Anyone ever mess around with a Boss BF-2?

[Coley]

I dont really use flanging too much.. at all. I dont like the sound.. it's really metallic.

I was able to get some siren-like sounds out of it... but it was basicly a  sound that the pedal would make by itself, you could barely hear the guitar.

is there anything cool i could make it into?

if no one has ever messed with this one before... i guess i'll just keep making slight mods to it and seeing what they do and let you guys know if i come up with something cool

[Rodgre]

I've made the siren noise as well, by having the battery die on me. I loved it and kept it in the track for posterity.

Other than that, I kinda like that pedal for what it does. Decent fast vibrato/leslie sim. Decent chorus warble, and generic swooshy jet flanging.

Roger

[petemoore59]

But I didn't like/use it that much.
 Let some ........ kid try it out at a gig one night that I was jamming with,
[I though he was staying and that was HIS amp&stuff he was playing through] he snuck it out the door with it [in the middle of a song I was singing]...lol...haven't seen him since.
 Moral: never lend your stuff out to someone you don't know to get hold of [by their neck?], because they seem cool and are interested in talking about and using effects!
 I'm sure his karma must :evil:  take specail care of him, but he probably doesn't even know it yet!

[David]

I have a BF-2.  I found it before I found this forum.  Awhile back, I was looking to buy the wettest sounding chorus I could find.  I had decided that a Small Clone was the best price vs performance choice at the time.  Then I got somebody to look up some information from Boss and I found out how to get chorusing out of my flanger.  It was at least as wet as the Small Clone and I already owned it.  That was a quick cash savings.

[Mark Hammer]

One of the things about flangers is that as you turn up the resonance, you get the electronic equivalent of standing waves; i.e., a tiled bathroom box-ey sound that may not be what you're going for.  You can make high resonance settings more tolerable by chopping some of the bandwidth off the bottom end of the recirculated signal.  You'll see a cap between the regen pot and the point where it gets mixed back into the signal path.  Cut that cap value to about 1/4 of its original and you should be about the get less box-ey/tank-ey sounding tones.

[Rob Strand]

The bottom line is if you don't like Choruses or Flangers it's not the beast for you.  Just sell it and buy something you can use/like.

[Mark Hammer]

Forgot to mention that you can simply swap the BBD chip in the flanger for a different sound.

The BOSS HF-2 Hi-Band flanger is basically a BF-2 but with an MN3204 where the MN3207 was.  The MN3204 is a 512 stage delay chip and is pin-for-pin compatible.  I bought a used Washburn SC-7 Stereo Chorus and found an MN3009 in there (a 256-stage BBD)  changed it for an MN3007 to quadruple the delay-time range and it booted up just fine.

Shifting the delay range downward (in time) and the notch locations upward (in frequency) may achieve a tone you like more.  Once the MN3207 is desoldered and a socket retrofitted, you may find that you like chip-swapping the way some folks swap amp power tubes depending on their mood and needs.

[Parade]

One of the things about flangers is that as you turn up the resonance, you get the electronic equivalent of standing waves; i.e., a tiled bathroom box-ey sound that may not be what you're going for.  You can make high resonance settings more tolerable by chopping some of the bandwidth off the bottom end of the recirculated signal.  You'll see a cap between the regen pot and the point where it gets mixed back into the signal path.  Cut that cap value to about 1/4 of its original and you should be about the get less box-ey/tank-ey sounding tones.

I incountered the same boxey metalic flanging. It does become a hasle and turn off alot of people to this wonderful effect. I have heard analog flangers and they sound smooth and deep but this Boss one sounds thin and metalic. So the mod you described should take away this metalic sound but when I turn the res trimpot inside up will it still perform correct and give me the deep whoosh?

[Mark Hammer]

I incountered the same boxey metalic flanging. It does become a hasle and turn off alot of people to this wonderful effect. I have heard analog flangers and they sound smooth and deep but this Boss one sounds thin and metalic. So the mod you described should take away this metalic sound but when I turn the res trimpot inside up will it still perform correct and give me the deep whoosh?

You need to distinguish between the sound of resonance turned up high, and the *quality* of that resonant sound.  A big part of what people call "metallic" is actually the sound of regeneration at low frequencies, which is what talking inside a metal drum or tile-covered bathroom would produce.  If you take that low end out, you should, in theory, be able to get the piercing intensity without the low end emphasis.

Take out C7 (.047uf) and stick in a .01uf cap in its place and see if it makes a difference in terms of how high you can crank it and still like it.  Actually, you can do the same for C21, which is also a .047uf cap.  If you could do those mods and report back, that would be extremely useful to others.  If you should feel inspired enough to try other values as well, that would be even more useful.

I take these from the Anderton/PAiA Hyperflange which has a switch to swap out the functionally identical cap to permit ultrahigh resonance settings.

[Parade]

Ok I am going to attempt the mod, but I am having such a  hard time finding that dam cap on my board. You said .047uf right? Well I was looking at the confusing schematic and I believe I might have found it I am not sure. My board does not clearly read C7. Would the cap inside it have the label "837k" or "037k" I cant make it out.

[Parade]

Ok I finaly figured it out now with help from my dad. I found the caps and then like you said replaced them with the .01uf ones and OMG it's amazing. This mod is definitly worth doing. I still had my thick flange but it took away it's metalish sounding noise. Now it's just even analog sounding flange. Thank you 1milion times.