12 Essential Compact Edition Boss Modulation Pedals

Controls - 4 push buttons of increasing intensity, and where 2 can be selected simultaneously for further nuance, Mode : Standard Dimension C / SDD-320 (Dimension D).

This obviously started with Roland's 1979 SDD-320 Dimension D Rack Unit - which was most famously used on Prince's Purple Rain intro. Boss describes it as a Spatial / Spectral Enhancer - while I prefer to call it a phasey-chorus - where multiple phase-lines are fed back into each other for a bright-accented pristine sort of chorusing effect. As Dan describes it, this has significantly less bottom-end than the CE-2. Which boss describe as sparkling high-fidelity!

I believe the perfect Purple Rain Setting is just the 3-rd button pressed in (were I go for a little more typically as 3+4), while there are 10 possible combination settings here as you can combine any two buttons in an increasing pattern of intensity, i.e. : 1, 1+2, 1+3, 1+4. 2, 2+3, 2+4, 3, 3+4, 4.

The beauty of this device is the simplified controls - there really isn't a simpler Chorus-style effect to deploy than this one - albeit it is not exactly a chorus! Still probably my overall favourite Boss Modulation.

Controls - Decay, Manual / Vowel 2, Sensitivity / Vowel 1, Mode : Up/Down/Sharp/Humanizer/Tempo.

Actually a really elegant shimmery flaked pale gold enclosure which alas often renders as a dull tan colour in photographs. This is a hugely versatile pedal which combines both more conventional Auto Wah, as well as Vocal-Wah Vowel Sound flavours. It's somewhat under the radar of late in the face of some stiff competition - like say the Flower Pedals Hosta Wah-Filter. While the AW-3 is actually every bit as impressive as that with all its many modes and playback variations.

You have 3 conventional Auto Wah Settings which represent toe-down and heel-down actions, but are more easily discovered as different frequency focuses - with Down being Low, Up being High, and Sharp being brighter still. I find the Sharp mode is the best for the Wah tones I'm affter - it will vary based on your rig and what tones you're specifically looking for. Then you of course have the Humanizr / Vocalizer / Vocal-Wah - where the Wah renders as a series of vowel sounds that you select on the middle two dials or a,e,i,o,u x2. Select o and e for some Morris Day and the Time O-E-O Jungle Love action!

The AW-3 will be ousting the Flower Pedals Hosta Wah-Filter for the next couple of rotations - both that and the Hosta have their own strengths and it makes sense that they share that same #4 pedal-chain slot!

Controls - Manual, Depth, Rate, Resonance.

So the Boss Flanger to own is the original MIJ Analog BF-2 with the Black Knobs and Red Markers. I have a later MIT edition with White/Tan Knob Tops - but which has been modded by Alchemy Audio with superior noiseless parts - metal film capacitors etc. So although mine doesn't look quite as cool as the original MIJ version it actually functions slightly better!

This is another classic Series 2 Modulation, and while the later BF-3 Digital Flanger is an excellent candidate too, its forebear has slightly more gooey analog nuance. This is typically the trade-off you have as the newer editions have extended feature set while the predecessors render rather more warmer and organic.

The Boss BF-2 probably has to concede to the EHX Electric Mistress as the original King of Flange - while I really like both and deploy then somewhat differently.

Since I acquired my ThorpyFX Camoflange, the BF-2 hasn't had that much action on that slot - no doubt its time will come again. There are lots of fans of this earlier Boss Flanger - which means it could potentially be another candidate for Waza Craft revival one of these days. It's overall quite a different beast to the EXH Electric Mistress. While I use both mostly for EVH style flavours!

Controls - Balance/Rise Time, Shift/Harmony, Fall Time/Key, Mode : S-Bend/Detune/Pitch Shifter/minor/Major.

The PS-6 is such an underrated pedal, where it offers so much. I myself have been guilty of overlooking it in the past, while it's one of the most versatile and easy-to-dial in Pitch-Shifters and has all kinds of tricks up its sleeve!

It does the Tom Moreello and Dimebag Darrell Whammy Effects brilliantly via S-Bend Mode - so a very suitable substitute for a Whanmy/Whammy Ricochet for those flavours. It can also do fantastic synth-like chord pads - with really strong tracking, and a sort of weird and wonderful wobbly modulation where you play over a long decay/fall time, and don't allow any of the notes to fully resolve before you play another.

