Is the Boss IR-2 the amp/cab sim pedal I’ve been waiting for?

Now, I can’t say that I was waiting for an amp/cab sim pedal.. but now that I see that it exists, I’m a bit blown away by the Boss IR-2 to be honest. Sure, there’s other IR-loading pedals out there, or small power amps, but this small combo looks like it could solve so many problems for me.

I mean, first of all. Just think of it as the end pedal, hook it up to any system and you have your own pedals + amp + cab going straight out. Don’t want the cab/IR sim? Just use it for amp sim then, or as a booster. Or why not skip the amp part if you have an amp, and just use it for cab sim?

The basic concept of it is that you get both amp and cab sims in a neat pedal format, but man, it looks soooo versatile! And after seeing (and hearing) what Boss can do with their Katana:Go which basically just plugs into your guitar jack I’m confident there’s plenty of computing space to make this sound absolutely amazing. Apparently, adding your own IR’s to this is a breeze as well, using USB.

To be honest, I’m wondering how small decent guitar tech will be in the near future.

Anyway, highlights of the specs are:

• 32-bit floating point processing / 96 KHz sample rate
• Eleven different amps (both official like Fender Twin, Marshall Plexi, Vox AC30, Soldano SLO-100 and Mesa Boogie Rectifier as well as their own designed ones)
• Mono input, stereo outputs
• Mono/stereo loop for patching in mod/delay/reverb effects after the amp emulation
• Headphone jack
• USB-C for recording and audio playback
• Switching between two amp/cab tones with the pedal or external footswitch
• The possibility to turn off either amp or cab simulation depending on what you want to send your signal to

The last part really caught my eye, it looks like this pedal can do so much, but also being able to choose wether you only want it to act as the “cab” or the amp or anything inbetween sounds… amazing to be honest.

I might actually have to place an order for one of these. They’re out for just below $200 so…

Read more about the Boss IR-2 over at Boss

Want to buy it? I recommend:
Thomann: Boss IR-2
Sweetwater: Boss IR-2