In the late 1980s and early 90s, Boss decided to discontinue a number of esoteric pedals like the Dimension C, Xtortion, Slow Gear and Dynamic Filter because they were not big sellers. Fast forward 20+ years and due to their relatively low initial sales, these pedals are quite collectible among analog pedal enthusiasts with a price to match. The Boss Slow Gear for example regularly sells for over $200 on eBay. When I saw a Dynamic Filter come up for auction a couple of months I was very interested mainly because the guitar player Alex Gunia from Matalex (a killer German fusion band - check out the "Jazz Grunge" CD) had one on his pedalboard and I really liked his guitar sound. $75 later and the Boss FT-2 was mine.According to the promotional verbiage the Boss FT-2 is an auto wah pedal that fits into the company’s line of auto wahs between the TW-1 and the AW-2. I think this is a little misleading because in essence the Boss FT-2 is an envelope filter and produces quite a different effect than an auto wah.
There are four controls on the pedal: Sensitivity, Cut Off Frequency (high – low), Q, and Up/Down/Manual modes. You also have an “Exp In” jack, which provides the option of plugging in an external expression pedal so you can control it like a traditional wah, although I did not bother to do this.
The keys to this pedal are the Cut Off Frequency the and Q, which controls the peak bandwidth. By finding the right setting you can get some decent “quack” from this pedal, especially with single coil pickups, but try as I might I never really found “the sound” to make it a keeper. The pedal is an obvious choice for funk guitar, but it is more subtle and less usable to my ears than the Electro-Harmonix Dr Q or its Micro Q-Tron, which I think are much better sounding effects pedals in this genre.
When engaged the Boss FT-2 also destroys your tone – not really surprising because it is a fairly aggressive filter effect. My favorite setting was using full on distortion from the amp – it produced a very subtle wah effect, which could spice up solos and with the distortion cranked tone loss was less noticeable. I did try this pedal with my Ibanez bass and I think this may be where it shines best. Despite being a rare and somewhat collectible effects pedal, it didn’t make it on to my pedalboard so back to eBay it goes.
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I'm interested in getting one of these with the hope that I can use it like a synth filter (with the expression pedal mode), as I've read that it's basically a low pass filter. Reading this though, it might not have the range I'm after. I guess the lack of a resonance control might also make it a no no. Did you ever try to use it in that context? They're still way cheaper than the Mooger Fooger stuff. Nice blog, thanks.
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I never tried it with an expression pedal, but I don't think it's going to get you what you want because it is such a subtle pedal.
ReplyDeleteYou could check out the Digitech Synth Wah. It's cheap but can produce some usable synth tones.
Have to disagree. While it may take some time, the FT-2 gives up super vowel wah effects if you dial the controls in to your style and learn how to exploit the sonic possibilities. Though it has a high noise floor in comparison to some newer pedals, it still squaks hard if you adjust it to suit your playing style. That is the key. You don't have to adjust your style, you just need to find the settings that work for you. A little more complicated than some modern pedals, but not much. This pedal won't do it for you, but will reward you for adjusting it to work with you. I've had mine for almost twenty years.
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