Boss' least favorite child: The Xtortion XT-2

[dangayle]

From what I've gathered, most people don't really like this pedal. Boss only made it for one year, and I bought mine secondhand from the Trading Musician in Seattle. In fact, it was so hated that when I had a $12 credit at the store, I offered to take that pedal in lieu of cash and they accepted.

Here's the catch: On basically every setting, it sounds kinda lousy. The distortion is meant to be a hard/heavy metal kind of sound, but it just doesn't hit the sweet spot that someone playing that style is going to want.

Here's the secret: Turn the volume up to max, contour knob to about 11 o'clock and all the others down to zero. Instant Blackface overdrive. In this setting, it has a bit of a scooped eq with some boost to the bass and treble. It's incredibly touch sensitive to picking dynamics, and will go from a clean strum to a nicely overdriven tube-amp distortion.

Stick in front of a good sounding tube amp, clean or distorted, and your amp just sings. It's one of those pedals that you instantly feel disappointed when you turn it off, it makes everything sound that much better. Maybe mine is special and the rest are crap, but it won't ever leave my pedalboard from now on.

EDIT: Volume to MAX volume. That's important. I was writing this based off of memory.

 

[MERCYFULFATE]

i have one i bought new.its sounds ok.

 

[Occam]

My old Marshall JCM800 2210 (the 2-channel model) is also much maligned but mine had one magical setting that was just amazing sounding...everything else was either bad or pedestrian.

 

[dshobe]

How could you go wrong for $12?! At the least you'd own a piece of history, I.e. The worst boss pedal ever (for some). I haven't played one, just heard about them. The local music go round has one, but they want $60 for it. Crazy.

 

[KevinFinn]

I love mine for how hated it is alone.

I think it's perfect for industrial crap sounds for covers. If I was ironically covering a Britney Spears song, that would be my power chord sound. The thing is, it's like lo-fi and hi-fi at the same time. It has this noise-killing compression, and sounds like a purposefully-bad sound you'd tweak in pro tools.

I think it's cool.

 

[jgyn]

I have one, and like it (once in awhile.)

 

[cjkbug]

I love mine for how hated it is alone.

I love that!

 

[Pedal Dan]

I like mine. In fact I've got 2.

 

[Moe45673]

I listened to some demos on youtube. Does it sound awful? Sort of. It'd never be the distortion I use regularly. However, for one song to give it that certain touch.... I don't see how you could go wrong. Particularly at that price.

 

[dangayle]

As an overdrive/booster I love it, as a distortion, not so much.

I will say this in its favor though: You CAN get distortions out of it that I don't think exist anywhere else, and it's certainly not a retread of an 808/DS1/Rat/Muff like 90% of all the dirt pedals in existence.

 

[sahhas]

i'll have to check this out, i'm wondering if this was a pedal to be used for industrial music back in the 90s? again i need to check out clips.
from what people are saying it reminds me of the zoom 9030, 1/2 rack unit that zoom had back in the 90s.
most guitar tone snobs hated it, sounded too digital, etc.
but for those into industrial sounds, it was the guitar distortion that NIN used on one album and helped you get that specific sound.

 

[sahhas]

i just checked ebay quick, the worst hated boss pedal ever (?) there are 2 of them on there, both over $100. oh well...

 

[sahhas]

just listened to some clips of this pedal on youtube. it sounds like a grunge flavored distortion. it does have a unique flavor to it, can't quite describe it. but in the brief bit of the clips i watched it sounded decent.

 

[nullin]

I have one, love using it for nasty, late 90's industrial sounds. Anyone notice that when you turn the Punch up, you start to get harmonics on the low E string like you were doing pinch harmonics? Ugly, nasty, in a good way. I still think the Power Driver is uglier sounding.

 

[KevinFinn]

Yeah, it's really original. The amount of tone you can affect in key ranges is pretty significant. It almost leaves "distortion" territory and becomes an effect unto itself.

This thread inspired me to play with mine again today, and I was really digging it. It's a lot of fun. It sounds like industrial dystopia. It was never meant to do SRV. But, oddly enough, the setting someone recommended for a "Blackface-like" sound was really great! It can really clean up a clean tone, as a way to use the pedal unconventionally.

I keep mine around 'cause I figure it's a piece of history. And if I ever find myself in a pop cover band, it will be useful for covering everything from Britney Spears to Ke$ha, 'cause it has that overblown "jar o' bees being raped by dragonflies" with tons of compression so the noise floor is almost non-existent.

 

[crosse79]

i just checked ebay quick, the worst hated boss pedal ever (?)

That honour actually belongs to the Boss MetalZone

 

[KevinFinn]

Isn't the Metal Zone the only Boss pedal to outsell the DS1?

 

[teleclem]

That honour actually belongs to the Boss MetalZone

i have to agree

 

[KevinFinn]

Whether or not any of us likes the Metal Zone, it's arguably Boss' FAVORITE child. It has been printing them money for 2 decades.

 

[hades_1123]

XT-2 Sound like a lot of distortions from digital effects boards for me

And a lot of people have digital boards So .....