If you need a small portable modeler I don't see why you'd pick this over an HX Stomp, MX5, or FM3. It's cheaper but once you add an overdrive, a delay, etc. you might as well get the MX5 or HX stomp. If you're a gigging musician and already have a pedal board maybe you'd get it for Boss's durability. My Boss pedals from the 80s and 90s still work.
I love my HX Stomp, but the power supply is just meh. It does great on my pedalboard, but for smaller travel gigs I’ll do Boss + Zoom MS-70CDR for everything else apart from gain.
11:20 why boss and not ampero mini? Sometimes you are just after simplicity, you want your guitar plugged in with decent sound. If you dont need millions of amp models, but want to be able to use your headphones and hear your modulation effect pedals - you need FX loop. And if you want to squeeze something on your pedaltrain nano then you want Boss IR-2 :) I think it wins with simplicity and practicality. Unfortunately not necessarily with over driven tones from what I can hear on youtube... I cant get my hands on this one either as there is no stock anywhere in the UK atm
I'm probably not the target audience either, but it could be a decent backup solution for many different setups. It could certainly get you through a gig if your main rig fails. Other solutions as you suggested may be superior for that purpose, but given it's form factor, I can see the IR2 actually living on a pedalboard on a permanent basis for that purpose alone.
Pedalboard Guys are a different breed! I recently found out there are clubs here in the UK where for a monthly fee they send you a different one every few weeks.
If you want a solution for touring that can also work on batteries - Boss is for you. Every other pedal these days requires power supply. On top of that boss is super reliable and built like a tank. I have my doubts about road worthy-ness of Hotone and toneX on tour. I really do. Last, but not least it’s the easiest solution that does not require you to use computer at all. Just tweak settings like you would do on the regular amp. There is no other solution on the market except Strymon iridium that can beat that easiness but iridium doesn’t work on 9 V batteries.
I think this a good and cheap way to have IR loader and amp sim, no all of us have 1000usd to spend on a (Fractal/neural) not all like menus, for a pedal guy mid level I think works fine, I hope can try on by myselft soon, the hoto dont have enough ouputs for me...
It's literally and amp replacement for those with pedal boards. I'm toying with getting one, and I do, I'll put my Fender Tre Verb in the FX loop, and my JHS Notaklön in the front. A small super flexible rig with knobs, not menus
This is perfect for my home studio. I've got 11 decent sounding amps and cabs running into my recording set up. No computer, no menu screen diving, the simplicity is key for me. Set the knobs like on a real amp and hit record. I'm not going through 150 IRs and playing with mics and settings. I'd never record a thing, just fiddle. Once yor guitar is in the mix, will you be able to tell that it's the Boss IR-2?
@@Haze763 i just wanna chime in on how much I love this pedal. Like you, it solved a lot of problems. It also changed the way I look at practice or recording. It’s so easy now to just sit down, grab my guitar, turn on my pedalboard, and I’m off. I even use a jbl go mini speaker with Velcro on my board and run the headphone out to the aux in and bam, a mini pocket sized speaker on my pedalboard that sounds awesome for practice at home. I can hook it up with one cable to my apollo interface and bam, every single tone I just took the time to carve out sounds exactly the same in my interface. Or the fact that I have an effects loop in my board now, so if I wanted to I could A) bypass the IR2 and plug into my amp input and have all my pedals work the same and all my delays and reverbs run through the loop. Or B) run into a PA or an amp effects return and just use the IR2 as is. I have two pedalboards in one. I set one channel to crunch, the other to hi gain. I can’t believe how good those sound especially with my own IRs loaded in (I like the ML Labs Mix ready Hefty or Dynamic). I haven’t stopped playing guitar in days. Hell when the pedal arrived our power was out. It came with a battery installed. I literally jammed with headphones using just the pedal until the lights came back on. I love this thing.
@@Earthwormjimm This is great to hear!!! I love that it has an effects loop. The Strymon Iridium doesn't. Yes, the Boss even has a battery option too. When I was researching, I watched a video on the Tonex One. They said that when the Tonex One came out right after the IR-2, Boss had to be worried that the IR-2 would flop. They said to expect the used market to be flooded with IR-2s. I was leaning toward getting the Tonex One but I snapped out of it. I still like the simplicity of the IR-2. I even looked into the IR-200. That thing is a beautiful beast but still too much for me. The IR-2 is perfect for my home recording set ups. I've got 11 different amps and cabs at the end of my pedalboard and I can record quiet if I want. Again man, I'm happy you love yours. You made a great choice!! ✌
Somehow this video and a recent jam made it click for me why the stock IRs are so fizzy. It's the beginner/bedroom tone. At low volume it makes sense, the loudness curve makes you hear the mids more, it just doesn't translate to stage volumes. The fizz was exactly what I heard from the guy I jammed with, he had a Katana and admitted he had never played at stage volume before.
