Everyone is wrong about the HM-2: tips and jams
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- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
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The Boss HM-2 is a legend, but still a pigeon-holed, meme of a pedal. Considering, however, that the "H" knob is an incredibly powerful mids knob and that it can easily clean up at all distortion levels - why limit it!?
In this video we sue a modern Waza Craft reissue to put the HM-2 circuit to the test.
Intro: 00:00
Overview: 00:39
Old Skool: 02:34
Classic: 03:28
Modern: 04:44
Can it Blues?: 05:16
Outro: 05:57
This video is in no way affiliated with any brand or company. The opinions expressed are of the creators and do not reflect the opinions of any brands or associated employees. - Hudba
You may or may not know this, but David Gilmour actually used the HM2 in the 80s for his live sound as he "moved on" from using the big muff for his high gain stuff.
I actually cut a brief comment about Gilmore using one from the final video!
Eric Clapton used one for a short time.
Oh shit . . . Is this BOOMER pedal!?
@@doctorfuzzzdirtboxwait there's more!!...the HM2 was one of Jerry Garcia's favorite distortion boxes. He used it until he passed.
Makes sense. The pedal is so mid-heavy, it's actually weirdly good at adding the signature choppy fuzz without losing the tone. You can still hear the notes being played in spite of how nasty it can be. Obviously a nice chainsaw, but really versatile on lower settings to add some bite to a sound you're otherwise satisfied with.
So comforting to know that it isn't only Bilinder Butcher of My Bloody Valentine who understands that the HM-2 is more than just a Swedish chainsaw pedal with all of the controls set to 10.
I have a 1983 HM-2, it sounds great. I was really surprised with how versatile it is.
All you need to know about how versatile beyond "metal" the HM-2 is that David Gilmour used one for a good chunk of his lead tone on his second solo album About Face and with Pink Floyd on Delicate Sound of Thunder onward!
Still buzzy but yeah the blues was actually pretty good
Yeah, it definitely still has an edge! Maybe more of a hacksaw when it's not a chainsaw 🤣
I've looked the other way with this pedal until recently. Stefan from The Pedal Zone said he has one as his main dirt. In my brief experiments with the HM-2, I think it can sound a lot like boosting a Big Muff with an SD-1, the main dirt tone from Coheed and Cambria's debut album.
I can't wait to play around with that new EHX Hell Melter; it looks like it's got some great features.
And that's a sound I love and used to use myself! SD-1 being very like a Tube Screamer (but better.)
I love this pedal for blues tones!
Like how you had the hell melter in the background. Enjoying the videos but would love more of you jamming!
More!? Ok, haha! I normally cut down all my jamming as to not drag the video on but I could certainly extend some in the future. Thanks!
I installed p-rails in my Jazzmaster too! I love these pickups and all the tone options. Your the first person I've seen do it too!
I love this. I never thought it sounded all that great dimed out. Great job!
Glad you like it!
It does if that is the sound you are going for, and trying to replicate, for fans of that style of Death Metal.
Maybe I´m 6 months late.. but never too late to tell you that you are right! Hence my experiments with finding 5 different (chainsaw) sounds without diming the knobs, putting it onto everything including the sound a black hole in space makes and so on. There is so much more about the HM2 and I´m glad that there is someone like you discovering the fields I wouldn´t touch 😁
Those opening tones (the dirty and the clean) are glorious!
Thanks man, I think so too! 😁
100% agreement. Great pedal, great analysis, great playing, great vid!
This very young man has convinced me that he knows what he is talking about. I am now subscribed.
Great to have you on board!
Don't forget the HM3!
Gain around 9 o'clock gives a great fuzz tone!
Aw man, that "chainwaw blues" riffs was so smooth.
4.44 great settings. I had no idea. I wonder what those settings are like with drone boxes?
