Boss releases IR-2 Amp & Cabinet compact pedal with 11 amp types

November 30, 2023 · 2 sources

Boss released the IR-2 Amp & Cabinet pedal, a compact amp emulator and cabinet IR loader, on November 30, 2023. Guitar Pedal X and Gearnews both reported the launch that day.

The pedal contains 11 amp types paired with Celestion Digital impulse responses¹². The amp and cabinet sections can be switched on and off independently, so the pedal can run as a preamp only, a cab only, or both together¹². Processing is 32-bit floating point at a 96 kHz sampling rate¹².

The amp types, as listed by both outlets, are:

The two outlets describe some amp types differently. Guitar Pedal X lists Brown as "EVH / Peavey 5150" and Crunch, Hi-Gain and Modded as MDP (Multi Dimensional Processing) designs¹. Gearnews describes Brown as a Boss original high-gain amp derived from the Katana series, and Crunch, Hi-Gain and Modded as Boss original amps². Gearnews specifies the RFIER as the Dual Rectifier's Channel 2, Modern mode².

Controls are Level, Gain, Bass, Middle and Treble, plus a dedicated Ambience control with Room, Hall and Plate reverb settings¹². The footswitch selects between Green and Red channels, each storing its own amp type and its own ambience, bass, level, middle, gain and treble settings; holding the switch bypasses the pedal¹. An external footswitch can also change channels¹². The pedal has a mono input and stereo outputs, a mono/stereo send and return loop for effects after the amp emulation, and a headphones jack¹². A USB-C port handles audio recording and playback with a computer or iOS device, and connects to the IR-2 IR Loader app for macOS and Windows, which loads user cabinet IRs in place of the factory Celestion files¹².

Guitar Pedal X gives the weight as 0.45 kg and lists a five-year Boss warranty¹. The US list price is $199¹.