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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
 Posted - 09/16/2008 : 12:10:48
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From all the Bosspedals, and in particular the overdrive and distortion pedals, I have discovered that the BD-2 is the one where there are bad versions and good versions.
I am not talking about a bit more bassresponse in older pedals or something like that, not simply a kind of sound which is not good.
Okay what is the matter then?
The trailoff point on some BD-2's is harsh, on some of them it is smooth and gradual.
By trail-off point I mean how the distorted sound fades away. Is it gradual or is it like it stops at a certain point?
How can you check this for yourself?
Play a powerchord of A as follows: Open A string and D string on 2nd fret. Make sure ampsound is clean, put controls on BD-2 on quarter to, play chord [use plectrum for sharper and clearer sound, no fingers!!!] and let ring. Listen to how the sound decays: Smooth or is there a break-off point at some point. A good one will sound until there is almost no sound anymore. A bad one will stop somewhere in the middle.
When you max out the drive control you will not hear it!! The pedal will sound smooth, but the sound is more saturated as well.
Okay subjective point here? Maybe, because I like the BD-2 to act as a subtle pedal.
If you max out the controls you may not mind its breaking point not being smooth.
How do I know that not all pedals will act the same? I tested some other ones. Have heard good ones and some bad ones.
The case is simpily a matter of cap. and trans. values. Most of them will vary with the result of giving you a smooth pedal or a not so smooth one.
What should you do if you have a bad one? Go through some other ones until you have found the one you like. You will need to listen, so just buying off Ebay may not be the idea. This matter is not related to age or anything, you will get new pedals which sound smooth and older pedals which will not sound so smooth.
Discovering this made me think about Eric Johnson and him going through a lot of Tubescreamers to find the good ones. Do you need good ears for this check then? No I think anyone will hear it, you just need to know what to listen out for. I have done these tests with other people around me and everyone else could hear it too.
Maybe some of your could tell me whether you have a smooth BD-2 or not. I would like to believe there are an awful lot of bad ones out there.
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FRANZONI
Double Platinum Member
Ireland
3543 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 15:12:54
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i think your on the right track when you talked about transistor values etc.....people should remember Boss/Roland and all the other companies are in business to make a profit as well as everything else also when your outsourcing parts it's posible that you regular supplier could be having problems so you might have to use another for various reasons including as Dr Bob says 'to keep the bean counters happy'..not a very good way of quality control but a fact of life in big business..leo fender used many different parts in the early days of fender and sometimes based on the supplier being the cheapest... and all the phooey written about the early fender stuff.... the good news is with all the tech people on the forum i'm sure a mod will or had already been found to improve the BD-2......
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Edited by - FRANZONI on 09/16/2008 15:13:42 |
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MullyFX
Gold Member
Germany
753 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 15:13:29
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| I always thought all Blues Drivers are like that... just like all Marshall Guv'nors and DriveMasters are like that... it emulates the beahviour of an overdriven tube amp... they sound the same.... |
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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
Posted - 09/16/2008 : 17:42:27
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I used to think among similar lines Mully, thinking pedal may be based on class A valve amp, but no, I believe they should fade out smoothly.
On the good side: If you do believe you have a bad sounding pedal and if you have bought your pedal new, do not hestitate to get in touch with your local dealer as Roland is quite helpful to give you a helping hand with these matters.
We should not forget the good things about this company when it comes to it, and when it comes to service to their customers I only have good words for them!!! |
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Goran
Double Platinum Member
Sweden
2203 Posts |
Posted - 09/17/2008 : 07:36:47
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Nice finding Visserman!!
I suppose things like this happens on many more pedals, the problem is that one person don�t have many pedals of the same model, e.g. 10 SD-1.
I have two TW-1, one of them (the newest one) sound way better than the other one and both of them are in working condition.
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 09/18/2008 : 20:31:25
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quote:
By trail-off point I mean how the distorted sound fades away. Is it gradual or is it like it stops at a certain point?
Visser:
this is what i consider the artifical "noise gate" effect. I've found a good number of boss pedals have this, especially when playing at lower volumes with the drive settings low.
with a lot of pedals, i've had several of the same model that have displayed this and generally i've often ditched them because of it. for the most part, i've found it's generally pedals that were designed/released in the 1990's, especially those with "domed" knbos. the PW-2, BD-2, HM-3, FZ-2, XT-2, MT-2, MD-2 etc. have all displayed this characteristic to me.
honestly, it is so offputting to me in some cases that i've flat out sold the pedals. the newer pedals that did not harbor this characteristic: OD-3, SD-2, ML-2, OS-2.
i've owned 4 BD-2's and all of them have displayed the artificial gate effect.
on many of them i've found that this effect didn't really go away until the distortion knob hit 3 o'clock, often at a point where the tone was so saturated and noisy that it was almost unusable.
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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2008 : 11:06:23
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quote:
Originally posted by Goran
Nice finding Visserman!!
I suppose things like this happens on many more pedals, the problem is that one person don�t have many pedals of the same model, e.g. 10 SD-1.
I have two TW-1, one of them (the newest one) sound way better than the other one and both of them are in working condition.
I just noticed on the homepage that the TW-1 did have a change of op-amps. I did not know that.
I have two of them as well, both of them are older versions, and they sound different as well. One of them is better in the down function, the other sound better in the up mode. They both distort easily, I guess the later op-amp did not do that, just as the FT-2.
Need to write more about the dynamic filter pedals but will do that in another post.
Oh on the issue of having 10 pedals of a particular type: Why not go to a shop and ask to check out all of them. I have done this many times and it is one way of getting around finding out about the best sounding pedal. I do find this interesting, but frustrating at the same time. Makes me often wonder why I do these things as the differences in sound are often very very small.
