The JB-2 / Angry Driver
BOSS Angry Driver JB-2
If you’ve been following JHS for the past few years, you probably know about our collaboration with BOSS in 2017: the JB-2 Angry Driver, which combined the BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver with the JHS Angry Charlie distortion pedal. And if you didn’t know before, you know now. Boom.
It’s been about five years since we had the honor of collaborating with BOSS, the greatest pedal company in the world, but this is still the highlight of my career as a builder. The JB-2 was even BOSS’s first ever collaboration with another pedal company, which is a pretty big deal. To celebrate this landmark moment in guitar pedal history, I wanted to highlight four settings on the JB-2 that I especially love.
But first, let me tell you how it all started, the story of how my life got turned upside down by a guy who shares a name with one of the most beloved characters in the Nintendo fandom.
How It All Started
I first met Yoshi Ikegami, the president of BOSS, at the 2014 Summer NAMM show in Nashville, Tennessee. Right from the start, I knew we were peas in a pod, and because I had nothing to lose, I just started asking him questions. I love BOSS pedals and everything they’ve done, and getting to pick the brain of the guy who started it all was a dream come true for me. I'm a history nerd. He’s a living embodiment of guitar history. It was a match made in heaven, the guitar pedal equivalent of a novelist going back in time and hanging out with William Shakespeare.
Yoshi and I got to know each other well enough that at the next NAMM, he came to the JHS booth and hung around, and then I would do the same at the BOSS booth, and we just built a relationship. Eventually I said, “Hey, we should collaborate on a pedal.” I had nothing to lose, so I just kept throwing that idea out, hoping it would stick.
Then BOSS’s 40 year anniversary rolled around. I got a message from Yoshi: “Let's collaborate on a pedal.” It was one of the greatest moments of my life. Probably greater than getting married and having children, honestly. We met up in person at the 2017 Winter NAMM and I proposed the idea. They said, “What would you do if we did a collaboration? Pitch it to us.”
So I said, “The SD-2 is crazy underrated, and it has this interesting remote that changes between two different drives. We should do a take on this. There should be a BOSS Overdrive and a JHS Distortion that you can switch between, or vice versa.” And that's where the idea started. The rest is literally history. In the end, they chose to use the BOSS BD-2 Blues Driver, which is a very iconic pedal (and, ironically, is also the stompbox that got me into pedal-building to begin with). It's kind of an ultimate low gain/tube sounding overdrive that does a nice distortion if you want it to. I chose to use the JHS Angry Charlie for the distortion.
I mailed the original breadboard to Yoshi, and he passed the project over to a young man named Mario,** who is incredible. He developed the switching system using the BOSS ES-8. And did I mention that he was a teenager at the time? Yup. A teenager. Mario is basically the Doogie Howser of pedal-building.
**Yeah, the irony ain’t lost on me that Yoshi and Mario collaborated to make this pedal. I only wish we’d had the foresight to use Donkey Kong graphics on the enclosure, but you can’t win at everything.
How it Works
The format for the pedal was incredibly simple, but incredibly effective. Because it’s a two-in-one, it gives you an insane amount of possibilities on how you chain them into each other. Here are my four favorite modes.
Blues Driver into Angry Charlie: In this mode, the Blues Driver produces a really great transparent overdrive (buzzword alert), adding a ton of volume, and the Angry Charlie brings in a big distortion sound. Overdrive into distortion is my go-to setup for a reason.
Angry Charlie into Blues Driver: I’ll be honest: I haven’t really utilized “distortion into overdrive” with any other pedal, because I just didn't like it, but in the Angry Drive it works. Whereas normally I have my overdrive in a lower gain setting going into distortion (see above), this literally reverses that, and it sounds pretty cool.
Parallel: Parallel means that the two circuits basically sit on top of each other, like you’d use a mixer desk. They don't affect each other directly, and then at the end of your chain, the pedals are combined and sent to the output.
Utilize a Switcher: A switcher like the JHS Red Remote allows you to switch on the fly between the two circuits, which opens up tons of possibilities depending on if you have the overdrive going into the distortion, or vice versa.
To quote Yoshi himself, this was a product that BOSS didn't have and they needed. It did extremely well when we released it in 2017, and it still sells today.
One of the most valuable pedals in my collection is the second ever production model of the JB-2 Angry Driver. We originally released this pedal at the House of Vans 40 Year Celebration, and Yoshi gave me this pedal and signed it. He kept the first production model, which I signed. I also have the prototype for the JB-2, which is really only interesting to a mega nerd like me, but I love it.
It’s no exaggeration to say that collaborating with BOSS (more specifically, with geniuses like Yoshi Ikegami and Mario) has been one of the highlights of my career. I hope Yoshi and I get to work together again, but even if we don’t I’m immensely proud of this pedal and what we accomplished together. Rock on and prosper, Yoshi!