BOSS Jb-2 Angry Driver Distortion Overdrive Pedal, All-New Overdrive Pedal with Massive Tonal Range

Product Information

NEW products: 4% of the current new selling price to double the warranty from 1 year to 2 years. 4% for each additional year. At first sight the JB-2 looks like a conventional overdrive, with four knobs labelled Level, Tone, Drive and Mode, but closer inspection reveals that the first three are dual-concentric pots, enabling completely independent control over the two circuits, and the last is a rotary switch. The real magic happens with the mode switch, which allows the drive circuits to be used individually, in series or in parallel — and in serial mode you get to decide which circuit comes first in the signal path. Everyone from pro guitarists to bedroom jammers are familiar with the biting tone of the Blues Driver, but you might be less in the know about the Angry Charlie. This searingly hotcircuit captures the essence of a high-gain Marshall amp in a box. With both styles at your disposal, you have every flavour of classic, saturated tone to sculpt your unique sound. Multiple Modes Housed in the classic BOSS compact design, the JB-2 Angry Driver pairs the tones of the iconic BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver with JHS Pedals' popular Angry Charlie. Working closely together, the two pedal innovators have developed an all-new combined circuit with refined sound and performance perfectly tuned for dual-mode drive operation. Open chords feel lost and disenchanted. Power chords on driven settings sound hungover. As if they are all ashamed of the pedal they are working for and are merely trying to get through the shift. Just like your audience will be if you dare put this on your rig.

Housed in the iconic Boss enclosure and manufactured in Japan by Boss (but also stamped with the JHS Pedals logo), the JB-2 contains circuitry that enables independent or combined renditions of the two effects. Dual-concentric potentiometers control drive, tone, and level for each effect, while a 6-position mode switch activates the JHS Angry Charlie, the Boss Blues Driver, a mode in which you can toggle between the two, two series modes in which you can run JHS into Boss or Boss into JHS, and, lastly, a mode for running the two circuits in parallel.

History of JHS Pedals

Allowing you to really customise your overdrive sound, the Boss JB-2 features independent LEVEL, GAIN and TONE controls.

After discussing a number of ideas, BOSS and JHS Pedals ultimately felt that combining the Blues Driver and Angry Charlie would be the ideal match.The JB-2 stood out as the most versatile pedal overdrive that I can recall playing in quite some time—maybe ever. Thanks to the circuitry inherited from the Boss BD-2 Blues Driver, the JB-2 Angry Driver gives you a really nice bluesy overdrive that’s great for pushing valve amps, while the JHS Angry Charlie side of the family gives it some extremely high gain tones. When Parallel mode is activated, it runs both circuits in Parallel, maintaining the clarity of both at the same time. Using a remote switch while Parallel mode is activated drops out the BD circuit, giving you the AC alone.

With this mode, you can turn the JB-2 on or off with the standard pedal, engaging the Angry Charlie circuitry while adding a remote switch allows you to switch between the Angry Charlie and Blues Driver circuits. In recent years Boss’s Metal Pedals came in for some unfair criticism - in particular the Metal Zone which was a joke meme for the longest time - even though it is Boss’s second best selling pedal of all time supposedly. Recent revivalism and playing these pedals through an amp effects loop has largely managed to restore the reputation of these pedals which are all very decent high gain tone machines - some just require more due diligence when dialling in. As you can here from the various below demos there is no ’bad’ sounding pedal amongst these - that is unless of course you don’t like this genre of music. But generally the Boss High Gain Pedals server up very decent chunky soundstage which server most types of metal. You may not like some of the sub-genres, and possibly have other pedals whose core tones and features you prefer, but that doesn’t discount these 9 pedals in the slightest - and the newer ones will hold their own against mosts of what else is out there. In this small format, you get this amazing switching system that is out of this world with series and parallel,” Josh relates. “You have six controls for two pedals, but the six controls in parallel become six controls for one new pedal, and that is very, very cool. So you have the Angry Charlie that people know, and the Blues Driver that people know. But when you put them together, the six controls all interact and there are hundreds of sounds. I think that's a fantastic product.” Nominal Input Level -20 dBu Input Impedance 1 M ohm Nominal Output Level -20 dBu Output Impedance 1 k ohm Recommended Load Impedance 10 k ohms or greater Controls Pedal switch If you are interested in receiving this coverage for longer than one year, you have the option of purchasing additional years of the Performance Warranty. The pricing is as follows:

MSRP (UK) £155 (US) $199

Whilst JHS now boasts a large product range, the company hasn’t entirely abandoned its roots. Still offering modded pedals, this show that JHS are still open to garnering inspiration from other manufacturers.

I'm running my pedalboard straight into a powerstage 700. All other tone pedals sound as they should and behave well despite the odd setup. All of which are less money and more simple in design. As with all Boss products, the JB-2 is nigh on indestructible with that tough and rugged metal chassis that Boss pedals are famous for making it ideal to take on the road with you.This mode runs the Angry Charlie into the Blues Driver circuit with the standard footswitch turning the unit on and off while adding a remote switch allows you to select between SERIES MODE and BD Mode. With this mode, you can turn the JB-2 on or off with the standard pedal, engaging the BD-2 circuitry while adding a remote switch allows you to switch between the Angry Charlie and Blues Driver circuits. Most of these are still in the current range - that is to say the original Metal Zone, Mega Distortion, Metal Core and recent Angry Driver and Waza Craft Metal Zone. While the Heavy Metal, Digital Metalizer, Hyper Metal and Xtortion have all been discontinued for a while now. input or battery powered, delivering high quality sound along with legendary Boss build quality – the JB-2 gives you everything that people love about Boss pedals with a great new flavour created through a great collaboration between Boss and JHS Pedals. This pedal is very simple to use, on the far right of the pedal there is a mode control to switch it between, JHS only, Blues Drive only, Toggle between JHS/Blues Drive, JHS series into Blues, Blues Series into JHS and finally a parallel mode. The next set of knobs simply control the Level, Tone and Drive of each pedal, the larger and lower control for the Blues Drive and the smaller control on top of each knob for the JHS. Nice and simple! With an additional footswitch you can have further switching options (such as having it in Blues into JHS mode, using an external switch to take out the Blues so its just the JHS pedal etc). That’s the basic functionality. Its awesome to be able to use the drives in different combinations, the series modes allows us to ‘push’ one drive with the other for more gain/unique mid-range, and the parallel mode also allows for even further more detailed tone shaping.