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For other uses, see Boss.
Boss is a manufacturer of effects pedals for electric guitar and bass guitar. It is a division of the Roland Corporation, a Japanese manufacturer that specializes in musical equipment and accessories. For many years Boss manufactured a range of products related to effects processing for guitars, including "compact" and "twin" effects pedals, multi-effect pedals, electronic tuners, and pedal boards. In more recent times they have expanded their line to include Digital Studios, rhythm machines and other electronic equipment.
[edit] History When Roland decided to form a subsidiary company dedicated to guitars in the early 1970s, they originally intended to call it MEG (Musical Engineering Group). Realizing, however, that Meg was a girl's name and might dissuade male guitarists, they searched for a name that would connote power and mastership, and eventually came up with Boss.[citation needed] The earliest Boss product was called B-100 The Boss, released in 1976. This came with a clip-on pre-amp and a pickup to amplify acoustic guitars. At this point the Boss company had not been formed and it was still technically a Roland product. The first proper Boss foot pedal effect, in 1976, was called the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, believed by many guitarists to be the "Holy Grail" of pedal chorus effects. It was a fairly large, AC-powered unit. It was popular with artists at the time such as Andy Summers and can be heard on various recordings. However the real breakthrough came the year later.  Boss's renowned line of compact pedals began in 1977 with the release of three pedals: an overdrive pedal (OD-1), a phaser pedal (PH-1) and a parametric equalizer called the Spectrum (SP-1). The now famous Boss DS-1 was released the next year, in 1978. Also released in this year is the T Wah (TW-1) pedal. Their first compact chorus pedal (CE-2) came the next year 1979, and their first flanger pedal (BF-2) in 1980. In 1983 Boss broke new ground with the release of the DD-2 Digital Delay, the first mass-produced digital delay in a compact pedal format. In 1987 Boss released nine new pedals, including the Turbo Distortion (DS-2). The Metal Zone (MT-2) was released in 1991. The Heavy Metal (HM-2) distortion pedal was an integral part of the guitar sound of many styles of heavy metal music ever since. Their big selling point has always been reliability - many[who?] compare their metal cases to a tank. As well as Boss's compact pedals sporting heavy-duty metal cases, they are colour coded in distinctive, bright colours. The pedals all share the same 'footprint', making it easy for guitarists to develop pedal-boards for the standard size. Boss introduced COSM, Roland's proprietary version of digital modeling technology, into their AC-3 Acoustic Simulator pedal in 2006. Boss has since released several pedals using COSM, including the FBM-1 '59 Fender Bassman pedal and FDR-1 '65 Fender Deluxe Reverb pedal, introduced at the Winter NAMM show in January 2007. All Boss compact pedals use a "buffered bypass" type of silent foot switching utilizing Field Effect Transistors (FETs) that produce no clicks or pops. Most guitarists feel that although buffered bypass switching is not as transparent as "true bypass" switching, the Boss version of buffered bypass is one of the best of its type, causing very little signal degradation while helping the signal to go through long pedal lines and cables without losing its fidelity. [edit] Japan/TaiwanBoss compact pedals were originally produced in Japan, until circa 1990 where production moved to Taiwan. Some users claim there is a sound difference between the two, although there is no conclusive evidence to prove the superiority of either. Earlier units came with a metal screw securing the battery compartment, later models retained the metal screw, adding a plastic knob for tool-less battery removal. The labels on the bottom of the pedals come in several different colours including black, silver, green, pink and blue. Apart from this the basic design has remained unchanged for over 25 years. The DS-1 Distortion, however, is an exception; the design has changed significantly twice throughout its lifetime. The first time was around 1994 when the Toshiba TA7136AP op amp was replaced with the Rohm BA728N. In 2000 the op amp was again changed. This time it was replaced with the Mitsubishi M5223AL. The latest op amp change occurred in 2007, when new DS-1 pedals began shipping with the NJM3404AL op amp. In recent years older Boss compact pedals have begun to command a high premium on the used market. Some pedals, such as the relatively rare VB-2 Vibrato, SG-1 Slow Gear, SP-1 Spectrum, DC-2 Dimension C, PS-3 Pitch Shifter/Delay, and either of the two analog Delay pedals (DM-2 and DM-3)are highly sought after by collectors. The Boss Doctor Rhythm DR-110 drum machine was the last drum machine out of Roland to use analog sound synthesis to generate the drum sounds. After the DR-110, all Roland drum machines used samples of drums to produce sounds. The DR-110 is not of high build quality or easily incorporated into a modernized studio setup running MIDI but there are modifications available to sync the DR-110 to other gear. There are also modifications available in DIY formats to add tonal controls to the analog drum sounds on board the DR-110 that will give the user a wider range of sonic ability. The DR-110 is said to have one of the nicest analog handclaps and hi-hats of any drum machine and the user interface is extremely simple to understand. [edit] Current products[edit] Compact pedals for electric guitar[edit] Overdrive/distortion
[edit] Modulation
[edit] Reverb/delay
[edit] EQ/tonality
[edit] Pitch shift
[edit] Other
[edit] Twin pedals for electric guitar
[edit] Compact pedals for bass guitar
[edit] Drum machines
[edit] Multi-effects processors
[edit] Digital studios
[edit] See also[edit] References
[edit] External links | |||||||||||||||
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