The Top 5 Boss Effects Pedals

We reviewed 30, here are our 5 favourites   30-Mar-13

Rich looks back across a month's worth of Boss pedal reviews, during which time almost the entire Boss compact pedal range got the Sonic State review treatment. He picks his favourite five pedals from the month...

This month we reviewed 30 Boss pedals, it was a monumental effort from the camera guys, editing dude, from the poor FedEx guy who had to deliver 30 pedals and bring them up the stairs to our office.

I really enjoyed it, I've never had many Boss pedals on my rig, but from my days working in a guitar store, and from my days working in a recording studio, I'd become familiar with many of the pedals in the compact range.

I was blown away by some of the pedals, Boss have a reputation as being 'the mainstream brand', a lot of the boutique pedal lovers out there aren't exactly head over heels in love with Boss.

Really, I came into this month-long feature as one of those guys, I had absolutely nothing against Boss pedals, I just never really considered buying one and adding it to my rig.

But this began to change pretty quickly, so I thought I'd do a round up at the end of the month of the five pedals (out of the 30 I looked at) I was most impressed by, these are five pedals I'd have on my rig:

5. Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter

From a background in recording, I always go for flexible phase units or VSTs, they obviously need to sound great, but for me, phase is a mechanical thing first and foremost, and there's no point having a great sounding phase pedal that doesn't offer much in the way of versatility.

The PH-3 Phase Shifter has every different setting you could hope for, and really allows you to shape your own phase sound. Pedals such as the EHX Small Stone might have a more easily recognisable sonic signature, but the PH-3 sounds rich, modern and it inspires creativity.

It wouldn't knock the Small Stone off my board, but it would happily sit alongside it.

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