Boss BF-3 Flanger
The BF-3 flanger pedal delivers guitarists and bassists a modernised version of the classic BOSS flanger with the deepest stereo flanging effects ever, based on the 20-year legacy of the famed BOSS BF-2. Even Slicer-type effects and sounds that seem to “swirl” around the listener are created in stereo by two new modes (Ultra and Gate/Pan). This is an immediate classic.
Features Boss BF-3 Flanger
- In a tiny pedal, BOSS offers the best flanging effects
- Ultra-fat flanging and futuristic slicer-type sounds are available in new Ultra and Gate/Pan modes
- Flanging is turned on immediately in momentary mode.
- There are two independent guitar/bass inputs and stereo outputs.
Benefits BF-3 Flanger
- The amount of controls on this Boss BF-3 are great.
- The “Standard” mode is very clean and bright sounding, but running distortion/fuzz into the “Ultra” mode gives you a great vintage “jet engine” sound, for all my “Psych and Stoner Rock” needs.
- There are also a Gate/Pan mode to use with or without a stereo output.
- It is the best all around flange pedal for both clean and overdriven flanging signal processing that i have found.
- I’m pretty impressed by the sheer amount of effect variations this pedal can produce.
- It’s a flanger that really has almost all the bases covered and then some.
- It’s got enough settings to choose from that you can cover a lot of ground.
- Good with bass or guitar.
- I like that it doesn’t introduce distortion into the signal.
- Easy-to-use.
- Excellent finish and switch quality.
- Gives you great Flange and Chorus tones.
- Great flanger plus has the momentary flanger and new gate/slicer sound.
- Simple to use with the flexibility of stereo use if you’re into that.
Conclusion
I’ve never been much of a flanger sort of guy, but playing around with the BF-3 has definitely started to change that. For one, it’s at a hell of a good price point. But most importantly, it has serious depth to the controls. I tend to like to keep in relatively subtle in the mix, and it’s so easy to get the perfect blend with the tone controls. The multiple modes are great as well – the stereo sound is super rich, and the momentary setting isn’t something you see all too often.
An excellent sounding pedal. Like most flangers it’s a bit too “robot like” to do tape style effects but that’s not what it’s about. You get a nicely cutting “Keep Yourself Alive” sear, chorusy Andy Summers sound and an actually nice slow Leslie effect at low resonance settings that you can ramp up and down manipulating the handy, if slightly awkward tap tempo. Which I might add is useful on the fly if not ideal, but after all this is just a single non-programmable pedal, so in that context it’s quite nice to have included. Although this day and age I do think they could add some kind of expression control like they have the newish DD8 Delay.
I spent a while trying to get phasers and chorus pedals to work for me, then I realized that BF3 was all I wanted/needed. It can get crazy metallic or jet-engine sounds, but it can also do really subtle, pretty chorus-like sounds that I actually prefer to chorus (since there’s that swooshing lfo in the background). It’s really nice if you set it to max depth with very low rate. Stereo sounds great, too!
