Fret Fiend: The somewhat daily blog about all things guitar.

Boss released their “Dyna Drive” pedal in the Winter NAMM of ‘07. The pedal was designed so that your picking velocity determines the amount of gain on the pedal. So basically, the harder you strum, the more distortion there is. If you want to hear what it sounds like, Boss has a audio demo of it on their website (link). Of course, they probably have a five-thousand dollar guitar and a ten-thousand dollar amp in their studio, so it might not sound exactly like that when you get it. Anyways, here you go, a review of the Boss DN-2 Dyna Drive Pedal.

Quality

As always, Boss did not sacrifice any quality in the design of this product. The DN-2 has a hard metal casing with a rubber stomp pad and hard plastic knobs. I am quite sure that this baby could survive a two-story fall (although I wouldn’t be the one to test that).

Tone

The big hype about this pedal was its ability to adjust the level of distortion based on the picking velocity. However, I wish that Boss had included an on/off switch for this feature because for some types of guitar playing, such as tapping, you need lots of sustain but the pedal won’t give it to you because you’re not picking hard enough. This was one of the major turnoffs for me about this pedal. Another thing is that contrary to what I thought, the volume does not change as you change your picking velocity. It must change the volume along with the drive, or something like that. Kudos to Boss for thinking of that.

Aside from the dynamic overdrive feature, the tone of the pedal was good. It was nice and crisp stayed true to your picking technique, just like a real overdriven tube amp would. The only thing was it lacked the bass that I needed to get that extra oomph in my playing.

Overall

This pedal definitely is not one of my favorites, but it has its uses. I wouldn’t use this as my main distortion pedal due to its lack of flexibility. It;s good at styles like jazz, funk, and blues, but it won’t deliver the heavy distortion you need for metal or hard rock. Although, it might be good for a recording environment; you could just record the parts where you need the transition from light to heavy overdrive (or vice versa) with the DN-2, and then do the rest with a similar sounding overdrive or distortion pedal. Overall, though, I do not think that this pedal was worth the $120 that it cost me. I am going to return it tomorrow and buy a Marshall Guv’nor (check back soon for a review of it), which is half the price and double the value.