nikfarr's Music Gear Setup

There are two kinds of guitarists: those who prefer a transparent boost, and those who don't mind a little color in their signal. The Boss FB-2 seems to come up somewhere in the middle, oddly enough. It's nowhere near as clear as, say, the MXR MicroAmp--probably due to Roland's buffer--but at its mildest EQ setting, it's much more difficult to hear than you might expect.

The secret sauce here is the Tone knob, which allows the user to dial in anything from a flat (non-EQed) signal to a bold midrange hump, up to more extreme settings. And actually, with the Tone knob at 12 o'clock, the pedal can really fatten a guitar's sound and really help it cut through a mix. This is especially useful with single-coil guitars, like a Fender Strat, which can sound thin in the context of a live band.

This pedal has a few other neat tricks up its sleeve. Most obviously (since it's part of the unit's name), it can assist in the generation of feedback when the pedal is held down. It does this by raising the volume slightly, and the nature of the feedback generated varies depending on where you position the Feedback knob. In my experience, the noise floor and volume increase substantially the higher you set this value; however, that can be a desired effect in certain circumstances. The lower half of this dial can be used to summon nice, droning waves at fairly low volumes, making it extremely useful in small gig or practice settings.

Another nice aspect of the FB-2 is that, with the Boost and Character knobs set sufficiently high, the pedal begins to act more like an overdrive pedal. It has a more harsh character than, say, the SD-1 or a Tube Screamer, but it's not unpleasant--in fact, there are times when I find myself using the pedal specifically in this way, rather than engaging my super-smooth Fulldrive II MOSFET. I like the "clang"-y nature of the FB-2's driven tones; they're reminiscent of classic punk and post-punk records, to my ears.

In short, this is a cool pedal with a fair amount of sounds to be explored. Highly recommended.