Boss AD-2 Acoustic Preamp Pedal

This pedal was perfect for me as a beginner player. Heads up to other beginners, this does not include an AC adapter (power cable). Very sturdy, already survived a couple weeks of constant use with no issues. Sound is good for the price, was looking for an entry level pedal to use with a cheap acoustic pickup I bought for my Fender and have been enjoying this pedal.

I know 5 star reviews are kind of meaningless, but this was a good purchase. I had bought an entry level nylon string fusion guitar (Yamaha NTX700) with Piezo pickups. This made it sound much better and significantly more fun to play. I'm not sure how it would improve a better guitar or set up, but if you're looking to make something thinsound richer this is a good way to do it. Money well spent and easy to use

I was looking for a preamp that would clear up the signal coming from my piezo-style pickup on my violin/fiddle. I have a Fender Twin amp that controls the volumes & EQs pretty well so I didn’t need a preamp with a lot of bells & whistles. I came across this, honestly did not know it was specifically for acoustic guitar, but it appeared to have the kind of controls I needed. Well I was right, it eliminated any tin can sound, allowed me to control the resonance, helped make my EQs a lot more pronounced, I now have WAY more control over my sound than I did initially. Definitely a good preamp buy for a fiddler!

This is review number 3. I have left the previous reviews intact below.Well I bought this in spring of 2017 and used it about a year, then, dissatisfied, bought a BBE Acoustimax and used that for seven months until it failed in the middle of the gig. I went back to the Boss AD-2 by default, and I am happier with it than before, chiefly because it works, but also because it seems to sound better this time around (yeah, subjectivity). While it is a minimalist box with limited tone processing, and some additional EQ from the mixer is nice, it does the job and is still working, by cricky, which counts for a lot when you don't want to be trouble-shooting electronic twilight zone events in the middle of trying to entertain people. The issues we have had with keeping our sound in unfamiliar venues with other systems have not been solved (which I hoped would be solved by some preamp in order to carry minimal gear to gigs in strange places), so we take our own mixer and send a line out. I wouldn't take this box and plug it into an unfamiliar system, but I am at the moment happy using it. It doesn't mean I don't have my eye out for another possibility, but it is always hard to justify spending more money on electronic gadgets.********************************************Review #2 starts hereWe went on and experimented with other boxes (this is an expensive process!) and found two others that are better [edit: that was spring of 2018... except that one of them failed in the middle of a gig and caused some serious annoyance, causing me to get the Boss AD-2 out again.]Although the Boss AD-2 works fine, it does not have enough tone processing to stand alone. This is not a disadvantage if the mixer has additional tone controls, but we found that we were using a lot of EQ. The problem with this is taking it to plug into somebody else's system - then we have to futz with the EQ on an unfamiliar system under time pressure, not good. This box is really, I think, probably intended to stand at the head of a string of other pedals with additional processing capacities, but a string of pedals is the last thing I want, I want to keep it very simple and just have a very pure acoustic guitar sound. Also, the ideal would be to have one box which would dial in the sound completely and be portable to any house sound system anywhere; this we have not completely accomplished, but instead of running two of these Boss AD-2 boxes, we now have one Zoom A3 and one BBE Acoustimax [edit: which failed], which are both, IMO, better. I will review those in their places.********************************************Original review:As mentioned in my comments to Chris's question "Does it work for nylon-string guitar?" - Yes.The first and most important function of this Boss AD-2 is as an impedance buffer and transformer. Piezo pickups already have plenty of gain, so a "pre-amp" is not really required, but an impedance transformer most certainly is. (Built-in electronics in acoustic-electric guitars usually have this function.) Piezo materials produce this ultra-hi-frequency signal at 10 M-ohms which sounds lousy when plugged into any lower impedance input, and require processing first to bring the impedance down. It is hard to say whether all piezos have the same capacities and qualities; what is certain is that the tone can be altered by additional electronics, even as simple as adding a single capacitor at the jack. Anyway, they all need signal processing.>>> This is the least expensive box that I have found that does such a job. <<<The less expensive Behringer box has the wrong input impedance for piezos (read the specs) and is perhaps meant for a magnetic pickup plugged into a PA. Baggs and Fishman have boxes that also do the job (that is, that are intended for piezos) which are more expensive and have more bells and whistles, and there are some super-pricey boxes from Grace Designs that also do this (which I will probably never get my paws on).Addendum Sept. 2017: The BBE Acoustimax, however, now has a lowest listed price on Amazon of $120 (and up to about $160 from different sellers), which is a pretty competitive price compared with this Boss AD-2, and that BBE box has a lot of features that look like they might be better than the Boss in terms of sound shaping tools. However, I don't have one so I can only say that it looks like it could be more bang for the buck, but I bought the Boss before I saw the BBE, and the Boss works.Our nylon-string guitars have boomy spots around the low A string, 110 hz more or less. The notch filter on the Boss AD-2 takes this right out, no problem at all. I tried one of Fishman's more expensive boxes (which I returned) and could not get the notch filter to take out this problem, don't know why, when it took just one sweep of the dial to find the spot with the Boss.The question of whether this box is "tailored" more for steel strings or for nylon strings appears to be irrelevant. It is specifically tailored to piezo pickups, and whatever sound comes through that pickup is not as important as the type of pickup. The piezo pickup colors the sound in its own way, and some EQ and perhaps other processing is desirable. One of the processors on the Boss AD-2 is a mild reverb, and the other one seems to change the amount of fatness in the mid-range centered around 250 hz ??. I find some additional EQ to be good.Addendum: June 2017. I finally got around to wiring up the special cables necessary for the line out jack - these must be stereo 1/4" on one end and XLR on the other, I bought the jacks and soldered them up myself. The wiring diagram is in the manual. There was a dramatic improvement in the sound over using the higher-impedance "output" jack. Our mixer has a "hi-z" switch to accommodate the "output" jack, but this signal path required lots of EQ all the same, and w/o EQ from the mixer, the sound was a little harsh. Using the "line out" instead, the sound was sweeter and was at least acceptable with the mixer EQ flat, so instead of having to use the mixer EQ to compensate, I can use it to enhance. Well worth the trouble to get the line out cable. I don't know if anybody sells them, it was easier to do it myself and know they were wired right. Why they didn't put an XLR balanced output jack instead of requiring a special cable I dunno.

I use it for playing plugged in to PA. If you struggle with EQ this pedal is great . It is simple to use and gives nice warm tone

Awesome

Great pedal to help fill out your acoustic guitar sound. It takes the thinness and creates a nice full warm sound. I use it for our PA system at church in a decent dized room and it sounds great!

It seems a though I got a used or diplayed Boss preamp item, doesn't look new at all...