@@GuitarCinemaOfficialI think Celestion’s IRs aren’t that great. Bought many from them and none of them really moved me. I think they are a big factor behind the meh sound. Just an observation I noticed, the Brit stack voice is better on the IR2 than on the IR200, but the Clean voice is better on the IR200. Tweed and Vox voices weren’t great on either unit. Boss should have scrapped the “Brown” and a couple other voices and replaced them with bass amp models to really make the IR2 versatile.
The IR-2 became irrelevant when the ToneX One hit the market, If the Ampero Mini had an FX loop for my ToneX One, it would be a super mini pedal board!
I load this with my favorite IR's and play straight into my headphones while I'm in the middle of nowhere with my caravan, no mains power required. What is their not to get?
If only! RUclips Ad Revenue aside I have never received a cent from anyone or any company for the graft I put into making these videos. I just really like that Mini.
Hey! Sorry, but I don't agree for the most part of your demo... I don't think you've god to understand and review this pedal well 🙂I have it since almost 6 months and I love it! I've build a pedal-board over this pedal, which is amazing in my opinion 🙂 I also have big rig with Marshall JVM-410H, TC G-System and many other things, which I use for big gigs on some stadium or other similar venues... I think, that It's not correct where you said, you have 11 preamps with their two selectable channels, you don't (or I'm missing something)... You have two channels on the pedal, but you have a total of 11 preamps, which you can place on either of the two channels (green or red) with different settings. You don't have for example Clean and Drive channels of the "Modded" or "Hi-Gain" preamp, or any of the other, instead you can place for example two Hi-Gain preamps ( with different settings or identical) on both Green and Red channels, or Clean "Twin" on the green and "Hi-Gain" on the read or vice versa 🙂 I don't know what kind of reverbs you like, but I use the "Hall" mode all the way up (100% mix) and it's pretty good enough for me. I also use the BOSS Space Echo RE-202 - Stereo trough the FX-Loop jacks in conjunction with the IR-2 and I like the reverb on the IR-2 much more 🙂 Yes I also use some modification of the B.B Preamp by Exotic for boost, but it's not essential for me. Another big thing (and you've mention that) is the ability to load your own IRs, where the drastic change of the sound comes... I don't use any of the stock IRs from the IR-2, I tested all of them, but honestly I don't like them... I didn't have any problems, what so ever with the software and loading my IRs. Yes it would be much better if BOSS made some changes to the way we load IRs and maybe add some A/B comparison option, but even like it is now, it's not to bad 🙂 And finally in my opinion, the reasons behind the attention about this pedal are few: 1-Amazing sounding preamps (almost all of them), 2-Almost unlimited flexibility of connecting this pedal to other gear, 3- Very compact - small form-factor, 4-Has stereo FX loop like most good real amps do, 5-Not very expensive, 6-You can easily gig with almost no compromises with this pedal, you can go on rehearsals with it ( as I do now ) and the most important thing for me, it feels and responds almost like real amp to the guitar and your playing 🙂 Anyways...This is just my personal opinion 🙂 Cheers! 🤘🍻
@@GuitarCinemaOfficial I own a Quad Cortex, Headrush Prime, and Boss GT-1000 Core. I love them all, but whenever I use the Boss, I can instantly feel the speed of its response. Beside that, in my experience, it is the only modeler that sounds like a real amp
Seems to me like the target demographic for this is the "impulse buy" crowd. I also don't see the great appeal after watching your demo. Just another boss pedal with boss flavor. It's fine, but isn't anything evolutionary.
I just need one clean amp sim, one IR and reverb so it is a great option for me at right price,
If you need a small portable modeler I don't see why you'd pick this over an HX Stomp, MX5, or FM3. It's cheaper but once you add an overdrive, a delay, etc. you might as well get the MX5 or HX stomp.
If you're a gigging musician and already have a pedal board maybe you'd get it for Boss's durability. My Boss pedals from the 80s and 90s still work.
Good point, another couple hundred easily to turn it into a viable live rig.
I love my HX Stomp, but the power supply is just meh. It does great on my pedalboard, but for smaller travel gigs I’ll do Boss + Zoom MS-70CDR for everything else apart from gain.
