BOSS BD-2w Waza Craft Review: Beano In A Box Gets Amped Up

Bigger, meaner and heavier than its older brother - the BD-2   13-Jan-15

Around a year ago SonicState took on the daunting task of reviewing a BOSS pedal every single day for a month, and one of the ones that came out on top was the BD-2 Blues Driver.

The pedal was originally designed in the mid 90s after a resurgence in the popularity of blues, and it was aimed at 'plug in and play' style players - think Eric Clapton Beano era.

Out of the three Waza Craft pedals released by BOSS, this was probably the one that got the least buzz, purely because the Blues Driver is a fairly new pedal in comparison the Super Overdrive and Analog Delay (the two other pedals which were given the Waza treatment).

While being a popular pedal, it probably doesn't join the other two in the 'classic' category.

But nonetheless, BOSS have created an amped up version of the BD-2 here; a pedal that will have you reaching for your Gary Moore backing tracks and seeing how long you can hold *that* note in Parisienne Walkways.

Value for money

The BD-2w sounds great on lead tones, there's no doubt about it. But it's loose in the low end which makes higher gain rhythm tones difficult to achieve.

The gulf in quality between this £115 pedal and its £65 brother - the standard BD-2 - isn't huge. And then you have to factor in that you could probably get hold of a Keeley modded BD-2 for not much more than the shelf price of the BD-2w.

Check all three out if you can, and see what you think. Speaking of which... let me file away a mental memo to do a blindfold test of all three.

Review by Richard Beech