Revisiting the Boss OS-2 OverDrive/Distortion – Underrated or Underwhelming?

Today we’re giving the old OS-2 another crack at the whip. It’s long been labelled the runt of the Boss drive litter—but is that actually fair? Or has it just been misunderstood all these years?

On paper, this thing should be a bit of a winner. You’ve got two circuits in one box: an overdrive and a distortion, with the ability to blend between the two using the Colour control. That’s a pretty forward-thinking idea, especially considering when this pedal first dropped.

 The Overdrive Side – Perfectly Fine… Just Not Special

Let’s start with the overdrive side. If you’re familiar with classics like the Boss OD-3 OverDrive, Boss BD-2 Blues Driver or even the humble Boss SD-1 Super OverDrive, you’ll know Boss can absolutely nail this kind of circuit.

The OS-2… doesn’t quite reach those heights.

It’s not bad by any stretch. You can get some nice **low-gain grit and boost-style tones**, especially with the gain kept in check. In fact, it behaves best in that lower-to-mid gain range. Push it too far though, and things start to feel a bit noisy and a touch unrefined—particularly by modern standards.

There’s also that classic older Boss quirk: **the tone control sweet spot**. Sit in the wrong part of the sweep and things can get a bit fizzy or a bit dull. Find the middle ground, though, and it behaves itself nicely enough.

The USP – Blending OD and Distortion

Now, this is where things get interesting.

The OS-2 isn’t really about the individual circuits—it’s about how they interact. Boss clearly had a vision here, and you can see that Boss clearly saw potential in this idea with later pedals like the Boss JB-2 Angry Driver.

Set the Colour control right in the middle, and something quite cool happens. You get this tight, crunchy definition from the overdrive side, with a softer, mushier distortion layered underneath. It’s arguably the best sound in the pedal—the actual sweet spot where everything clicks.

The frustrating bit? It feels like the individual building blocks aren’t quite polished enough to fully realise that idea. It’s like a great concept that just needed a bit more refinement.

Pushing an Amp – Does It Redeem Itself?

You’d think a pedal like this might come alive when used as a boost into a driven amp—and to be fair, it does a decent job.

But again, it’s a crowded field. There are plenty of pedals that do this better, cleaner, and with more character. The OS-2 holds its own, but it doesn’t exactly stand out.

So… Is It Actually Any Good?

Here’s the honest take:

It’s not as bad as people say… but it’s also not exactly a hidden gem.

It lands somewhere in the middle as a perfectly usable, slightly unrefined drive pedal with an interesting core idea. There are players out there who absolutely swear by it—and for certain setups, I can believe it works brilliantly. But it often feels like they’re getting great tones in spite of the pedal rather than directly from it.

Final Thoughts

If you can grab a Boss OS-2 OverDrive/Distortion cheap on the used market, it’s definitely worth a punt. There’s enough in there to have a bit of fun with, especially if you lean into that blended sweet spot.

At full price though? Absolutely not.

You could easily look towards something like the Joyo King of Kings for less money. Ok, it doesn't do exactly what this does but you can get overdrive out of it, you can get distortion out of it and, more importantly, it sounds great in most settings.

The OS-2 isn’t a disaster. It’s just… a bit average. And in a world full of incredible drive pedals, “average” is sometimes the hardest thing to justify.

An exciting update in the world of NAM profiling...

 NAM Architecture 2 – A Big Step Forward for Amp Profiling?

Something pretty exciting has been happening in the world of Neural Amp Modelling, and I wanted to take a bit of time to talk through it properly. There’s a new update on the horizon called Architecture 2 (A2), and while it might sound like a fairly dry technical upgrade on the surface, the implications for guitar players could actually be huge.

Before we dive into what A2 actually is, it’s worth taking a quick step back and looking at where NAM came from in the first place.

A Quick Refresher: What is NAM?

Neural Amp Modelling (NAM) first started appearing around 2019 as a project under development. The idea behind it was fairly simple: create a system that could capture the sound of a real amplifier and turn it into a digital profile.

That concept itself wasn’t new. Companies like Kemper had already been doing it for years with things like the Profiler, and more recently the Quad Cortex had joined the party with its own capture technology.

