You’re my boy, Blue.

It’s 1995, Coolio’s “Gansta’s Paradise” is punching out one of the greatest pop drum & bass grooves ever recorded (IMHO) on high rotation, Oasis skyrocket into international stardom with the release of “Wonderwall”, U2 release what is the best part of BATMAN FOREVER with their single “Hold me, Thrill me, Kiss me, Kill me”…… and Boss release the BD2 Blues Driver, aimed at recreating a bluesy, valve like overdrive tone, changing the tonal palette available to guitarists for more than the next 20 years.

So what is it? Well, the Boss BD2 Blues Driver is one of the most popular Boss compact overdrive pedals ever to be released. As I mentioned above, it recreates a dark & bluesy valve-like overdrive tone. Going from a warning bark to a hair raising growl with the flick of the gain control.

Connection is nice & simple with this one (as all Boss Overdrive & Distortion pedals), your guitar connects to the INPUT, your OUTPUT connection sends signal to your amplifier’s input, 9v DC via power supply on the back or internal battery. Amp goes on, volume goes up & you can start stomping on the BD2 & tuning your settings.

The controls from left to right are nice, simple & familiar to those of you that have used an overdrive pedal before.

LEVEL controls the output volume of the effected/overdriven signal, we use this to set the volume balance or lack of balance against our dry, bypassed tone. The BD2 is capable of a reasonably large amount of volume so this can be used to reign in a higher-gain setting or push the volume into your amp to break it’s first valve stage up.

TONE sets the filtered range of our distorted signal just before the output, after the clipping stage. As is commonly found, anti-clockwise lets lots of the bottom end through & filters out the higher end. The middle filters a little bit of bass & a little treble, fully clockwise filters out bass & lets the treble response of the pedal pass through un-hindered. The EQ in a Blues Driver is actually a three band eq with the bass & middle set to maximum & the treble to minimum so by rolling the tone control forward you cut a lot more bass than you gain treble. I found this particularly helpful when using a bright guitar & using a lot of neck pickup. You can sit the tone control almost cranked & the bridge isn’t too sharp but the neck has a great response.

GAIN is the amount of clipping in the circuit. The BD2 doesn’t have a really-clean point so keeping it low for boosts & dialling it up for more aggressive overdrive tones is pretty simple. As the gain control increases from anti-clockwise to about halfway/12:00 we get some mild overdrive with a quick decay, once it gets over that 12:00 point the gain increases quite a bit, sharpening the tonal response into a harsher range with all that bottom end & mids being clipped this much. The gain range of the Blues Driver is somewhat of a polarising point amongst it’s users, some people will never go past 12:00 & others will never go below but using your guitar’s volume control, pickup options, stacking other pedals around it & controlling your dynamics through your playing technique is a great way to tame this little blue beast & let it out of the cage upon command. 

Who would us it? To my ears the BD2 is a really great overdrive pedal that offers a lot of presence to it’s users. While initially being aimed at blues guitar tones it is used in many different styles of modern music. Blues is easy, those neck pickup tones & dark response really allow some thick, syrupy melodies to take flight. Country players looking for just a little bit of bite without getting too sharp on the tone with brighter guitars like Strats & Telecasters. Then there’s a pretty decent array of those of us who want to push an amp into breakup, simulate an amp breaking up at reasonable volume or using it as the last stage in a stacked arrangement. If smooth overdrive with lots of sustain is your “only sound” then this isn’t going to jump out at you straight away, but once you realise the power that you have to run your smooth OD into the BD2 & create some incredibly dynamic & expressive sounds you may come around quickly. 

Does it do what it says it will do? It most certainly does, I was in the camp of “no I use smooth Overdrive & go to a big muff when I want aggression” camp for a while, using an SD1 & DS1 or an OD3 & a DS1 to get my range of distortion & overdrive but after really spending the time with it that I had with my usual go-tos, I found a new approach to how I could play with these darker sounds & layer them to provide contrast in the songs I was playing.

The build quality of any Boss pedal (as I’ve said before) is the pinnacle of pedal manufacturing. The enclosure is a magnificently simple & effective design, the controls are well labelled & easy to read, you could knee-slide across the stage & head-butt the footswitch & not miss your cue.

Would I use one live? – If I was playing a guitar with single coils the BD2 is a great choice to use live. It might be a little dark at short notice with some humbuckers I’ve used but I don’t tend to change my amp too much so it wouldn’t be hard to dial some treble in.

Would I recommend one to my mother?  I sure would, nice & simple to use, it’s great value for money.