Drunk Beaver's second Limited Pedal Drop is the fantastic Mykolaiv Grunge extended Slider-EQ take on Boss's PW-2 Power Driver

The timing of Vitalii Bobrov’s second Pedal Drop is ingenious as back in the day (1996) Boss launched the PW-2 Power Driver as its supposed ’Grunge’ pedal of choice in the wake of that genre’s negative impact on Boss’s Metal Pedal sales. While ironically Kurt Cobain was using his Boss DS-1 Distortion to craft a very memorable flavour of Grunge all of his own. So you could say that Boss already had a ’Grunge’ pedal of choice in the guise of the DS-1. And as a result the PW-2 was never properly supported and did not take off as intended!

Boss launched its improved Waza-Craft Edition of its actual de facto ’Grunge’ pedal just yesterday - the DS-1W, and on the following day we’re getting a significantly improved take on Boss’s PW-2 intended ’Grunge’ pedal. Which I’ve always said is actually the closest Boss has ever come to a Big Muff type sound - not really in circuit topology - but in its tone, timbre and sustain. I have and love the PW-2 and it’s one of my favourite unsung Boss pedals that deserved to do so much better and be held in higher regard. While we can never forget that Roland’s 2 most influential products of all time were also categorical failures at their time of launch - the TB-303, and TR-808.

So it’s really cool that Vitalii is reviving the fortunes of this PW-2 pedal type via an entirely new 3-Band Slider-EQ custom derivation. He attests to the fact that the reason there are so few PW-2 clones out there is because the existing schematics online are frighteningly erroneous - and he had to correct for all manner of inaccuracies in developing this limited run pedal.

The controls of the discontinued PW-2 Power Driver were - Level, Fat (Lows), Muscle (Mids), and Drive. Or essentially 2-Band EQ - while as Vitalii’s new and improved take gives you active 3-Band EQ sliders - where you can flip the target frequencies of the Fat and Muscle Bands, while the Scream upper Band stays fixed at circa 3kHz or very specifically 2775 Hz! Those frequency bands have been very carefully selected here for maximum impact!

Controls - Level, Drive, EQ toggle-switch, Fat Lows Band - 130 / 80Hz, Muscle Mids Band - 1070 / 890Hz, and Scream Highs Band - 2775Hz.

The core circuit consists of a JFETs Buffer into discrete Opamp (widely used on Boss FZ-2, OD-2, OD-3, and BD-2 pedals), with no clipping diodes / raw FETs + PNP BJT clipping - into 3 band (2 band in original) gyrator based EQ (peak filters, like for HM-2, HM-3, and MT-2 etc.) and then finally out through a BJT output buffer.

Since the original JFETs used are obsolete (2SK184-GR), Vitalii used their SMD equivalent by Toshiba - the 2SK208-GR. He also used the same Opamp (used in EQ part) as the original Mitsubishi M5218 in SIP-8 format (single line op-amps widely used by Boss in almost all of their pedals). In addition to the 2 EQ bands of the original, Vitalii further added a further high-mids/highs band at 2775Hz.

The EQ toggle-switch gives you different frequency options for the Fat Lows and Muscle Mids bands.

Vitalii describes the frequency impact as follows ;

• Fat can take you from 130Hz per the original to 80Hz (low E frequency) with EQ switch flipped
• Muscle goes from 1070Hz in the original to 890Hz
• The Scream Highs Band is entirely new at a constant 2775 Hz

The 80Hz + 890Hz bands are frequencies more closely aligned to a HM-2’s.

At noon the EQ Sliders do almost nothing, but can boost or attenuate each frequency band, those particular ones have pretty high Q bandwidth values (3+), so more boost/attenuation, but narrower frequency bands, for example a Q bandwidth of 2.87 gives you 1/2 an octave, while a Q of 1.41 delivers a whole octave.

I’m totally onboard for this release and have a Mykolaiv Grunge with my name on it as such - heading my way imminently.

Any PW-2 fans among you? I think these will go very quickly - only 15 in total were made! So you have to get your skates on.

As before there are no demos released for the Pedal Drop series - rapid prototyping means they’re on sale as soon as they have been aseembled!

Pricing is $175 and the Mykolaiv Grunge is available right now from the Drunk Beaver Reverb.com Store.