Bought it as a meme. I ended using it as my lead tone for rock
i use it on bass with the low at 2oclock and the hi at 8oclock with distortion around 10-11oclock and level at 4oclock . Best distortion i've ever heard at this setting
YT’s Algo brought me here, great videos, just subscribed
Thanks man! And thank you algorithm! 🤣
The HM-2 is a weird beast. Advertised as "Heavy Metal" it kind of sucks for anything you'd see as "80s Heavy Metal" with its loose bass and fuzzy edge. If anything it's really bordering all-out fuzz territory. "High" is not really JUST mids, it's technically mids and highs BTW, the 2 EQ bands are tied together on that knob. The Distortion knob also doesn't do a whole lot between it's extreme settings. The "meme" to run it at all max for chainsaw is a meme for sure, as ideally you will want to tweak the EQ ever so slightly, put the distortion to the point where it just gives you a bit of nastiness and the volume to get the amount of push required (and ideally you want it to run into something dirty already). And no, it won't do THAT Swedish deathmetal chainsaw sound into a clean amp.
That being said cool tones, not really the tones I would go for in those genres, but it can add a lot of uniqueness to the overall sound, maybe even if just mixed/blended/layered with more "traditional" options.
I totally agree, it's very much in the territory of fuzz. But I disagree on the H knob. Considering when it's down, you still have treble and presence, it doesn't cut the high end like the filter of a Rat or combined HPF/LPF of a Big Muff. It's quite a broad mid-range that it handles and it sounds like its Q may shift through its range, but I could say it really addresses any true top-end.
But bang on about the distortion knob. It's basically "ON" when you get past even 10/11 o'clock! It's still one of those niche sounds, for sure. But so are a lot of fuzzes. Which only lends to your first point again!
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox that's because it is a bandpass filter, not a lowpass or shelve. ;) if you ever play an HM-2 clone with seperated mid and high knobs you will see what I mean but generally speaking you're right about what you're hearing.
@@MrJesusCrispAh, well there is one clone that I am making a video for soon that'll look at exactly that! 😉
@@MrJesusCrispExactly right. That's literally the circuit. A 3 band eq with 2 of the bands controlled by the "hi" knob, but not shelving, just broad bandpass filters. Irc, it's boost/cut @ 100hz, for the lo, and boost/cut @ 1khz+ 10khz, for the hi.
@@xenod1066 Actually high and mid bands are pretty close together at around 800-900Hz for mids and around 1.2kHz for the highs if you calculate it...
Reminds me of the band Polvo
I bought one when they first came out. I thought it was a little thin and harsh sounding, but I then ran it into my Rat, and it thickened it up nicely...🤘
Ooof! That's a Doom pair if I ever heard one!
excellent video! subscribed!
Thank you! 🤘
As for the blues thing I think I remember reading David Gilmour had on his board in the 80s/90s for leads. And while I do play guitar in a Doom metal band, I actually use mine more like and e.q. Distortion up less than 1/4 of the way into an pair of overdriven amps or blended with other dirt pedals.
Cheers!
Yeah, he did. I actually cut a comment on Gilmore using one at the last minute. That's a good way to use it. It stacks really well and becomes a bit of a dirty boost. That H knob is just so powerful!
Man I never thought that it should be called a mids knob but that’s exactly what I have been hearing - a mids / ‘voice’ control
Voice! That'd be a perfect word for it
Nice!
Could I ask, how does the Valhalla Delay fair? I don't have a delay pedal and have a few pedals on the list which are all pretty bloody expensive, nice as they are. I haven't come across a guitarist who uses it. I have Supermassive which is free and really useful
Man, I LOVE anything by Valhalla and the Delay was my gateway into them. I really wish they could do pedals, like UAD have done. A Valhalla delay pedal would be incredible. But whenever I record, so I can have more control, I tend to use that over a pedal. Or even if I have a pedal on for the vibe, I often still add Valhalla to add mix balance. It's the best out there IMHO.
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox my next buy could be a suitable MIDI controller. Have you looked into that for your rig? I've never used a controller I've felt was worth investing in. Ideally something like the H9 (on board processor) would be great, but with the ability to use 3rd party plugins. There must be something.
That's why I've been looking at Strymon etc for time based fx, but again very expensive in comparison to top notch plugins.
