Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal 

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

Well, I have played many styles of music from metalcore, thrash, cross over, rock..nowadays im playing more jazz(Pat Metheny,etc) and lots of ska/reggae and spanish rock. This pedal covers alot of ground for any uses. I personally LOVE it. The Heavier settings remind me a lot of early testament sounds, especially for solos it has a good alex skolnick-esque sound to it. when you role it back you can get a great clean lead sound..especially if you dial back your guitars tone and volume knob. I have been through tons of amps and pedals. With my current set up(tube vypyr head) or even with any other amps This pedal is amazing..go out and try it. :)

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

A lot of people are negative on BOSS distortion pedals and digital modeling in stompboxes, so it's not surprising that the BOSS Power Stack has some doubters. Don't believe the "noise", though, try it for yourself.

If you already have a Marshall half-stack, this pedal probably wasn't meant for you anyway. For the rest of us, it does a very nice job mimicking both clean and distorted sounds of a large Marshall cabinet. Really excels for lead guitar work. If you desire even more low end, check out the Marshall Jackhammer, but this an excellent pedal.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

Let's not beat around the bush here - when we're talking "stack" amps, we're talking about the classic sense of the word - Marshall. Make no mistake about it. This isn't another dirt pedal, this is a Marshall amp modeler. The models are more or less represented 3 general sound settings - Crunch (1959 Plexi), Drive (JCM800), and Ultra (JCM 2000 or some sort of modded high-gain Marshall), represent the range of Marshall tones that span decades.

Its really simple - as the sound knob is turned, not only does the gain increase, but the character of the tone changes a bit as well (the mids tighten as the gain is pushed into metal territory); hence it being a "sound" knob and not merely a gain knob.

What's great about this pedal is that if you're looking for something to give you that Marshall bite, its all right here and then some. Because this is designed as sort of an amp-within-a-pedal, whatever setting you have the sound knob at will respond to a boost or overdrive in a similar manner as the amp its emulating. In other words, if you have it on "Crunch", and put an boost in front of it, it will sound like a Plexi with a boost; it won't simply push the gain into Drive or Ultra settings. If you're familiar with amp models then you get what I'm saying.

Because of its versatility, this can get you a mild grit for blues or country, chunky drive for rock, or high gain for metal (it won't sound like a Mesa Dual Rec, however). "Crunch" at a high setting with a single coil Strat = Hendrix territory. "Drive" with a mid boost and humbucker = Slayer. You get the idea.

A slight disappointment for me is that this is still at the end of the day just a pedal/preamp type effect. It would be REALLY cool of there was a speaker cabinet-simulated stereo output to plug directly into a mixer or practice with headphones. Like a Tech 21 Sansamp, this could be a gigging musician's pocket powerhouse. Another issue that might be a deal breaker for some is that like with alot of amp modelers, the sound suffers from a bit of top end fizz in the higher gain settings. Not too much, but its there.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

Great little pedal which delivers distortion of all sorts. Great for Rock, Blues, Hard Rock, Metal, etc.

Also great to use as a tone control...which is done by turning down the gain and just using the on board equalizers.

I am a tone-snob to say the least, so I did my research before purchasing this product. Many professionals are using this pedal - Boss is a huge company for a reason.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

I tested this pedal out at [@] before buying it from MF. It sounded pretty good at [@]. However once I hooked it up to my amp and effects chain, it sounded really terrible. I use a Fender Deville 2x12 and play an Epiphone SG. This pedal is really, really noisy in the signal path. I was hoping to get a nice Mesa/Marshall high-gain tone from it. Unfortunatelty to get anywhere near this tone you have to crank up the gain to the point where's there very audible static when the effect is turned on. Somehow I'm getting a better high-gain sound from my amp's distortion than from this pedal, which is weird considering the Fender Hot Rod series aren't really known for high-gain tone. The noise in the signal chain is a deal-breaker for me. I only have 3 other pedals, an Way Huge Aqua Puss, Boss Super-Chorus and a Dunlop standard Wah. There shouldn't be that much noise in the chain with only 4 pedals. Honestly I kind of feel like this pedal is a rip-off. For the price Boss is asking, there should be much better and quieter circutry in this box. I also feel like for the above-average cost for distortion units, there should be more EQ filters than just one bass knob and one treble. Overall, I'm really disaapointed with this unit. At this price point you should at least get a quiet pedal that you can tweak to your liking. Not a one-trick pony that's pretty much useless on stage and in studio due to the ridiculous amount of noise it generates.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

