In the admittedly niche (but to a certain type of person - very interesting) history of guitar pedals, using pedals “the wrong way” on purpose would have its own short chapter. From plugging a wah pedal in backwards for effect - to using a graphic EQ as a booster, there are a variety of ways that savvy guitar players, intentionally or otherwise - make use of the tech at hand in new and creative ways.

It’s fascinating then that many guitarists over the years have taken some very expensive delay and chorus units - some remarkably elaborate - and plugged into them strictly to take advantage of the preamp section. For some reason, good effects pedal design in years past required that there was a gain stage on the front end and in many cases, the inbuilt preamp circuitry just did something magical to the sound of the instrument even when all the other effects stages were zeroed or switched out entirely.

There have been more than a few boutique pedal manufacturers who recognised this over the past decade and a bit. Companies like Catalinbread, Xotic, MXR/Dunlop and J. Rockett (to name just a few) have all released their takes on preamps derived from complicated delay units such as Mike Battle’s famous EP-3 Echoplex. These preamps did away with the actual delay unit - it wasn’t about that. It was about grabbing the mojo and “secret sauce” out of the analogue stage at the front of the device and spitting out an unmodulated signal on the other side - usually warmer, fatter, sparklier, all the tone adjectives! In addition, they could be used as semi-clean boosts if a guitar had underpowered pickups or if an amp needed a little push to get into breakup territory. I say “semi” clean because the idea is not to send a pristine version of the signal into the amp, but to colour it in all the best ways, to thicken it up, to make it just - better.

Enter the BOSS BP-1W. It’s not the first “boost” pedal the Japanese pedal giants have made. Older pedals such as the FB-2 Feedbacker/Booster had served this function for years in the legendary compact metal enclosure. Many people even liked to use the GE-7 Graphic Equalizer pedal as a boost, as mentioned earlier. However, this is the first pedal specifically built as a sole preamp, and indeed it’s also given the “Waza Craft” treatment right from the get-go which puts it among the elite builds in the BOSS product lineup.



The Waza Craft story itself is a simple one, but it makes a lot of sense. “Waza” is a Japanese term which means “art” and “technique”. What BOSS is doing with the Waza series of pedals is designing them to the highest possible standard - where the technique of building the best possible pedal with the highest-grade components available is in itself, an art. It’s BOSS’ way of hanging with the best of the small-batch boutique makers, except in this case you’re getting a classic-looking BOSS pedal. Some of the pedals in the Waza series are “Wazafied” reissues of existing pedals, like the DS-1 Distortion or the SD-1 Super Overdrive - similar design philosophies to the original units but correcting some niggles in the originals since they are not necessarily building “to a price”. But a handful of other pedals in the lineup, including this BP-1W are new designs entirely, and deserve to sit in the Waza range due to their outstanding sonics and insanely high build quality.

As far as it looks, it’s the classic BOSS form factor in a speckled white metallic paint job with a compartment for a 9V battery, a soft-but-firm stomp action, and the WAZA CRAFT silver logo inlaid into the footpad. As with the other Waza products, it’s made in Japan. In addition to a 9V battery you can power it off a BOSS 9V power adapter (sold separately).

The Waza team has drawn upon two classic BOSS/Roland units for the preamp design, and they are selectable with a simple toggle switch - with a middle ‘NAT’ position (Natural) giving you a super clean, uncoloured boost for the occasions you need it.


The leftmost position on the toggle is labelled RE and it’s meant to represent the Roland RE-201 Space Echo analogue delay unit. This famous not-so-small box was originally released in 1973 and quickly became as revered for that initial preamp stage as it did for its intergalactic tape-esque delay and real spring reverb sounds.

On the right side of the switch is the CE position - this models the sound in the shape of the preamp on early BOSS CE-1 Chorus/Ensemble units. Now fetching crazy amounts of money but rarely in museum-worthy condition, these desirable big box stomps have a vintage BBD chorus sound like no other (think Johnny Marr on The Smiths albums, for example) with a switchable vibrato as well for those watery old-school modulation sounds.

Other than the switch, the only other controls on the top are the big knobs - one for Level and one for Gain. Level acts like a master output control - make your amp louder or quieter, and Gain is what actually boosts the signal internally and actually drives the preamp - think “more” or “less” gnarly depending on how far you turn it up. Note that this is not an overdrive, though - the sounds you get out of it, even on high gain, are not designed to be broken up - but gritty in a nice way, but still smooth - like chunky peanut butter in soundwave form. Your amp, of course, will be the determinant of how distorted your sound gets.



There is a neat little switch on the back too that allows you to select a buffer type. You can click between “Standard” or “Vintage”-style buffers - however, the buffer type is only selectable when the pedal is engaged. It defaults to the Standard buffer type when it’s switched out. BOSS claims that the Vintage buffer sounds “warmer” but is best used with passive pickups (this is fine here as I don’t own any guitars with actives, so I can’t make a judgment on this statement!) - in practice, it’s another nice little tone-shaping tool though and is worth experimenting with, especially if you run lots of pedals.

In action, I think it’s not hyperbolic to say that I love this pedal. The CE is the brighter of the two “vintage” modes and it sounds particularly good on my HB/FB equipped Strat. Cranking it up does make it more aggressive-sounding with that brightness cutting through, but it never “breaks up” in a bad way. My 68RI silverface Princeton breaks up early anyway, but with the pedal cranked it’s even better with a sweet-sounding breakup at no more than about 2 ½ on the amp volume. Backing off on the pedal, it still retains a lovely sheen to the character of the sound - certainly this might be my new go-to “always on” sound.

The RE side is more saturated at higher levels, a little “tapier”. I try this mode with a Telecaster that has Twisted Tele pickups and a Knaggs Severn with Seymour Duncan P90s and it sounds great on all of them. The Telecaster is particularly flattered by it - despite the Twisted Tele pickups being a little hotter than your traditional Tele pickups, the RE boost acts as a thickener - like adding a bit of roux to a great sauce in the kitchen, and then a dab of butter to give it a beautiful shine. Seymour Duncan P90s are already pretty aggressive - the RE with some crank makes them even more so, but again, not in any negative way. I can envision playing this through an amp at higher gain levels just to make it sound angrier, yet retaining note separation and definition. I don’t have a Les Paul Junior to hand but I think if I did it would LIVE with this pedal in the case at all times ready to be broken out when it was!

Finally, the NAT mode - this does exactly what it says. A clean, linear, uncoloured boost, making your signal louder through all that terrific Waza circuitry. One of my favourite boost pedals in the world before I tried this was the Hamstead Ascent - a single-knob, adding extremely transparent 20dB of gain and having extremely high headroom. The BP-1W in NAT mode is very much reminiscent of that, plus it has the two extra vintage preamp modes to add a little or a lot of colour as one sees fit. Whether you’re using it as a tone-shaper or a problem solver, there should be room on anyone’s board for this.

Essentially, the BP-1W is three pedals in one, and at a street price of around $150 here in the UK it’s extremely difficult not to see an exceptional value in that considering the outstanding versatility of the sonics, the quality of the construction and the reassurance that it’s a BOSS pedal - it has a five-year warranty that you’re unlikely to ever need to take them up on.

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