Boss Blues Driver BD-2w - your only Overdrive?
What if you could only have one overdrive? What if you wanted one overdrive that was massively versatile? What if you didn’t want to spend a lot of money? Well if any of those are true, or could be true, you need / want to take a closer look at the Boss Blues Driver BD-2w, which is one of their special Made in Japan Waza Craft pedals.
What Does Waza Craft Mean?
Here’s the net of things. The Waza Craft line take the ideas behind proven Boss pedals and reengineer them with the finest components, less noise and even more capability than their successful processors. Waza is the Japanese term for craft and technique. If you understand Japanese philosophy, it is about commitment to excellence, artistry in execution and superior outcomes. The term is used by Boss to describe some products, but you will find Waza in use in a number of disciplines.
Boss? Really?
It’s a funny thing with musicians. Lots of us started with kit from Boss and then moved on, ostensibly up, to other makers, including the so called “boutique” makers. Nothing wrong with that, but it also resulted in this underlying attitude that I have seen many times, that Boss kit is generic, perhaps only suited to beginners. In my aging world that is facts oriented, I call this Toro-PooPoo.
I was one of those people. I never found anything wrong with Boss pedals. They did exactly what they said that they would do, and some did things that no other pedal would do, regardless of how much cash you poured into them or how boutique they were or how pretty the paint jobs. With the resurgent interest in analog circuits, because apparently despite decades of success, digital is now cold and impersonal, (watch where you step), it made sense for a company that created some of the most dependable analog products to take another shot at their design. Hence the Waza Craft line.
Blind Tests
Most of us know the excellent videos produced by Andertons in the UK. They are consistently well done, and so long as one understands that at the core, Andertons is a business and that Lee Anderton and Peter Honore as hosts have to create interest for viewers to buy products, all is good. Consequently most every video gives a glowing report on whatever product is covered. It just makes sense. However, recently Rabea Massad has been engaged to do some blind comparisons, and the thing that I like the most is that Rabea does not know what product he is playing through and calls things as he hears them, for better or worse. The recent Overdrive blind test video is rather long, and I will save you the time. Out of all the pedals that he played through, he chose the Boss BD-2w Waza Craft as the one he would pick because he felt it was most versatile. He picked it over pedals that he uses on his own boards, and pedals that are significantly more expensive. On that subject, here in Canada, the MAP for a BD-2w is $259.99 That’s pretty amazing considering that a talented artist like Mr. Massad compared it in live testing to pedals over twice the price. He didn’t think any of the contenders were bad, but he chose the BD-2w.
Over to Me
I do own a few Waza Craft pedals. I have their CE-2w Chorus and the Dimension DC-2w as well as being fortunate enough to get one of the very rare Waza Craft Tone Benders. I did not have a Blues Driver, but I do have a lot of overdrives. Only a couple of true distortions and a couple of other fuzzes, but I have overdrives on every board. Being the skeptical critter that I am, I bought a BD-2w. I then plugged it into a couple of amps to see how it would fair. Let’s save time and say that I was impressed, particularly with the performance with the Tone King Gremlin, an awesome little 5w killer that I use almost entirely with a guitar only because it’s not a great pedal platform and a fair bit of tweaking is required to get the guitar, the pedals and the amp all dialled in to work well together. Fender blackface twins and deluxe reverbs were perfect because they have such enormous headroom and stay clean. I prefer setting the amp to clean or just to the brink of native OD, and then push with a pedal when the time is right. The BD-2w worked a charm. Then I took it into the studio to see how it would work with virtual set ups. I am a big fan of the plugin/standalone amp and cabinet kits from Neural, the same company that makes the Quad Cortex. Some of those amps never need a drive pedal because they are programmed with overdrive in them. However, I can get a nice clean tone with a preset that I built for the Fortin Cali Suite as well as one that I built for my favourite one of their products, their Tone King Imperial Mark II. I have the real thing, and am blown away by how good the Neural plugin is. So guitar to BD-2w to interface direct to the standalone version of the plugin first, and then to the channel strip using the plugin version in Logic Pro. I set things up to get the clean tones I wanted, then engaged the BD-2w. What is so impressive is the range of tones that you can get out of this pedal simply by trying different settings on the Drive and Tone knobs. I’ve done this a lot with a number of other excellent pedals and I have to say, I can get amazing tones out of the BD-2w that sound as good as more expensive pedals that may excel in certain areas but not as general overdrives.
Audio Samples
There are four samples in this clip. First is no pedal at all. Second is the BD-2w with the drive at 9 o’clock for a bit of bite. Third is the BD-2w with the drive at 2 o’clock for a pushed overdrive and fourth is the BD-2w with the drive all the way up for some solid distortion.
As the drive was increased, I lowered the output level to try to maintain unity gain in the clip. The tone control was at 2 o’clock for all sections. The Standard / Custom switch was in Standard for the recordings, because that’s what the original Blues Driver sounds like. Only the Waza Craft version has the Standard | Custom switch.
The setup for recording was very simple. My 73 Les Paul with Seymour Duncan Antiquity pickups into the BD-2w which then fed into the Bass input on my Laney LA-Studio tube head. The Laney is jumped as well from bass to treble. I use the DI out from the Laney direct into a Clarett + 8 Pre which feeds Logic Pro. There are no effects or mixing tools used in Logic Pro. The Laney amp is set the way I like it for that Les Paul. Presence 8, Bass 3, Middle 5, Treble 8, Gain 4. The Laney Power Brake is not engaged.
My Conclusions
When I look at the cost of acquisition, Boss products are a bargain for what you get. Even the Waza Craft family, which are more expensive than the general line are still a great deal. Certainly if you are looking for a very specific response, you can go there, but if your space and wallet are more limited and you don’t want to be doing Irish dancing to get the tone you want, the BD-2w is a killer overdrive and so flexible. If you have never tried one, head out to your local music store because most all shops carry Boss and try one out. It is my considered determination that you cannot get anything this good for the same amount of money. It’s proven, it’s simple, you just feed it 9v via battery or pedal power unit and go. Thanks for reading. Please leave a comment or click the link to send in a question. Until next time, peace.
