In 1976, Boss revolutionized the pedal market (or, well, invented it?) releasing the first-ever Chorus pedal. Yes, I’m talking about the same CE-1 Mr. John Frusciante still carries around in his mammoth pedalboard to this day.
But that’s not what I associate Boss pedals with. What Boss did as a brand was to create amazing guitar and bass pedals for the masses. Yes, the same pedal your idol was using on stage could be in your bedroom plugged into your 15-watt practice amp.
Well, in my opinion, Boss did it again. How so? Well, this is a pedal that’s set to revolutionize the pedal market again by making impulse response technology affordable and available.
Did the Japanese giant just take the market by storm?
Let’s find out!
Table of Contents
Big News from Boss
Boss announced the release of the IR-2 Amp & Cabinet pedal on November 30, 2023. You can already see all over the internet the bombastic effect this announcement had. I mean, it is the first-ever amp emulation pedal with IR technology the size of a regular, compact Boss pedal.
This is nothing short of a revolution.
But that’s not all, because this small pedal is a huge powerhouse that can work as your amp in a plethora of situations but can double as an audio interface, or even be your late-night silent practice rig.
Plus, it’s important to mention also that, price-wise, this pedal isn’t far from buying, for example, a Boss DD-3T, the quintessential digital delay unit released in 1986 and still being sold today.
Finally, you can use two channels on each amp model, giving you a total of 22 amp sounds that are sure to quench your thirst for tone.
The New Boss IR-2 Amp & Cabinet Pedal
The first thing that gets you about this pedal is just how small it is. It’s exactly as big as any other Boss compact pedal is, so it fits in the palm of your hand.
Connections-wise, there are quite a few options to use this pedal.
To begin with, you have a single input on the right side with two additional jacks for a footswitch and the return of the effects loop. Yes, it even has an effects loop!
On the left side, there’s a jack for the return of the effects loop and two outputs, one being mono, and both working in stereo.
I have to say that, it seems like a no-brainer to me not having an XLR out. I mean, in my opinion, if you’re gigging with it, the XLR out is more important than the effects loop. But that’s just my opinion.
A great idea was making the ON/OFF switch a multi-purpose one that allows you to change channels without using a footswitch. Also, you can hold it to bypass the unit entirely as well.
Finally, controls are seamless and intuitive and not too different from dialing tones on your favorite amp. I especially liked the “Ambience” knob, which adds more reality to the combo.
Time-Tested, Road-Proven
Boss pedals have been on more stages than the Ramones (and that’s saying a lot). During these past 3+ decades, the company has managed to survive every trend and fashion. Yes, they even refrained from commercializing a Klon copy! Jokes aside, I know many pro musicians currently using Boss pedals to play sold-out shows in arenas.
This is, perhaps, the best thing about this pedal. Everything is intuitive, road-proven, time-tested, and seamless. It’s like a constant “been there, done that” thing from Boss. The company fought every issue you might have on the road and worked to fix it.
This pedal is designed with that leverage and experience and is, no doubt, another piece of road-ready equipment from Boss.
Built Like a Tank
Speaking of road-ready equipment, everybody knows that Boss pedals are built like tanks to go to war with. I had a Boss Phase Shifter for more than 20 years and it never left the board. I mean, if there’s a Zombie invasion, Boss pedals will be the only thing the human race will leave behind. Well, maybe Keith Richards would survive too, but that’s a whole different story.
In this sense, I think that the huge half-pedal switch you step on is part of that longevity. After all, the switch is what tends to bail out first in most pedals.
I would definitely add this pedal to my board and take it to the gig with no backup night after night.
Widely Available
This is another great thing about Boss pedals; you can buy them literally anywhere. If you happen to break one of them (in that case I recommend a doctor rather than a music store) you can easily find the exact replacement virtually anywhere in the world.
So, if you’re in the midst of a successful tour through Southeast Asia and the IR-2 decides to fail on you, chances are you go downtown and buy a new one to play with the same night at any random music store. This is clearly not the case with other IR-pedal brands.
Use Factory Standards or Upload Your Own IRs
Although Boss worked with Celestion for the impulse responses on this pedal, you can also upload your favorite via the dedicated software. For example, if you want to do some combinations that aren’t factory standards, or acquired a great IR that you want to try out, you can just connect the pedal with the USB-C cable and upload the IR to take it with you on the road.
That said, there are plenty of great-sounding IRs to have lots of fun with right out of the box.
What are IRs Anyway?
Maybe I’ve been talking about them the entire article and you’re still scratching your chin and wondering what they are.
The Impulse Response technology is based on capturing the unique patterns of reflections and reverberations a space generates when hit by an event such as a burst of sound.
Wow, wait. What? Let me translate that for you.
An impulse response is, in Layman’s terms, the exact recreation of a specific sound in a specific set of conditions. So, what you get with impulse-response-based technology isn’t just the sound of a 57 in front of your speaker. On the contrary, it’s the sound of the microphone, the environment, the cab, the speaker, the wood, the room, everything.
Therefore, when you bring up an IR file on an IR loader like the IR-2, you can play through the perfect era-correct amplifier in absolutely perfect conditions in the most expensive room. Since every aspect of it is taken care of, you can modify the sound to your liking and you’ll always get the actual image of the original sound.
Yes, that utterly complex technology is what Boss made available for the masses with this pedal.
The Price Talk
This pedal offers way more than you would expect a device with this price tag could offer. This is something that has to be addressed, because other pedals like the Strymon Iridium, the UAFX Lion, Dream, Woodrow, and Ruby, the Kemper Profiler Player, and the Tone X are all, at least, 50% more expensive.
Therefore, I think this will help a new generation of guitar players fine-tune their ears and sound with a high-quality, affordable, easy-to-use IR pedal.
What Can You Do with It?
Before I wrap this up, let me tell you some possible ways you can add this pedal to your existing rig.
- As an amplifier – The first and most obvious setup would be to use it as an amplifier. In this scenario, you could connect your guitar to your pedal chain and go straight into the IR-2. From it, you can go to the PA, a powered speaker, or in-ear monitors.
- As the clean amp line – This is something I’ve tried successfully. I usually play with a Big Muff and several other dirt pedals but we’re a duo and I need to keep guitar parts loud and big but clear and tight. Therefore, I go to my tube amp from my pedalboard but using an ABY box between the guitar and the wah pedal, I feed a clean line to the front of house. That way, you can understand my guitar moves all the time while I play with a face-melting fuzzed-out tone.
- To hit the looper with tone – During the pandemic, I learned how to play with a looping rig. Hey, come on, some people baked bread, and I played guitar. Well, what I noticed with my loop rig is that I was going to the PA through the looper with a bad-sounding guitar signal straight from my pedals. Using this pedal before the looper, everything sounds much better.
- As an audio interface – Another great use for this pedal is as a guitar-exclusive audio interface. With it, you can use Garageband or any other DAW and make your own virtual band with virtual amps and all.
- The silent practice rig – Late-night inspiration is a thing. I know this because I’ve had to urge to the dining room table to play guitar almost silently to keep a good idea from vanishing into oblivion more than once. You can just plug everything, connect your headphones to the IR-2, and rock the night away in silence.
The Bottom End
The Boss IR-2 is the first of its kind and, in my opinion, will revolutionize the music landscape. Moreover, I think we’ll come across an increasing number of people powering their rigs with small, amp modeling pedals.
But beyond global trends, this is a great pedal for the young, aspiring guitar players out there who can now have access to 11 amp models with top-notch audio quality for what they would pay for a decent delay pedal.
I think they will find it inspiring and this IR-2 will be heard in countless musical productions.
Happy (impulse response) playing!