The catch with those systems is that they’re tied to their own hardware. If you make a Kemper profile, you need a Kemper to use it. If you move to another platform later, those captures don’t necessarily follow you.

NAM approached the problem from the opposite direction.

It was built as an open-source platform, meaning the technology was free, the captures were shareable, and nobody was locked behind a hardware paywall. In theory, it made amp profiling far more accessible to everyday players.

The Early Limitation: Computers Only

The first practical NAM setups started appearing around 2022, but there was one big limitation.

You needed a computer.

NAM ran inside a DAW as a plugin, so it was brilliant for recording, but if you wanted to use it live you were essentially bringing a laptop rig with you. For some players that was fine, but it wasn’t exactly the most convenient setup.

The real shift came around 2024–2025, when companies started figuring out how to make NAM portable.

When NAM Hit the Pedalboard

That’s where units like the Valeton GP‑5 and the Sonicake Pocket Master came into the picture.

These little boxes suddenly made it possible to run NAM-style tones on a pedalboard-sized device. Instead of needing a laptop, you could throw one of these units in your gig bag and have access to amp captures wherever you wanted.

More recently we’ve also seen things like the Soran Tiny Stomp pushing that idea even further.

However, there was always a small compromise hiding behind the scenes.

The “NAM-ish” Workaround

Full NAM profiles are extremely CPU intensive. Running them at full quality requires quite a bit of processing power, which smaller and more affordable hardware simply doesn’t have.

So companies found a clever workaround.

When you import a NAM profile into devices like the GP-5 or the Pocket Master, the unit converts the file into a lighter internal format that the hardware can actually run.

The result is something that sounds incredibly good — more than good enough for most uses — but technically it’s not running the full-fat NAM profile that you would get inside a computer.

You’ll often see comments online from people pointing out that the bit-rate or fidelity isn’t identical to the DAW version. They’re technically right… but at the same time the tones coming out of these little units are already seriously impressive.

For a lot of players, it’s been the perfect introduction to NAM without needing to wrestle with a full computer setup.

Still, there has always been a lingering question in the background:

What if we could run full NAM profiles on smaller hardware?

Enter Architecture 2 (A2)

That’s where the new update comes in.

The NAM developers have been working on something called Architecture 2, often shortened to A2.

In their own words, A2 is designed to be “lighter, better, and slimmer.”

The big goal here is to reduce the processing demands of NAM without sacrificing the quality that made it so exciting in the first place.

If that works the way people hope it will, it could mean something pretty significant:

Full-quality NAM captures running on smaller, more affordable hardware.

In other words, the gap between studio NAM and portable NAM could start disappearing.

When Might We See It?

The early timeline mentioned March 2026, which is right about now. As of writing, the rollout hasn’t quite landed yet, so we may be running a little behind schedule.

That’s not unusual with projects like this.

Realistically, it wouldn’t be surprising if we start seeing A2-powered hardware sometime later in 2026, perhaps around the third or fourth quarter once manufacturers have had time to integrate the new system.

And if that happens, things could get very interesting very quickly.

Why This Could Be a Big Deal

If A2 delivers on its promise, we could potentially see:

Higher fidelity NAM captures on compact hardware

Less reliance on file conversion workarounds

Even more flexibility when combining amp captures with IR cabinet simulations

That would be a huge step forward for the entire ecosystem of budget modellers and portable profiling units.

For players who have been enjoying the convenience of things like the GP-5, Pocket Master, and Tiny Stomp, the next generation could offer the same portability but with even closer-to-the-real-thing tones.

The Bottom Line

Neural Amp Modelling has already come a long way in a fairly short space of time. What started as a computer-only experiment has quickly grown into a platform that’s appearing in pedalboard-sized gear that anyone can afford.

Architecture 2 looks like the next big step in that evolution.

If it works the way the developers hope, we could be heading towards a world where studio-quality amp captures fit inside tiny, affordable hardware units.

And honestly?

That’s a pretty exciting place for guitar gear to be heading.

The Soran Tiny Stomp impressed me, like REALLY impressed me...

