My favourite pedal of all time. Impossible to explain to people. But, fun fact: It sounds KILLER after a wah pedal. The way the octaves respond to the EQ shift accentuates how vocal the wah sounds, and adds harmonic characteristics otherwise unachievable. In Mode 1, it sounds marvellous before a wah too.
Fun tip, if you want to use this for vocals, try setting it to Mode 1, diming the Tone knob, and turning the Balance the whole way down, then nudge it upward as slightly as possible. If you're using stereo-out from the M0-2, try diming the Detune knob. I found that gives vocals a nice tape-y tone, similar to the effects used for vocals on Toto's Africa.
I play a couple of different electric mandolins (5 string) through this pedal. The mode switch is really clear with these instruments. 1 = octave above dry note, 2 = octave above and same octave as dry note, 3 = octave above, same octave, and octave below dry note. I use it to broaden the range of the emando; give it some breadth and depth. It works well for playing without someone (keys or guitars) who covers the midrange as a matter of course, especially when playing single note melodies.
Currently using one in between my two fuzzes to enhance and thicken the tone with mode 3 and make even more octave artifacts pop out of the super fuzz it's going into right after. Only need a bit of wet signal to get a good amount of an extra layer of harmonic tones, noise and sizzle. All the extra tones really make for some epic sounding looping with some reverb. I've never got these sounds with a pitch shifter or a harmonizer.
That sounds really interesting, could you expand a bit on your rig; what fuzzes,guitar,amp,etc? I'm an fn nerd when it comes to octave+fuzz related glitching and artifacts,I'm not happy unless my guitar sounds like robot diarrhea in monophonic disjunction hell lol. Most of my collection is built around those sorts of sounds,from the venerable blue box and DOD buzzbox all the way up to the eqd data corrupter and other such boutique offerings. I'm waiting on a shields blender general production preorder that I'm really excited for.
Dude, I love your demos. Unlike a lot of other content creators, you really break down what one can expect when purchasing a pedal. I just sub'd because, why not? You responded to my BBE tremolo comment. So anyway, you and AndyDemos are awesome, keep doing what you do.
100%. Jeff here and Andy Martin's are my two favorite video channels. Stefan Fast of Pedal Zone is also great. What they all have in common is no-nonsense, minimal hype just play the pedal and show what it can do with a bit of exposition where needed.
I think the confusion about this pedal is basically because Boss is putting more emphasis on HOW they are achieving the effect than what the effect is, actually. I believe that this pedal is relying on the same technology as was originally developed with a plugin like Melodyne where you can digitally manipulate a polyphonic signal by separating out the individual notes by some kind of digital magic and you can then alter those notes to be something else.... mess with the harmonic structure of them. Melodyne will let you change a single track with multiple harmonies and tune each voice differently. That miracle technology has brought us the Multi-Overtone and later, the EHX -9 synth/keyboard simulator pedals and the Boss SY-1/SY-1000 Guitar Synths that require no special hexaphonic pickup. I am not certain if this is how the Digitech Drop/Whammy did their thing, though. It's possible. The technology is pretty incredible, make no mistake. This stuff must have come from aliens, if you ask me. This effect, however, is much easier to describe if you ignore HOW it's doing it's job (by analyzing, deconstructing and manipulating the harmonics) and just say what it sounds like. It's a pitch shifter/detune pedal. By those functions, it can do a pretty good job at simulating a 12-string guitar or an organ with a leslie on it. You can do many other creative things with it as well, but at it's core, those are the effects you should expect from it. Because of how it does it's thing, it doesn't have the same sort of latency that an typical old school digital pitch shifter does. That is an improvement, for sure. It's not going to mis-track or glitch like a pitch-voltage guitar synth. It's not going to go crazy like an old school monophonic analog octave-down pedal or sound fuzzy and ringy like an old school octave-up fuzz like an Octavia. You can certainly combine it with other pedals to make some crazy sounds, though. I love how you demonstrated distortion BEFORE and AFTER the pedal. That's a huge difference that not everyone understands.
I have on my my board, I tend to use it to fill out clean parts with a kind of B3 sound just to give to some depth. I also used it on our next single, burnt Orange Michigan out at the end of the month to beef up the guitar sound towards the end of the song, along with an ehx pitch fork! - great videos, for an under rated pedal!
