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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
 Posted - 09/24/2008 : 12:35:27
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It seems that people who dislike this pedal fall into two categories:
~The ones who think the pedal should be clearer [brighter]
~The ones who would like the distortion to be more even [less harsh or bright]
From what I have read about people modding the pedal it seems that when you take away the brightness, the character of the pedal changes too much.
It seems that the brightness is part of the character of this pedal.
Now what I have overlooked in my other posts is the fact that this pedal was designed in the first place to clean up your guitarsound without loosing too much of your tone. The brightness seems to be an essential part of this application. Take that away and pedal may loose tone when you turn down your volume.
On a stock pedal does the pedal indeed not loose tone when you turn down your volume? No, not a 100%, but it does perserve your tone a little bit, although in an artificial way.
Listening on the Roland website to a demo of this pedal, the company had used a Strat for the demo. This pedal excells with single coil guitars really. All of the sample setting in the manual will work with a humbuck guitar, but the results are much better with a single coil guitar.
Okay now how to get rid of the harshness without modding the pedal?
One way to do it is by using an EQ after the BD-2, dial in more bass on EQ and set your gain on BD-2 at about quarter to, keep the tone on BD-2 at similar level and you should get a less brighter sound.
The natural brightness on the BD-2 seems to act like there is an exhiter in your signalchain. The pedal works very well on its own in an amp. Add more EQ or Exhiters and it gets too much very quickly.
The overdrive [boost] is quite natural on the pedal, it just kicks your amp into a higher volume. I have an amp which does have a natural boostcircuit. The amp is really a low volume amp. Using the booster and the amp gets louder, using then the BD-2 and the amp gets even louder, but the colour of the amp does not change that much. Excellent really since this is what probably most people are looking for when you use this pedal.
The gain on the BD-2 acts like a "wetness" knob: Try the Brish Blues setting from the manual, and the dist. is very "wet", go now to American Blues setting and the sound gets much dryer, sounding like you are playing through an old, simple valve amp. Using a really simple amp may enhance the pedal's features. I think using a modern modellling amp will do not much justice to this pedal thinking about what it is designed for. Better to use a simple, single channel amp,that is off course, if you have one in the first place!.
The pedal is great at giving you a natural brightboost [this is the cleancrunch setting in the manual]. Keep your ampvolume and pedalvolume fairly similar and you will hear the added brightness. Put volume much higher than your amp's volume and you will get a crunchy sound. This is the sound you hear on the Roland website. The volume on the amp is much higher than on the pedal. Great sound, but I prefer to keep levels of amp and pedal close to each other to get more "natural" results.
What else can the BD-2 do? Brighten up pedals like Tubescreamers [alwo will make them tighter!!], or pedals alike such as the SD-1. It can add more body and volume to the DS-1 without changing the character of its sound too much.
The unnatural fade out of the dist. is part of the pedal and its design. Other people did point this out earlier. I think you can work with it if you just give it some thought what the pedal was designed for in the first place, and when you think a bit about your set-up and how you want to use the pedal.
Using humbucks? In any setting you will get distortion all the way through. You will need to work with the volume on your guitar a lot. Yes it will clean up as well, but just need to use the volumecontrol a lot more agressively.
Personally I like what the pedal does on a Strat in its neckposition pick-up.
Much difference in the different pedals out there? I think it has to do with component-values, and yes they will vary, but the basic sound will be very similar all the way through. Mind you, the difference is in values, so older pedals do not sound better as such, you will just need to find one you like, and this could be a brand new one or a ten year old BD-2.
If you have a BD-2 and have been using it for a while, maybe you should try some different ones in a shop to see if there is a difference in sound and if it is worth your while changing the pedal.
Overal I would not get too upset about this issue as your ears may need to get used to how pedal sounds like and how different it reacts with different kind of guitars and in different gear set-ups.
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BD-2: Understanding and Applications
