Boss
Personally I'm not too much of a Boss fan. However, over time some of their boxes have slipped into my collection (And some (like the DD-2/3) were kicked out pretty fast) and there are some among them that are pretty good fun to play around with. One thing I disagree on is the statement that a Boss will never break down. Apart from that a pedal like the DS-1 contains a design flaw which causes distorted signal to leak to the output when the thing is bypassed. Weird.. Of all the effects I repaired over the last few years the biggest percentage was Boss. Not too strange considering the amount of stompers Boss has sold over the years.
Chorus Ensemble CE-1
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And, while not being a real Boss fan, this is the chorus I am a fan of. Especially the vibrato setting and connected in stereo is absolutely great. I've had multiple of these around lately for modification to True Bypass (and in this case I agree it shold be made TB) and repair. I expect that quite many of these will start to break down over the next few years as all failures I've seen with these boxes are related to ageing of components. A problem similar to the ageing problems seen with older tube amplifiers. Drying out caps and the like. |
Chorus CE-2 (metal screw version)
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A classic chorus. Get one and never let it go.
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Chorus CE-3
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The CE-3 is often referred to as not that good as a CE2. This may be the case but it's still a good chorus
pedal and can be picked up pretty cheap. For me it was my first decent chorus.
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Super Overdrive SD-1
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Bougth this fella from an online add without a photo. What can be wrong with a SD-1? Well,
the knobs were missing. For the larger 2 it's easy to find a replacement. The smaller one was
kindly given to me by Martin Lister from the The Decoders. Thanks a million for that Marty!
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Turbo Overdrive OD-2
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Don't know what to make of this pedal. As soon as I got rid of it in my setup I dropped the EQ in that same setup as well. Good distortion but not for my taste. However, I do like the all discrete design.
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T Wah TW-1
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Cheap BIN on ebay because defective. It's fixed now. This puppy is a little too limited for me in it's capabilities. If using some kind of envelope filter I'd turn to my Ibanez AFL as it has a wider variety of tonal options.
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Rocker Wah WH-1
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New technologies aren't always better technologies. Apparently the Boss engineers wanted to get rid of the scratchy pots and developed a mechanism with a Hall sensor and a magnet to adjust frequency. Due to the characteristics of magnetic fields this results in a clear "step"
when the magnet is very close to the sensor and less effect when the distance between magnet and sensor increases. Other than that the pedal is powered with two 1.5 volts batteries and uses a DC/DC converter to get a decent voltage. Apart from the fact that I don't like DC/DC converters in audio
it was burned out and I found it impossible to determine the type of the converter used. It's still unrepaired but so far I never felt the urgency to fix it immediately.
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Hyper Metal HM-3
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What a piece of junk. I never understood why pedals like these are designed in the first place, let alone sold. At the other hand, this is the perfect answer to the Ibanez LA Metal..... but if that can be considered a compliment...
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DD-2 Digital Delay
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No description yet |
DSD-3 Digital Sampler Delay
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No description yet |
Heavy Metal HM-2
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Hello!!! Was the design team that came up with the CE-1 fired or something? Another piece of crap! Gain to the max or nothing at all, the low end control makes the sound muddy but not much more. The best way to get some good souns out of this
one if by setting the gain at max and controlling gain with the guitar volume level. This one is on the "to be modded" list. The schematic looks very promising for better results that the way this thing was designed.
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