I bought the Boss Power Stack with relativley high hopes after hearing many positive reviews online about it and while I'm typically an optamistic person I'd have to say that this pedal really didn't meet my needs. While the quality wasn't really that bad on the pedal and it stayed functioning just fine, I couldn't get around the horrible lack of clarity in the sound. No matter how I tweak the pedal I've only found it to sound very muffled, almost as if there was a cardboard box on top of my amp. If it wasn't for this the pedal itself would sound pretty great actually, but the only way to get it to sound normal is to put an eq pedal in front of it and adjust it, and for that money I'd rather just buy another pedal that doesn't have this problem. I would consider that my pedal was just a lemon or that maybe it was just my amp but I played this pedal through atleast 5 or 6 different tube amps and I even went and played another Power Stack but the tone just wasn't there. I wouldn't reccomend it.
The features it had were nice but I think it could use more Eq controls.
The pedal was mostly sturdy but the jacks wont stay tight for anything and it got scratched up pretty easily.
I got this pedal before the price was raised and I still think it was too high. I wouldn't value this pedal at more than $60

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

Nothing much more to say. If you use a humbucker and want a great heavy old school sound that cleans up very, very well, then you should be happy.
I'm into classic Van Halen/AC/DC tone and I really like this. I use a medium output dimarzio humbucker. I set the output and about 10 o'clock which is somewhat louder than going clean.
I set the bass, treble, and "sound" (gain) at 2 o'clock. I am 56 and covered Led Zeppelin, Foghat, ZZ Top, Black Sabbath in the 70's (to my great amusement!) and have lots of tube amps and pedals and this pedal makes it quick to get what I consider a classic hard rock/old metal sound from a humbucker. What clinches it for for is that when I roll off the guitar volumes I get a wonderful, clean and bright spanky tone like EVH used to get when he rolled the volume down. So I really can go in my opinion from very bright and clean to total distortion and I don't have to endlessly tweak the thing to do it.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

I just a great padal, it sounds amazing It takes my amp into teh Kayliam Galazy, thats on the side of our known Universe.
I love this Stomp Box, I have a Mesa Boogie Mark V, clean channel BLISS. Thats all I need to say.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

Power Stack has all the sweet spots of your distortion needs. This is very usable during gigs when the house amp is crap. It creates a "big" sound and a very good presence.For me it's a 3 in 1 pedal. By having ST-2, I don't need OD-3(for Crunch), Crunchbox(for raspy dirt) and Metal Zone(for heavier stuffs) during gigs. Now, my OD-3 is to give boost in front of ST-2 during those scarce solos. I recommend this pedal if you are using a 15-watt (tube) amp like me. It makes small amp sound huge. With some tweaking on the EQ of a solid state amp, it also does the job very well.

Comments about Boss ST-2 Power Stack Distortion Guitar Effects Pedal:

The online videos do a decent job of demonstrating how this thing sounds, both alone and in ensemble. At bucks, I figured it was worth a shot. Since I still have the original GP 100 and it does a great job of imitating a stack, I assumed Roland ( Boss) should know how to do that, right? Well. almost.It's true, this thing sounds like a recording of a stack and it can emulate several different levels of high-gain amps.It even cleans up when you turn the guitar-volume down, so it behaves like a real amp.... almost... but not quite.When you turn the guitar down too low, say below four, the digital pedal does not have enough signal to process, so it starts to crap out and sound weak.I know that for many modern players, this is not a huge problem, since they almost always have their volume higher and rely on electronics to get the sound they want.For old school players who are used to operating the volume knob for different tones and dynamic control, this doesn't quite cut it. Other than that, it is a valuable and affordable addition to your arsenal of tones.