I had this stomp box for a while now, and at this moment this is my primary distortion unit. For those of you unfamiliar with this unit, here’s the description straight from the Boss web page:
The OS-2 gives players a choice of overdrive or distortion or lets them combine both–all in a single compact pedal. Its distortion maintains the subtle nuances of single-coil guitar pickups.
- Flexible distortion pedal capable of producing blended overdrive/distortion sounds
- Provides both “over-the-top” distortion sounds and less extreme overdrive tones for rhythm playing
- Includes Level, Tone, Drive and Color controls for precise tonal shaping
- BOSS 5-year warranty
Okay, basically this unit is a combination of overdrive and distortion sound in one compact stomp unit. It has 4 control pots: drive, tone, level and color. The level knob changes the sound level, drive changes the amount of overdrive or distortion, tone shapes the tone (treble/bass), and the color knob changes how much of the sound is overdrive and how much is distortion. Like any Boss pedals, it’s pretty easy to use, but finding a good tone is a little tricky.I would not say that the process of finding the sound you desire on this pedal is very easy. The possibility of blending Overdrive and Distortion signals, on one hand offers more versatility, but it will also take one considerably more time to figure out the way it works (what settings to use, to achieve the desired sound).
The key to this pedal is that the range of sounds is very wide, I have great sounds in all settings, depends on what kind of tone your trying to get/what your playing. but it can do it all. you can get a nice overdrive if you want, or get some pretty heavy distortion and everything in between. Thanks to the tone knob you can make it crisp with the high frequency area and with the low frequencies it shall sound just as good, deep and blunt.
What sets it apart from other Boss pedals is the fact that you can “blend” the sound of the overdrive section and the distortion, creating sounds that are likely impossible to do with just one single stomp box.
From what i know the overdrive section sounds similar to the Boss SD-1, but with a more vintage sound to it, with more mid hump sound and less bass than the SD-1, while the distortion part is similar to Boss DS-1, but the distortion is somewhat fuzzier to my ear, compared to the piercing DS-1 tone.
My favorite setting is with the color knob at dead noon (12 o’clock everybody), drive at about 11 o’clock, and the tone knob just barely open (like about 8 o’clock). The reason is that the drive section really lacks bass, while the distortion has too much of them, so the middle is where I found the most pleasing. The tone is very trebly that even pass 9 o’clock it cuts my ear, that’s why I don’t turn it too much.
I also find that this unit only sounds good if you put it in front of a slight overdriven amps. Forget about clean amps, it will disappoint you. I used it in front of a clean Marshall Plexy once and it sounded sterile and harsh..let alone on a clean transistor amp. It just happens that I always set my combo tube amp (crate Vintage Club 20) slightly overdriven, so my amp loves this pedal.
Conclusion : I really like this pedal, it has a wide range of sound at your disposal, and it has a nice tone to it. I just wish that the overdrive had more bass to it (there’s a mod to fix it, but I’d rather use Eq pedal). I’m still searching for a more “cooked” sound stomp box that would sound good even on a clean amp, maybe I’ll search around for some Marshall Jackhammer..but for now this nice pedal will do.
http://www.myspace.com/duasisi
You can hear examples of the Boss OS-2 in our songs there