11:20 why boss and not ampero mini? Sometimes you are just after simplicity, you want your guitar plugged in with decent sound. If you dont need millions of amp models, but want to be able to use your headphones and hear your modulation effect pedals - you need FX loop. And if you want to squeeze something on your pedaltrain nano then you want Boss IR-2 :) I think it wins with simplicity and practicality. Unfortunately not necessarily with over driven tones from what I can hear on youtube... I cant get my hands on this one either as there is no stock anywhere in the UK atm
I'm probably not the target audience either, but it could be a decent backup solution for many different setups. It could certainly get you through a gig if your main rig fails. Other solutions as you suggested may be superior for that purpose, but given it's form factor, I can see the IR2 actually living on a pedalboard on a permanent basis for that purpose alone.
Pedalboard Guys are a different breed! I recently found out there are clubs here in the UK where for a monthly fee they send you a different one every few weeks.
If you want a solution for touring that can also work on batteries - Boss is for you. Every other pedal these days requires power supply. On top of that boss is super reliable and built like a tank. I have my doubts about road worthy-ness of Hotone and toneX on tour. I really do. Last, but not least it’s the easiest solution that does not require you to use computer at all. Just tweak settings like you would do on the regular amp. There is no other solution on the market except Strymon iridium that can beat that easiness but iridium doesn’t work on 9 V batteries.
But obviously I don’t think it’s great for modern metal 🤷🏻♂️
Also, Strydom Iridium dies not gave an FX loop.
I think this a good and cheap way to have IR loader and amp sim, no all of us have 1000usd to spend on a (Fractal/neural) not all like menus, for a pedal guy mid level I think works fine, I hope can try on by myselft soon, the hoto dont have enough ouputs for me...
It's literally and amp replacement for those with pedal boards.
I'm toying with getting one, and I do, I'll put my Fender Tre Verb in the FX loop, and my JHS Notaklön in the front.
A small super flexible rig with knobs, not menus
Jimmy, you gotta try tonex. I recommend the big pedal. Get an overdrive to pair with it and youre golden
I'm on it!
This is perfect for my home studio. I've got 11 decent sounding amps and cabs running into my recording set up. No computer, no menu screen diving, the simplicity is key for me. Set the knobs like on a real amp and hit record. I'm not going through 150 IRs and playing with mics and settings. I'd never record a thing, just fiddle. Once yor guitar is in the mix, will you be able to tell that it's the Boss IR-2?
Nope. Cheers for writing and not obsessing.
@@Haze763 i just wanna chime in on how much I love this pedal. Like you, it solved a lot of problems. It also changed the way I look at practice or recording. It’s so easy now to just sit down, grab my guitar, turn on my pedalboard, and I’m off. I even use a jbl go mini speaker with Velcro on my board and run the headphone out to the aux in and bam, a mini pocket sized speaker on my pedalboard that sounds awesome for practice at home. I can hook it up with one cable to my apollo interface and bam, every single tone I just took the time to carve out sounds exactly the same in my interface. Or the fact that I have an effects loop in my board now, so if I wanted to I could A) bypass the IR2 and plug into my amp input and have all my pedals work the same and all my delays and reverbs run through the loop. Or B) run into a PA or an amp effects return and just use the IR2 as is. I have two pedalboards in one. I set one channel to crunch, the other to hi gain. I can’t believe how good those sound especially with my own IRs loaded in (I like the ML Labs Mix ready Hefty or Dynamic).
I haven’t stopped playing guitar in days. Hell when the pedal arrived our power was out. It came with a battery installed. I literally jammed with headphones using just the pedal until the lights came back on. I love this thing.
@@Earthwormjimm This is great to hear!!! I love that it has an effects loop. The Strymon Iridium doesn't. Yes, the Boss even has a battery option too.
When I was researching, I watched a video on the Tonex One. They said that when the Tonex One came out right after the IR-2, Boss had to be worried that the IR-2 would flop. They said to expect the used market to be flooded with IR-2s. I was leaning toward getting the Tonex One but I snapped out of it. I still like the simplicity of the IR-2. I even looked into the IR-200. That thing is a beautiful beast but still too much for me. The IR-2 is perfect for my home recording set ups. I've got 11 different amps and cabs at the end of my pedalboard and I can record quiet if I want. Again man, I'm happy you love yours. You made a great choice!! ✌
Somehow this video and a recent jam made it click for me why the stock IRs are so fizzy. It's the beginner/bedroom tone. At low volume it makes sense, the loudness curve makes you hear the mids more, it just doesn't translate to stage volumes. The fizz was exactly what I heard from the guy I jammed with, he had a Katana and admitted he had never played at stage volume before.
The custom IR definitely helps the sound.
For a product with IR in the name the included ones are not great...
@@GuitarCinemaOfficialI think Celestion’s IRs aren’t that great. Bought many from them and none of them really moved me. I think they are a big factor behind the meh sound.