Obviously it does the Pitch-Shifter and 3-Voice Harmonies really well, and the Detune mode offers a cool moving modulation. This has just recently gone in the pedal-chain in place of the Meris Hedra. The Hedra has that pitch-shifted delay thing and slightly more granularity - while the PS-6 matches many of its other constituent parts in a somewhat simpler and easier-to-set-up manner.

There are plenty of cool Harmonizers out there, but this is now my overall favourite - partly because of how good the tracking is, and how easy it is to setup and dial it in.

Controls - Balance : Direct > EFX, Tonę (Brightness), Detune, Mode : 1/2/3 (Depth/Intensity).

This is the most recent of Boss's Modulation types and works by enhancing and modulating the natural harmonics generated by your guitar. The Three Modes vary in depth and intensity and can of course be tempered by Balance (Dry>Wet Mix) and Tone. While Detune adds some cool modulation / movement to the tones.

Mode 1 is very much a sort of synth pad sound, Mode 2 is sort of like a 12-string type of sound, and Mode 3 delivers Low and High Octaves into the mix as a sort of barrel organ tone. The pedal is stereo, fully polyphonic and features Boss's proprietary Multi-Dimensional Processing Modelling Technology. Parts here are sort of POG like - but there are a lot of other different tones on tap, including a sort of synthetic steel drum timbre - so plenty of scope for variety - and with significant range on each of those dials.

Note that this is another extremely attractive sparkly shimmery flake paint job enclosure - which most pictures don't do full justice to!

Generally the different Modes can be seen to ramp up the intensity of the effect as you step through the higher values. This is another Boss pedal that often gets overlooked - everyone should try one, as you will likely be nicely suprised by what you get out of it.

Controls - Direct Level, +1 Octave Level, -1 Octave Level, -2 Octave Level / Range, Mode : Vintage OC-2/Polyphonic. Guitar/Bass Selector on rear.

There's still a healthy debate between the preference for OC-2 or OC-5 editions. Obviously the OC-5 has a broader feature set and an extra octave over and above the OC-2, while the original is entirely analog and has some really great analog nuances which present themselves particularly well for Bass Guitarists.

So it seems a lot of bassists still prefer the OC-2, while I feel the OC-5 is preferable for guitarists. I actually run it on mine in Bass Mode (rear switch), and with the custom switch set to Vintage OC-2 - obviously a monophonic output for that, but slightly more textured output overall.

The Polyphonic Mode does some cool things with the Range Dial so that the octave effect only impacts the lowest notes and you can do a kind of bassline accented playback with the other strings rendering without the effect.

Some will always say that the analog variety will sound better, while the tracking and everything else is improved on the OC-5 and I really love the output I get with it - across those 4 octaves when you include the Dry/Direct signal of the root. Obviously in Polyphonic Mode you lose the 4th / 2nd Sub-Octave.

I feel this is the best compact octaver currently on the market, while my CopperSounds Triplegraph offers some more dynamic playback possibilities at a significantly larger footprint.

Controls - Rate, Depth, Resonance.

This is the follow-up enhancement to 1977's original PH-1 4-Stage Analog Phaser - with added Resonance control. I feel this is Boss's best Phaser - obviously properly analog, and with a lot more texture courtesy of that added Resonance pot.

Funnily enough there are two key versions for this one too - where the more sought after variety is the one where the PH-1R lines up with the 's pf 'Phaser'', while on later versions the alignment changed to the 'e' of 'Phaser' so the designation reference slightly shifted to the right!

There are often some circuit / component changes that occur when the version changes while I understand that for most of the 'e' versions the circuit remained the same, and was only tweaked slightly for the final batches.

There are two camps of phaser fans that subscribe to either MXR's Phase 90 or Boss's PH-1R Phaser as the King of that category. Obviously MXR won the colour war - with orange the accepted reference colour for phasers, while Ibanez took command of Green courtesy of its popular Tube Screamers.

The Boss PH-1R is far more nuanced and textured than the Phase 90 and is usually my preferences. While I do also deploy an MXR Phase 95 on occasion - again mostly on EVH duties!

Controls - Sensitivity, Attack Speed.

This elegant effect is a sort of Attack/Decay / Volume Swell with just two simple controls - Sensitivity, and Attack (Speed). The first sets the dynamic threshold, and the second is a sort of combined Attack/Decay control where you select the speed of onset and decay. The swell component is somewhat automatic.

