GEA R SPOTLIGHT
ISSUE 203
O C T O B E R 27
BOSS / JHS
A N G RY D R I V E R
REVIEW BY S.P. BURKE
STREET PRICE $199.99
When the Angry Driver
came up on my docket of
pedals to review, I didn’t
know what to make of it.
What exactly was Boss
aiming for here? I was
somewhat unfamiliar with
JHS, so I didn’t have a
point of reference.
Turns out the Angry Driver
is a bit of an anniversary
celebration, specifically
Boss’s 40th. Teaming up
with JHS, they’ve combined
forces Voltron-style to
give us two pedals in one.
The Angry Driver contains
circuits both from Boss’s
BD-2 Blues Driver and JHS’s
Angry Charlie, essentially
giving us one low-gain
60
G EA R S POTLI G HT
//
overdrive stacked with
one high-gain overdrive.
Controls are mapped to a
set of concentric knobs,
and which overdrive you
want is controlled with the
fourth knob. You can either
cycle through manually,
or with a remote switch
thanks to the additional
input jack that’s available.
The advantage here is
that the Angry Driver
lets you combine the
effects however you want,
including which one comes
after the other. Six options
are available: just the
Boss, just the JHS, series,
parallel, JHS before the
Boss, or JHS after the Boss.
And just to make things
b o s s // j h s an g ry d river
easier, custom LED colors
come up depending on the
setting.
It says a lot about Boss’s
industry power when
they can team up with a
boutique company like this
and have them instantly
on board. As I set up, my
question was how unique
of a product we would get.
Boss makes a solid product,
but its pedals are rather
generic compared to most
boutique effects available
on the market today. It
feels like asking McDonald’s
to cook you filet mignon.
Plugging in my loyal
Humbucker-equipped
Strat, I decided my criteria