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox a bit of a work-around. Floyd Steinberg demos how to set up this little set-up with Valhalla plugins: czcams.com/video/Re637crxM0U/video.html&ab_channel=FloydSteinberg
"Gorilla Whale" ...... I think i heard a similar tune once. It was called "Radioactive Laser Lizard"
All knobs to the max...
Cool video brother!!!🤘🏼🤘🏼🤘🏼
Thanks man!
there are a lot of clones of this pedal for good reason, and the DOD American metal is exactly the same circuit. Internally the HM-2 is very similar to a Big Muff or a Rat, but the Rat has better tone, it has both hard and soft clipping diodes and a set of germanium diodes like a fuzz but it also has gyrators which the other two pedals don't have. I'm proud to say this was the second guitar effect pedal i ever bought, and as soon as plugged it in i loved it.
Thats interesting! I do find it like a Rat on steroids - it's that same kind of chunk with the edges of fuzz mixed in
i forgot something, it also has crossover distortion, so its cutting up the waveform much more and in a different way than other pedals. boss says the internal circuits are an SD-1 into a Ds-1 with the germanium diodes used for the crossovers, a Rat's distortion isn't as "processed" as the HM-2's @@doctorfuzzzdirtbox
I was pleasantly suprised by the range you got. My only knowledge of the pedal is what ive heard on the internet (mainly bad). BTW I'm fully intrigued by your guitar the PUP configuration
Those are Seymour Duncan P-Rails. Absolutely awesome for a very flexible guitar to demo with. The lower toggle works as usual, selecting bridge, both or neck. The top two toggles select single, humbucker or p-90 for each pickup. There's a few ways to configure them, including adding phase to the equation. Quite ingenious!
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox bloody hell! Yeah that sounds fantastic. I'm always switching between my SG with humbuckers or my RIC 330 with high gain singles as can never decide on which sound I want. Sounds like you've got a solution right there.
Pity that blues part was so short. Dope tones.
I am of the mind that boss was going for one specific type of sound with this pedal. Look at the color of the letters...orange. So simple. Staring everyone in the for decades. Orange...
Yeah, it sounds citrusy! 🍊 🧡😜
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox Oooooooooooh yoooou mr sillypants. Im gonna give you such a pinch! Oh you know what I mean...
Actually, it's an interesting theory. I don't have enough experience with Orange to really comment either way
I'm looking for a pedal that resembles the Black Sabbath-Tony Iommi sound, not entirely sure about this one. What would you recommend?Thanks
The HM-2 can do it (as demoed in "Brown Shabbat") but it's not quite the Iommi thing. I'd go with a Rat for that, TBH. Not what Iommi used/uses as it's all in the Laney amp but the Rat is thick and a little muff like but with mids.
I’ve gotten close with a Boss DS-1 with the tone set low (9 o’clock) into any decent, warm-sounding, British voiced tube amp (Orange, Laney, Selmer, Sound City)
@@jenkinses8121 Thank you very much for your help.
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox Do you think RAT is better for this sound than tube screamer or boss sd-1? Thanks
Much. Unless your amp is already most of the way into distortion, a TS or SD-1 has nowhere near the amount of gain for this sound.
Fun fact: Jerry Garcia had a HM-2 in his signal chain.
It's clipping characteristics suit it more for a fuzz role in my opinion :'D
Agreed. It’s a hard clipper. Really cool fuzz-stortion IMO. Wouldn’t be my first choice for a blues tone.
@@Unusednickname_1970 The Boss Blues Driver and Klon centaur are also hard clipping circuits tbf, albeit with less total gain.
@@MrGallade475 yeah, hard clipping doesn’t alway mean harsh. But, I think most would agree, the HM-2 is far from smooth, even at lower gain settings.
It's basically a fuzz. I think part of the circuit is the same as a fuzz face
I think so too. When I first got it I thought "How is this not called a fuzz!?" And it's cleanup? Yeah. Definitely fuzz territory.
Man, this makes me wanna dig up my old HM-3 that I picked up for like 50 bucks from the used pedal bin, I have no fucking clue where it is but I miss it everyday.
