Boss HM-2W Heavy Metal Waza Craft Edition is Green-Lit for 2021!

Anyone who sat in on today’s Boss Facebook Stream with President Yoshi Ikegami and our very good friend Matt Knight from Boss Europe will know that Boss has entered into a consultation period for a new Waza Craft Edition of the HM-2 Twin Peaks Heavy Metal / Swedish Death Metal Legendary High Gain Distortion Pedal. We’ve long been aware of its popularity - as can be seen by the myriad versions of clones and copycats - some of them very impressive indeed too - and which have taken on and evolved the circuit further.

I’ve forever been an advocate of this pedal and circuit, and there are several HM-2 support groups and even a dedicated HM2 Cult YouTube Channel. Earlier this year HM2 Cult was instrumental in getting a petition going to pressure Boss into finally making a follow-up to the pedal that was discontinued back in 1992. I’ve often speculated on this site about the viability of a Waza HM-2 - and Boss always advised / replied that the numbers didn’t look quite right. Now however, and based on increased fan pressure and further requests from dealers, Yoshi and Boss in general have come around to the fact that there is sufficient demand for an HM-2 Revival to make it a worthwhile exercise.

From my many years of debating the pedal and circuit, it seems to be that the general consensus is for a MT-2 style Waza extrapolation of the HM-2 - with the extended tone-shaping controls and an even beefier extreme mode - which can fill out the lower-mids slightly, as the HM-2 can sound a little thin and obviously spiky.

It’s important for it to retain its charged saturation and sizzle - but be open to a little more variety in delivery. I’m unconvinced by a Clean Blend really as that tempers the sizzle somewhat which to me kind of defeats the objective - but I guess that’s sort of preferable for Bass players in particular. I just want more control, more sizzle, and a little more balance in the lower register.

The custom Mode could be that extra weight in the low-mids. Some are asking for clipping options - while for this format I really believe just more of everything with more control would be the ideal best-fit-line solution - what say all of you. Are you onboard the HM-2 Train?

This is rather an unusual process for Boss - who rarely if ever accommodate customer input within the initial product development cycle. We customers and beta-testers and the like typically only get involved when Boss has a fairly finished product to share.

So these are significantly changed times that Boss are finally reaching out to and collaborating with the Community - more of that please says I!