BBE Boosta Grande Mini

The BBE Boosta Grande Mini is a compact clean boost pedal for guitar or bass, launched in February 2017 as a scaled-down edition of BBE's Boosta Grande. It offers up to +20dB of clean gain from a single knob, in a mini chassis designed to take up less room on a pedalboard¹². BBE's own description of the Boosta line is simple: "It's your guitar or bass, but louder"³.

A clean boost pedal does one job: it raises the level of your signal without adding distortion of its own. RockBoard's PedalPedia says the Boosta "adds volume without undue coloration or distortion"³. Players use boosts like this to push an amp harder into overdrive, to lift a solo above the band, or to feed a weak pickup into a pedal chain with more strength.

What it does and how it is controlled

The Boosta Grande Mini has what gearnews called "a grand total of one knob that lets you add up to +20dB of clean boost"². There is no tone control, no switchable mode, and nothing else to set. Turn the knob up for more level, down for less. For a player who wants a boost that stays out of the way, that simplicity is the point.

The pedal is all-analog², and its input and output impedances are chosen to behave properly with guitar pickups and amp inputs: 1MEG Ohms at the input for correct pickup loading, and 1K Ohms at the output when the pedal is engaged¹. When it is off, true hardwire bypass takes the circuit out of the signal path entirely¹.

Does it change your tone?

BBE positions the Boosta as a transparent boost, but "transparent" here has a specific meaning. MusicRadar's Michael Astley-Brown reported that "the pedal mildly rolls off some top-end around 1kHz to prevent excessive upper harmonics when driving an amp's front-end"¹. In other words, the pedal is not a perfectly flat volume increase: it gently tames the highest frequencies so that when you slam an amp's input with the full +20dB, the result does not turn harsh.

This is not a new idea in the Mini. The original Boosta Grande was described the same way, "rolling off high-end starting at about 1kHz to preserve tonal balance"⁴, and the 2013 BG-20 version used the rolloff "so when the tubes are driven" the upper harmonics do not get shrill⁵. Delicious Audio's Gus Green noted that the Boosta Grande "doesn't change the tonal balance of an amp, even with its max gain of +20dB slamming those tubes"⁵. So a player comparing this against a fully flat boost should know the 1kHz rolloff is part of the design, carried over from the full-size pedal.

A smaller Boosta Grande

The Mini, announced as the MBG-20 on 7 February 2017, is "a scaled down edition of the original BBE Boosta" Grande clean boost pedal². gearnews wrote that "the small format is ideal for most player's pedalboards"². The size reduction was the whole point: the site's writer added his own view as a Boosta Grande owner, saying "I have the big 'orange' one and just wish this and the BBE Sonic Stomp Maximiser were available in standard compact" form².

The full-size pedal had already been shrinking. In February 2013 BBE updated the Boosta Grande as the BG-20, with "a new, more-compact chassis and fresh graphics and vintage-style Gain knob"⁴², which Delicious Audio described as "a sweet new look and compact chassis to conserve space on a pedal board"⁵. The Mini took that trend further: BBE calls it "the latest mini pedal in BBE's product line"¹, and one commenter who owns the big "orange" original said he "just wish[ed] this and the BBE Sonic Stomp Maximiser were available in standard compact" form when he bought his¹².

Build and warranty

Guitar World's 2007 review of the BBE pedal line, which included the original Boosta Grande alongside the Crusher, Green Screamer, Freq Boost, Free Fuzz and Orange Squash, found "all six units are solidly built and resemble BBE's already released Sonic Stomp and Opto Stomp," and that "all feature true bypass, so they don't suck away your tone"⁶. The Mini carries that true bypass forward as true hardwire bypass¹, and MusicRadar's launch coverage lists a 5-year warranty¹.

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