Please what is the name of the song in the intro
It doesn't have a name - I just made it up for the video! 🤣
I wanna see a video on that guitar! Looks very Charles Moothart Inspired?
Can't say I knew Charles until I googled him off the back of this, but that is weirdly similar! Even the pickups! But mine was originally Sonic Youth inspired when they had signatures out but I wanted to build around the P-Rails. They had blue and green stain, so I got red! It's a "Crafted in Japan" Neck with a Warmoth ordered body.
Is it possible with mt2?
Haven't played one myself so not sure it does a good clean-up, but I love it's sound in demos where it's used in place of the preamp/straight to power amp. It's HUGE!
Your videos are the shit. ❤
Thanks man!
Hey! Wait!!!....that "Chainsaw Blues" has the sound of Gary Moore.....😮
You mean to say in that case that it sounds like a Bad Monkey which is a secret Klon and so it's worth £5000!? 🤣
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox 😁😅🤪🤪🤪
World is turning mad, mate...... 😅😅😁😁
Thank you for your videos, they're awesome!!!
amazing eq section on this pedal. just with 2 knobs you can have all the way from a clean boost to totally old-shit radio cock speaker like effect like the infamous josh homme qotsa sound
In my opinion the same could be said about the metal zone
Definitely!
Metal Zone is the most versatile boost there is.
Line 6 put this in the Helix, called "Swedish Chainsaw" 🤣
Reeeee! You’re using the pedal wrong!!!
😂 JK. It actually sounds like a decent fuzz imo
"Fuzz" is the optimum word there, surprisingly!
I use my HM-2W with the OC-5 octave up as an octave fuzz
I just **cannot** get past the gravelly texture of this pedal... it's not a fuzz, but it's not a distortion (like a DS-1 or MT-2, to stick with the BOSS environment for reference), but just the "bad" elements from both categories. Even as a death metal pedal, it's just bad. The Metal Zone & even the DOD/Digitech Death Metal pedals far outshine the HM-2. I wouldn't use it for stoner/doom stuff either, except MAYBE on a bass, might do alright in that context. Just my 2 cents... (been playing occult-doom for 12+ years, just search CZcams for "Goetic Circle"! Had to stop due to health reasons.)
Yeah, man, it's not for everyone. It's got a real edge to it. I personally like the gnarly, when paired with some thickness, that is. Just like a lot of crazier Fuzzes. But it's far from a pure, smooth distortion like a modern amp or Muff style pedal.
Sounds a lot like a rat
I think so too! It's quite a lot like a Rat with an active tone stack. A little fuzzy, like one, too.
I had one in it's day 83, worst pedal I have ever had
And I've now changed your mind? That's why you clicked? You were curious, right?
Still sounds like arse, mate. I've heard better drive sounds from cheap 90s multi-effects. What can't it do? Sound good.
Subjectivity is a beauty. What's your preferred drive? What sounds good to you?
It's still a steaming pile...
Haha! Can't be everyone's cup of tea. What do you prefer?
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox
That kind of pedal is tone specific. Limits the effectiveness of your guitar controls. It's not really a cup of tea, is it? For that kind of splat, I'd spend a little extra and get the Diezel VH4.
I found it quite liberal with the guitar controls (i.e. it cleans up well) and I'd hope to show it can shift through a good few tones with the powerful "H" knob. Maybe I missed the mark on that and should have done a few more genres.
Of course, the Diesel is a very capable pedal. More controls. More to the circuit design. Bigger case. More expensive. Etc.
@@doctorfuzzzdirtbox
That's the fun part. It's a "magic box" for someone. Thanks again for your content. Consider your opinion on stacking gain stages, someday👍
@@mazukakai Thanks! I do have something planned for that as I do have some key ways I stack from time to time. Stick around!
For me its not agressive enough, MT-2 is just right
It has a very unnatural sound to my ears. It's like it's being heavily clipped separately and then mixed back in with the main signal.. meh
It's definitely being heavily clipped! 🤣