Just an observation I noticed, the Brit stack voice is better on the IR2 than on the IR200, but the Clean voice is better on the IR200. Tweed and Vox voices weren’t great on either unit. Boss should have scrapped the “Brown” and a couple other voices and replaced them with bass amp models to really make the IR2 versatile.
The IR-2 became irrelevant when the ToneX One hit the market, If the Ampero Mini had an FX loop for my ToneX One, it would be a super mini pedal board!
Great shout actually I need to get one of those in for review next !
Hit this Like button everytime i repeat the name "Hotone Ampero Mini"!
I load this with my favorite IR's and play straight into my headphones while I'm in the middle of nowhere with my caravan, no mains power required. What is their not to get?
I'm sure we'd all like to thank you for the vid and your sponsor, Hotone Ampero Mini.
If only! RUclips Ad Revenue aside I have never received a cent from anyone or any company for the graft I put into making these videos. I just really like that Mini.
Hey! Sorry, but I don't agree for the most part of your demo... I don't think you've god to understand and review this pedal well 🙂I have it since almost 6 months and I love it! I've build a pedal-board over this pedal, which is amazing in my opinion 🙂 I also have big rig with Marshall JVM-410H, TC G-System and many other things, which I use for big gigs on some stadium or other similar venues...
I think, that It's not correct where you said, you have 11 preamps with their two selectable channels, you don't (or I'm missing something)... You have two channels on the pedal, but you have a total of 11 preamps, which you can place on either of the two channels (green or red) with different settings. You don't have for example Clean and Drive channels of the "Modded" or "Hi-Gain" preamp, or any of the other, instead you can place for example two Hi-Gain preamps ( with different settings or identical) on both Green and Red channels, or Clean "Twin" on the green and "Hi-Gain" on the read or vice versa 🙂
I don't know what kind of reverbs you like, but I use the "Hall" mode all the way up (100% mix) and it's pretty good enough for me. I also use the BOSS Space Echo RE-202 - Stereo trough the FX-Loop jacks in conjunction with the IR-2 and I like the reverb on the IR-2 much more 🙂 Yes I also use some modification of the B.B Preamp by Exotic for boost, but it's not essential for me.
Another big thing (and you've mention that) is the ability to load your own IRs, where the drastic change of the sound comes... I don't use any of the stock IRs from the IR-2, I tested all of them, but honestly I don't like them...
I didn't have any problems, what so ever with the software and loading my IRs. Yes it would be much better if BOSS made some changes to the way we load IRs and maybe add some A/B comparison option, but even like it is now, it's not to bad 🙂
And finally in my opinion, the reasons behind the attention about this pedal are few: 1-Amazing sounding preamps (almost all of them), 2-Almost unlimited flexibility of connecting this pedal to other gear, 3- Very compact - small form-factor, 4-Has stereo FX loop like most good real amps do, 5-Not very expensive, 6-You can easily gig with almost no compromises with this pedal, you can go on rehearsals with it ( as I do now ) and the most important thing for me, it feels and responds almost like real amp to the guitar and your playing 🙂
Anyways...This is just my personal opinion 🙂
Cheers! 🤘🍻
great review as always !! thanks for your unbiased opinion! will you try the Genome from Two Notes ? you may like it !
Was planning to buy ir2 but ended up buying Nux-MG30. No regret at all.
Only heard good things about the NUX I will try one soon. I don't get the hype over this IR2 at all....
My Sonicake Matribox 1 smokes this boss ir2. Nice review mate 🔥
Sonicake have just sent me a Matribox 2 to review!
I think people tend to gravitate to boss products over others because of their unparalleled latency management.
Quite a good point this although honestly I've never noticed them be any better than the competition in this regard?
@@GuitarCinemaOfficial I own a Quad Cortex, Headrush Prime, and Boss GT-1000 Core. I love them all, but whenever I use the Boss, I can instantly feel the speed of its response. Beside that, in my experience, it is the only modeler that sounds like a real amp
Seems to me like the target demographic for this is the "impulse buy" crowd. I also don't see the great appeal after watching your demo. Just another boss pedal with boss flavor. It's fine, but isn't anything evolutionary.
Its a good paperweight? I got nothing😂 regular pedals have no place for me with the helix/headrush stuff in full honesty 🤷♂️
Same here, I look at the mess of wires and grounding issues of a huge Pedalboard and get instant second hand irritation lol
Cuando llega a colombia
Yeah, i dont get the hype.
I cant find anyone else saying anything negative about it on RUclips..
@@GuitarCinemaOfficialbecause it’s awesome. Maybe it’s not for YOU. So what? It does its job wonderfully whether YOU need it or not.