Boss IR-2 Amp & Cabinet

For starts, I have 60+ Boss compact pedals. All of their analog gain pedals, almost all digital gain pedals, so I can admit I am a Boss fanboy.

I consider myself lucky to found out about this pedal on the first day that it was announced on YT because I'm having trouble getting another one for my bandmate.

As a Boss fanboy and collector I've been dreaming of this pedal for the last year before its arrival, as my bandmate was playing on Iridium, and we have transitioned to IEM system for live and rehearsals, with me micing my trustworthy Fender HRD... Cleans and light drives are most important to me, with only 5-10% of time going to medium and high gain... So when I saw one the first reviews of this pedal online I ordered it instantly

THE SOUND: I use only Fender Twin simulation, and it is everything I need from a clean sound. On the green channel I use both gain and master on 12 o'clock, and on the red channel I just crank the gain on max.

With that said, I would be happy with this pedal for this price and I would use some reverb pedal, because the factory setting of the ambience effect is just too weak on max... enter the IR Loader app! I've been having problems installing the Loader app because of some computer OS problems, but when I resolved it and got into IRs this pedal became twice as good... Other two reverb options on the pedal are intense enough so I don't need any kind of reverb pedals...

BUT... yes, there is a but... sadly, I expected more from using other pedals in front of this one... as I said, I have all Boss gain pedals, and they don't sound natural when used in front of IR-2... So, for the last two months I've been trying to find just one that will give me a good higain sound when combined with IR-2 TWIN sim... The one that I stuck with, and that sounds far better than any other is to my surprise the gain channel of my Boss PW10 wah pedal (don't recall which dist model)... Don't know how or why, i guess because it is digital but it sounds natural combined with IR-2...

For all the hi gain lovers, the RECTO part of IR-2 is bad, really bad... And I had a Mesa Recto long enough to claim that. But the BROWN amp (Peavey) sound great to me, and all other amps sound good when you combine them with non factory IRs. So be prepared to work on the pedal, but it is worth it, and it sound better to me than Iridium.