you're into pedals, you might enjoy it. I'd really appreciate any feedback!

RMJ

Nice work! Subscribed.

MarkGAK

RMJ said:

Nice work! Subscribed.

Awesome. Cheers!

not_the_dj

Nice one. Well put together, and good presenting skills. From the list I'd only heard of the Slow Gear before.

EricTheWeary

not_the_dj said:

Nice one. Well put together, and good presenting skills. From the list I'd only heard of the Slow Gear before.

ditto on all that

xSkarloey

Great fun. 

I want a Zakk Wylde SD-1 now. A bottle of Tipp-Ex and a roll of black insulating tape should do it...

Johnnyseven

Nice video, although I thought there was a Zakk Wylde CH1 too with a slightly different paint job. I also believe one of the SD1's sold on ebay in the UK a year or so ago.

randomhandclaps

The biggest thing that struck me when some of those Boss pedal were on screen with you is just how big they were, no wonder they didn't make many of them.

Seriously though that was a great video and the right kind of  intensity and length to hold your attention

Voxman

Really interesting and very nicely done.

ICBM

I've owned the SP-1, SG-1 and VB-2, and I can understand why they're rare.

The Spectrum is just not very "effective" - it's essentially a stuck wah type sound, but less dramatic. Not actually bad, but I can't see many players finding it very useful. Apparently some bass players did though, I seem to remember JJ Burnel using one.

The Slow Gear is great, but unusable live because they forgot to add a boost control to compensate for the fact that the attack part of the note is where the perceived volume comes from, so if you remove it without drastically raising the level then you suddenly become inaudible in the mix. There's also quite a learning curve to picking just staccato enough to allow it to re-trigger on every note, and if you get it wrong the next note comes out at full volume.

The Vibrato just made me feel seasick . Neil Finn and Roland Orzabal were users though, so I may have just not been creative enough to get the best out of it.

The SP-1 I bought and sold for a small profit, I can't remember how much, it was a very long time ago. The VB-2 I bought and sold for the same price, £40 I think - also a long time ago. The SG-1 was the best… bought for £20 in Cash Generator, and sold for £100 on Ebay immediately after the first band practice I tried it at!

dogload

Yes, I remember being incredibly disappointed when I tried out a Slow Gear when they came out. I was well into Steve Hillage and used a volume pedal, but thought the SG1 would save all that foot-work. WRONG!

As ICBM says, the necessity for precise picking and the fact that you were stuck with the fixed attack velocity made it useless to me. Wish I'd bought one now though.

The Vibrato pedal was a no-go for me then. And I really can't see the appeal. I'll make do with my Dano Chicken Salad!

Johnnyseven

Graham Coxon is a noted user of the VB2, you can hear it on the Blur song Tender. I had the Behringer knock off and from it sounded much better with a unaffected sound blended in

ICBM

Johnnyseven said:

Graham Coxon is a noted user of the VB2, you can hear it on the Blur song Tender. I had the Behringer knock off and from it sounded much better with a unaffected sound blended in

But that just makes it a chorus .

Gassage

ICBM said:

The Spectrum is just not very "effective" - ..... I seem to remember JJ Burnel using one.

Then it's great. Or are you going to argue with the hardest man in rock n roll?

ICBM

Gassage said:

ICBM said:

The Spectrum is just not very "effective" - ..... I seem to remember JJ Burnel using one.

Then it's great. Or are you going to argue with the hardest man in rock n roll?

Me? No. He can have all of them if he wants!

I can understand why it might have worked well for him actually - he used Marshall guitar heads if I remember rightly, and you can probably get a tighter overdriven sound for bass with them if you narrow the frequency range a bit.

Gassage

@ICBM

He is often forgotten in terms of truly great bassists, but I'd have him right up there. You always know it's JJ the moment you hear a couple of notes- that's the sign of a great player. One of the all time greats IMO.

And, by far the coolest bassist ever!

Gassage

ADD: JJ used to use old Marshalls, but for eons he's been an Ashdown endorsee. Woe betide them if they forget to pay him...two kicks to the head and they'd be down...

http://ashdownmusic.com/products/1/5a0/17/Signature-Series-/83/JJB500/

Voxman

@ICBM - Not surprised at your comments -rarity and value doesn't mean that the pedals are great from a playing perspective. Unlike something like the Roland CE1 chorus ensemble which is arguably the best sounding chorus pedal ever made and are as rare to find being sold as rocking horse droppings! >:D<

glynes

Rare is a relative term I guess. There's always tons of Slow gears on ebay and they're even more common on japanese auction sites and shops. Should have called it "Top 5 most expensive boss pedals" because you missed out the only production boss pedal that can be somewhat challenging to find.

Branshen

I got the vb2 for 15 quid about a year back from Denmark Street. I don't know why they sold it as broken. It worked fine for me. Maybe they tested it in bypass mode.. Made a tidy profit on it.

ICBM

Branshen said:

I got the vb2 for 15 quid about a year back from Denmark Street. I don't know why they sold it as broken. It worked fine for me. Maybe they tested it in bypass mode.. Made a tidy profit on it.

That bypass mode was odd! Why???

They also might have tested it in unlatch mode with the rise time set high, and thought the switching was faulty. I got one of my DF-2s cheap because "the feedbacker doesn't work" - the owner didn't realise you have to hold the pedal down. Although I did have another one where the feedbacker genuinely didn't work too - dead chip.