Thanks for the fairly thorough dive. This seems to be going for a ~sympathetic strings~ effect like you might get on some sitar, the odd lute, or gittern. [+ octave / DSP jazz] It reminds me a lot of E-mu's Z-plane filters they developed in the '90s, similar to a sampler patch or three I made back in the day. Cheers :) 🍻
It kind of sounds like a vibrotone or rotary +chorus cool, but it also sounds like a lot of the over produced 80's stuff. Great video even if I'm not in love with yet another boss pedal.
@@jumpingman8160 Each there own. It work for me. Just didn't need the flexibility of the POG. Doesn't mean it doesn't do exactly what they made it to do.
I swear, every time you do a video on a pedal that I'm planning to feature myself at some point, I come away feeling like I no longer need to. Great job, dude! 😎👍
I still want to see your take on this. Boss left this pedal's role so ambiguous, I bet five different players would come up with five different things they'd use the pedal for.
We want to see your unique take on it. I've just watched the new Domek video on it. His take is different yet again (a fellow noise connoisseur) but we all bring something to the table. Every take explores different ways to use a device.
love the beginning bit. That's me when I'm explaining synth circuits to my friends who dont give a damn lol This thing is kinda cool, like Boss's take on a unique modulator. Seems like its triangulated somewhere between a uni-vibe, time modulator and granular processor.
Very well done! You present the pedals in a pleasant way, still very informative and with a nice portion of humour. I also appreciate the effort - and results - in filming, editing, sound quality and creating some backing music to it once in a while! Concerning the MO-2, what I hear the most, is the "octavish" charakter of the more prominent overtones. Thus for me, the guitar sound gets a bit of an "organesque" support. Like it!
Thank you! I'm glad you pick up what I'm putting down. I think the other pedals are doing a filter-into-pitch-shift thing, which sounds organ/synth-ish, but relies on tracking. This seems to be doing a deeper analysis of the signal where it can pull out, and using that to either pitch-shift or synthesize something to round out the sound. I've seen people get a really convincing 12-string sound out of it... for me, I mostly had fun with that organ sound, for sure.
I sure wish more pedal demonstrations proceeded like this one, just going through the settings one by one, the pedal before the distortion, after the distortion. Needless to say I've subscribed to this channel. It sounds like channel 3 adds a sub octave, channel one an octave up and perhaps is 2 both? The de tune seems to be doing what a flanger does. It sounds really nice after the distortion like a sitar or something, kind of blown out before the distortion, like an overdriven tube amp.
Seems like a cool sleeper pedal. Almost like it's amplifying the "synthy" sound that people say bad octave pedals have. But that actually makes it interesting.
Definitely a sleeper. I use a synth pedal (SY-1) with my bass for a cover band, just to get a somewhat more dramatic sound, but it doesn't handle chords and dynamics quite like this. It's a totally different approach. Neat stuff, glad Boss is still trying stuff out.
I’m a lead bassist (no guitarist in the band), and I use the MO-2 as an octave up (Balance on hi, Tone on zero, Detune on zero, Mode on one), followed by a distortion pedal, going into a guitar amp, and split into a clean bass amp. My sound is wide and huge.
@@StompboxBreakdown - Okay, finally recorded a single… it’s called Rainbow, a powerpop anthem dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community. It’s just me singing, on bass, going through 2 amps, and a drummer. We’re called REVULATOR. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qOZAeJiFNoE.htmlsi=QMQUuyLTmtCKmE6n
Mode 3 with little detune reminds me of that hokey match organs. Boss really went crazy with this line of pedals. It's a shame that they are mostly ignored by most people. My Tera Echo never leaves my pedalboard. Guess I'll have to find one of these also. Btw, great review as always
Tera Echo is actually useful. This sounds like garbage to me. You can use it as an octave with fuzz/distortion added but that's not exactly a new sound.
I forget where I read the comment, but someone was saying that once the Tera-Echo gets discontinued, it'll get spotted on some well-loved guitarist's board and instantly be in hot demand. I have to agree. I wish I had been doing the demo jams when I covered the TE-2, it really fits into a band jam in a way people don't expect.