With the BD-2 I really felt there was a need to go into the "checking them all out" frame of mind again, just to see if my theory about the inferior sound was true. |
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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2008 : 11:22:01
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quote:
Originally posted by zentropa
quote:
By trail-off point I mean how the distorted sound fades away. Is it gradual or is it like it stops at a certain point?
Visser:
this is what i consider the artifical "noise gate" effect. I've found a good number of boss pedals have this, especially when playing at lower volumes with the drive settings low.
with a lot of pedals, i've had several of the same model that have displayed this and generally i've often ditched them because of it. for the most part, i've found it's generally pedals that were designed/released in the 1990's, especially those with "domed" knbos. the PW-2, BD-2, HM-3, FZ-2, XT-2, MT-2, MD-2 etc. have all displayed this characteristic to me.
honestly, it is so offputting to me in some cases that i've flat out sold the pedals. the newer pedals that did not harbor this characteristic: OD-3, SD-2, ML-2, OS-2.
i've owned 4 BD-2's and all of them have displayed the artificial gate effect.
on many of them i've found that this effect didn't really go away until the distortion knob hit 3 o'clock, often at a point where the tone was so saturated and noisy that it was almost unusable.
Zen,
I did not know at first what you meant with the artificial "noise gate". When you mentioned it before I have been trying to find out for myself to see if I could hear what you meant. I had a more gradual trail-off point in mind, and a point where the noise of the dist./overdrive stopped, just as what you get on a normal noise gate.
I can see your point, and like you, I also find this sound not pleasing and very unmusical.
I will check to see if any of my pedals you have mentioned here do have that trail off point as well. From memory I can say that my PW-2 and MD-2 are fine.
I think most of the pedals which do have this sound are the ones where you can obtain a clean, boost sound as well. Pedal like the XT-2, BD-2, OD-1 and SD-1.
The BD-2 I have now does have a little bit of the sound I described before but it will loose that sound when the controls are at about 12.00 o'clock, which is still way before the sound saturates.
Now the SD-2 in crunch mode does have this trail off sound as well, but when you increase the drive it looses this sound. Another point on the SD-2 in this mode: increasing drive just brings up volume, the character of the sound stays the same [No saturation issue here!!]. So really you can solve the "problem" easily. The pedal also reacts different to different amps, whereas the BD-2 does not seem to make much of a difference with this. |
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2008 : 20:16:15
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Visser:
you are correct that this problem goes away when you increase the saturation level of distortion. however, with some of the pedals, my "desirable" tone happens well before the heavy saturation point. with something like the XT-2 i would run the distortion at like 9 o'clock and the tone knobs at like 10 o'clock or lower. with this type of setup the sound abruptly stops well before the actual decay point. with the PW-2 i would dial back the drive and cut the bass almost completely and it happened badly as well.
i didn't have this happen with any of the 3 OD-1's i've had nor SD-1's.
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BluesDriveMonster
Copper Member
32 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2008 : 21:17:49
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How are Monte modded BD-2s? Anyone have any experince withem?
I was debating about modding my bd-2 or getting a new od. How's the OD-3 in comparison to the BD-2? What about some of the d/c'd od's?
My BD-2 has the problem described in this thread. I like it one week and refuse to play through it the next... |
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August West
Bronze Member
USA
137 Posts |
Posted - 09/19/2008 : 23:40:34
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I just tried this with my BD-2 and didn't hear any problem.
As an aside, I have to say I don't normally use the BD-2 with both knobs at 9:00. Usually one or the other (or sometimes both but not as often) will be on the other side of noon so even if I had this problem I don't think it would have bothered me a whole lot. |
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 00:09:46
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August:
a lot of it depends on amp volume.
if you have your amp set really quiet and crank the level up on the pedal with the gain down... that's usually when it starts to show up with most pedals, especially if the tone knob is set lower than 12 o'clock. |
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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 17:24:43
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Zen that is true, but really is it a different "problem" altogether.
Anyone trying the test as described before: Keep amp, and pedalvolume level the same. You do not need to use large volumes to notice this problem, listeninglevels will do.
Maybe people with "badsounding" [I used have use as title: "Some BD-2's are better than others !!"] BD-2's could mention their serialnumber to find out if there is some kind of trend going on. Will post mine later, both of the "bad" one and the one with more desirable sound.
Zen to come back to what you mentioned about ampvolume and pedalvolume, I think when you set levels as what you described you will get a lot more of these results with other pedals as well. I believe this is not really a pedalissue but more how you set up the levels of amp and pedal. In other words you could get a good-souding pedal to sound bad if volume of amp and pedal do not match.
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zentropa
Gold Member
USA
837 Posts |
Posted - 09/20/2008 : 18:25:18
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visser:
i agree that doing that exaggerates the problem, however...
after unloading half of my pedals, i kept 10 distortion pedals that don't do that at all. it's a certain era that seem more prone to that than others.
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visserman
Platinum Member
1072 Posts |
Posted - 09/22/2008 : 11:44:26
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Yep, very true.
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Dr. Bob
Moderator
Australia
6593 Posts |
Posted - 09/22/2008 : 12:56:37
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Hi Guys
Just thinking out loud here.
Do all BD-2's have M5281AL SIP Op-amps?
Or do the Good-Bad ones have a different op-amp?
It would be great if we could do some kind of Poll, & document, what's in the Good ones, & what's in the not so good ones.
Regards Dr. Bob |
Edited by - Dr. Bob on 09/22/2008 12:57:59 |
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Topic |
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BD-2: Good Ones and Bad Ones!!!