Interestingly this supposedly uses exactly the same core circuit as the NF-1 Noise Gate, only with the exact opposite action of attack/swell versus just decay / limiting. Thera are other variations of this sort of circuit out there, and something like EHX's Attach/Decay offers rather more features and granularity over the control of the signal.

There is however something incredibly satisfying in deploying the Slow Gear, while it never really took off and got discontinued relatively quickly after it first appeared. This is a highly sought-after pedal and proper pristine examples trade hands for a lot of money - they only appear very rarely on Reverb.com, there is one on there currently for circa £540, but it is mis-labelled as 'Excellent' condition when at best it's a very good!

This is one of those I hope Boss will review as a Waza Craft Edition, while I'm not sure demand is necessarily sufficient to justify such - but considering the HM-2W which Boss said several times they absolutely would not reissue - it's more a matter of never-say-never. I would quite like one of these while the current pricing is a little rich for me.

Controls - Rate, Depth, Wave + Volume and x2 Rate Footswitch.

I was fairly surprised to clock that the TR-2 is actually a relatively recent modulation for Boss, quite a long way on from its original Series 2 equivalents, and it came after the PN-2 Stereo Tremolo/Pan - which also had just 3 controls.

I've long felt that Boss should reissue both of those with an additional 4th volume control, as a natural side effect of the Tremolo LFO waveform is a noticeable drop in volume. While the TR-2 seems to suffer a little more than the PN-2.

You can tell that the TR-2 is slightly flawed by the number of Modded versions available for that type - and I would only have this in a modded edition - as per my pictured Alchemy Audio version.

It's actually a beautiful sounding amp-like amplitude tremolo which performs brilliantly in every department, apart from the fact that it needs a little volume boost for my preferences.

We're probably due a TR-3 any time now - and here's hoping that Boss see fit to add the much needed volume / output control as recommended by most! The video reference here is for JHS's modded TR-2 as an example. I generally find Alchemy Audio's dual-concentric knob approach more elegant!

Controls - Rate, Depth, Mode : Square Wave Tremolo/Sine Wave Tremolo/Square Wave Pan/Sine Wave Pan.

So Boss's original Tremolo was also a Stereo Panner with Square Wave and Sine Wave Modes for each key effect. And besides the Mode selector, we have just a couple of controls - Rate, and Depth. As mentioned for the TR-2 I still think this could do with an extra volume control, while it's volume-drop is not as noticeable as on the later TR-2.

The PN-2 is somewhat more nuanced and textured than the TR-2 while they could both do with a more recent update really. I feel the PN-2 would make a great candidate for Waza Craft Edition as it is in high demand at the moment and typically goes for several hundred pounds equivalent.

As with many of those second-hand Boss pedals most of those are not properly condition-rated and and are overly hyperbolic in their descriptions and pricing. There's a few available on Reverb.com currently but none at the appropriate goldilocks level for my preferences.

Per Andy's above demo - this is a particularly great pedal for replicating Johnny Marr's How Soon is Now! tones.

Boss's Tremolos are not necessarily overall the strongest candidates around and certainly could do with some modern improvements - while they can sound really decent - just slightly under-powered at times.

Controls - Rate, Depth, Rise Time, Mode : Unlatch/Bypass/Latch, Mode : Standard/Custom (Higher Intensity).

It's fitting to end with another Prince favourite - actually revival of his much deployed VB-2. This is slightly more off-kilter than the CE-2 Vibrato - giving you full-on warbly sea-sick and alien spacey atmospherics even.

Props to Premier Guitar's John Bohlinger for playing the perfect Prince Controversy riff in the above demo. That's probably my favourite way to deploy this pedal - adding dimension to funky licks! The Opening Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds riff-off is also great!

Vibrato is often a little bit of a marmite effect - and I've been guilty of dismissing it before myself - while I really like it nowadays - both used subtly and with full flavour. Adds great texture and richness to gain pedals too. Lots of smart applications here, and can be more full-on then a Chorus Vibrato.

Effects are all about musicality really and finding clever ways to add texture and movement to your tones to enhance the feel of the song. Prince is my poster-child for VB-2, while Graham Coxon, Andy Summers, Nels Cline, and Michael Landau hase all used the VB-2 to great effect.