The Soran Tiny Stomp – The Budget Modeller That Finally Fixed That Problem

If you follow the channel, you might have noticed something slightly unusual last week. Within the space of a few days we dropped three full videos and a stack of shorts all covering the Tiny Stomp from Soran Audio.

That wasn’t an accident.

I was excited. Properly excited.

This little box feels like a genuine step forward for the mini amp modeller / multi-FX world, especially at the super budget end of the market.

To explain why, we need to rewind about a year.

When NAM Went Portable

Around this time last year we covered the Sonicake Pocket Master, and that thing landed with a bit of a bang. The big deal at the time was that it brought NAM profiling to a portable unit.

Now NAM (Neural Amp Modeler) itself wasn’t new. It had already been around for a couple of years as a DAW-based tool, letting people capture and share amp profiles in a free open-source platform. The problem was that you pretty much needed to be sat at a computer to use it.

The Pocket Master changed that. Suddenly you could take NAM profiles out of the studio and onto a pedalboard.

Naturally, the floodgates opened.

We saw companies like Valeton jump in with things like the GP-5, and Sonicake themselves started rolling the tech across the Matribox range. Since then we’ve had more refined units aimed squarely at players who actually want to take these things out gigging.

But there’s been one persistent little annoyance.

The One Thing Everyone Wanted

Most of these budget NAM-capable units share the same limitation:

You can’t run NAM profiles and cab sims at the same time.

Whilst that might not be like a massive deal breaker, in practice it restricts what profiles you can use.

NAM captures can represent different stages of an amp signal:

• Just the preamp

• Preamp and power amp

• The full amp and cab together

Because these portable units couldn’t run cab sims alongside NAM, you were basically forced to use full-rig captures that already included the cabinet sound.

And to be fair, that’s workable. There are loads of great full rig captures floating around for free.

But it does limit your choices.

In the back of everyone’s mind there was always the same thought:

“Wouldn’t it be great if we could just run NAM and IRs together?”

Well… Now You Can

And that’s exactly what the Tiny Stomp does.

You can:

• Import NAM captures

• Import your own IR files

• Run them together at the same time

That means you can pair a pure amp capture with whatever cab IR you fancy. Or run NAM with the built-in cab sims, which are actually surprisingly good (and in-depth too).

You can even skip NAM entirely and run the built-in amp models with IRs if that suits the tone you’re chasing.

In other words, it finally delivers the flexibility people have been asking for since NAM first landed in portable units.

But Soran weren't content in just adding one bit of versatility, they said "hold my beer...."

A Signal Chain That Actually Makes Sense

Another thing that often crops up in these smaller modellers is static signal chains.

You get an amp block, a cab block, a couple of effects blocks… and most of them are locked in place. You might be able to shuffle a few things around, but generally the layout is fixed.

Soran clearly looked at that and thought:

“Why?”

On the Tiny Stomp you can move any block anywhere in the chain.

Seriously. Anywhere.

During one of the videos I even moved the cab block before the amp, which obviously makes absolutely no sense in the real world… but the point is it lets you do it.

Is it always useful? No.

Is it great for experimentation and creativity? Absolutely.

It’s Not a Helix (But It’s Not Trying to Be)

Now, to keep things realistic, this isn’t a full-blown modular playground like a Line 6 Helix or even something like the Sonicake Matribox II Pro.

Those units let you pile on multiple instances of effects until the processor gives up. Want eight phasers in your signal chain? Go wild.

The Tiny Stomp isn’t quite that level of flexible.

But here’s the thing.

It’s a sub-£100 modelling unit.

At that price point, the fact that it offers:

• NAM support

• IR loading

• NAM + IR simultaneously

• Fully movable signal blocks

is genuinely impressive.

Why We Made Three Videos About It

So yeah… when you put it all together, you can probably see why I got a bit carried away and ended up making three videos about this thing in one week.

The Tiny Stomp isn’t trying to compete with the big boys. What it’s doing instead is raising the bar for ultra-budget modellers.

If you want something with more footswitches and deeper gigging functionality, the Matribox II Pro is still probably the most versatile budget modeller out there.

But if you’re looking for maximum tonal flexibility for the smallest amount of money, the Tiny Stomp is pushing the category forward in a really interesting way.

/watch this space, Soran just moved the needle with this one.