Review: Boss TE-2 Tera Echo Pedal (World Exclusive First Look)

It's not a delay, or a reverb, so what is it?   20-Jan-13

It's another new pedal from one of the world's best known pedal companies, the Boss TE-2 Tera Echo is time-based effect which according to Boss is neither a reverb or a delay.

But what is it? Well watch our Boss TE-2 Tera Echo review and hopefully it'll shed some light on the matter...

Features

Despite its multi-layered sound, the Boss TE-2 is actually a very simple pedal, when you play a note, it triggers an effect which combines echo, modulation, and what to our ears sounds like a multi-tap delay (even though Boss claim it's not a delay pedal, it does produces a delayed repeat of your original signal, so that's delay in our books).

The exact sound triggered can be heard when you reel the feedback counter-clockwise and play a single quick note.

That note will be repeated, phased slightly, and eventually the time between the repeated notes will open up. I demonstrate this in the video review of the Boss TE-2 if you are curious to know what that sounds like.

Add more feedback, and the effect becomes a lot more ambient, and creates a beautiful swirling sound. Add more 'spread time' and the delay time will become slower.

The sound produced by the Boss TE-2 Tera Echo is very useable, and very modern too in a number of ways. It harks back to the classic Eventide rack units, but there has been a resurgence in the popularity of ambient sounds, particularly on guitars.

Sounds

The actual sound of the pedal is pretty much the main feature of the pedal, so I tried to explain this above! With a distortion pedal, you know that the pedal will produce a distortion sound, but most guitarists could talk for an unnecessarily long time about the features of that sound, and how the sound can be changed by tweaking the pedal.

With the Tera Echo, it's all about you. What you play on your guitar is a massive factor in the way that the TE-2 reacts.

Under the same settings on the pedal, you could pick softly through chord patterns and get a nice ambient reverb style sound. Play a David Gilmour style palm muting riff and you'll get something different altogether.

If you're the sort of person who sits down with their pedal rig and plays around with their sound before attempting to write riffs or songs, then the Boss TE-2 will be right up your street, the Tera Echo is a pedal for creative guitarists who really like to do something different.

Build Quality

Ya kidding me? It's a Boss pedal, I've been playing through Boss pedals for longer than I care to mention, and I've never had any complaints about the build quality of durability of their gear.

Don't see any reason the Boss TE-2 Tera Echo should be any different.

Round Up

It's ambience in a box. If you're the type of person who sets up a reverb, a delay and a chorus or a phaser to create an ambient sound, then the Tera Echo will replicate the sort of sound you are after.

A little birdie tells us that Johnny Marr might be adding one of these to his arsenal, so you sort of get the drift of the type of guitarists this might favour.

If you go for this sort of thing, then I thoroughly recommend it. It's definitely better with clean sounds, so if you play a lot of heavy music, and you are more into your riffs than your jangly chordal picking, then this probably won't be the pedal for you.

Pros: Breeds creativity, easy to use, responds brilliantly to dynamics, ambience in a box.

Cons: Wish I could plug an expression pedal in and control the feedback manually whilst playing!

Review by Richard Beech

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