I got the Red Panda Raster 2 and I'm trying to determine what the MO-2 does differently? I'm hearing all sorts of flange, chorus, and cool wobblings going on, which adds such depth and layering to any sound! I think the Raster does something similar (and more) with exotic flavorings, but the controls are really 'out-there', and 90% of the settings are really unusable. Also, the Raster relies heavily on the web based interface (translation: you need to plug it into the computer, make a bunch of setting adjustments which alter whatever is on the dials), and while that seems cool, it's annoying. I don't have time or patience to be doing all that. The MO-2 seems to take the best sounds out of that, and make it into a more straightforward, easy-to use pedal. Which, I'd consider getting just for the simpler controls!
Any other company without the matter-of-fact naming structure of Boss would simply call this an organ simulator. That's the simple way to explain it. It makes your guitar sounds like an electronic organ.
I really want to get one of these and try it on my electric 12 string now, it has the type of thing i think about a 12 on the 6 so adding that to a 12 would be fun
I DID NOT know this pedal ....never heard of it or saw it before ...... THANK YOU SOOO MUCH! .....I think it has some settings that are very important for what I'm trying to do. I wonder how it will react with a ringmodulator....
@@StompboxBreakdown lol! NO WORRIES! Did you know scientists - I think at CERN - have posed the theory that THEY PROBABLY collapsed the Universe and a new one instantly took its place ? (NO JOKE) ..(and WHAT IF the new copy isn't exactly the same? This could explain the Mandela effect!) Why should the CERN people have all the fun?
@@MYGAS21 I'd believe it. Watched a number of videos about multidimensional parallel universes lately. I'll have to try and find that one, sounds interesting.
@@StompboxBreakdown I heard it from Sean David Morton and I think he was referring to some article.... good luck in findiing it though....post the link here if you do. SO back to music.... I'm currently (for a bell or gamelanish sound for my arpeggios) using a ring modulator only on the treble part of the spectrum and for the rest of the spectrum I layer a KILLER V vibrato that simulates a pulsating bell in this context. The sound has the calm mystical feel I want, but I'm curious to see what more I could do. So I think this pedal could maybe add some useful harmonics - either feeding the ringmodulator or even the Killer V Vibrato with some MO-2 detune (so it's closer to the nature of ringmodulator detuned sound but with a different detune so the true pitch comes through - if that makes sense). I dunno, I'm also considering buying a NUX AMP Academy and loading a DIY gamelan IR in it. QUESTION: Somebody in the comments said that this pedal is a sort of POG...do you think this adds only octave harmonics?
Cool jams, first one made me think of early Yes, and loved that second one that called to mind Prince’s Purple Rain outro. No idea if those are in the ballpark, but loved those jams. This was a challenging pedal, and I’m sure to explore and plan out a video. Much thumbs up for a great exploration and explanation. ✌️🙂🎸
Second one was definitely Purple Rain, not sure what I was going fit on the first one. Thanks for watching, it was tricky, with not a lot of info to go on.
"it's a floor polish... no... it's a dessert topping... hold on... it's both a floor polish AND a dessert topping!!!!".. Mostly it makes you sound out of tune. 🎶
the moment you said, "or if you're a dude in your basement surrounded by peavey amps", I was like damn this dude can see me thru the monitor ....is he monitoring me?! lmao.
LOL 😆 Love your intro!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 It sounds a lot like a Leslie.... And I’m sure that it uses algorithms from Leslie pedals. You’ve really don’t an excellent review.
Another cool video, man. love the entire MDP series. The Tera Echo is probably my ‘desert island’ pedal. I have this one on my board, too, and use it a a 12-string type of sound. I’m curious as to the difference between the Adaptive Distortion from the series and the DS-1X. I have the DS-1X and it sounds fantastic, but I’ve yet to pick up the AD-2. Do you have any experience with either of these distortions? Thanks for the content!
I haven't played around with the AD-2 or DS-1X. I have to imagine it's different sets of the algorithm's functions being put to use in different ways. These pedals seem to have a more precise way of monitoring dynamics and overtones than anything previous, and it's just doing something else based on that realtime information. If I see a good deal on the AD-2, I'll pick it up, so far it seems to not show up much on the second-hand market.
Good question. Best I could tell, it seems to be tied to the detune function. I couldn't quite figure out exactly what the stereo function was doing, just that it sounded even bigger. Sorry.
