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BOSS

BOSS is a Japanese brand within Roland Corporation; BOSS pedals for guitar and bass sit alongside its amplifiers, multi-effects units and loopers. Its best-known products are the compact pedals — the familiar single-effect stompboxes in the coloured enclosures used across genres since the late 1970s.

Founded
1973
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About BOSS

The line began in Osaka in 1973 as MEG Electronics, a guitar-effects research division inside Roland. The BOSS name and logo were introduced publicly the following year. Early products included the B-100 acoustic preamp (1974) and, in 1976, the CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, which brought chorus into a dedicated floor unit.

The compact pedal series launched in 1977 with the OD-1 Overdrive, PH-1 Phaser and SP-1 Spectrum. Later staples such as the DS-1 Distortion (1978), SD-1 Super Overdrive (1981) and BD-2 Blues Driver (1995) remained in continuous production for decades; Roland’s 50th-anniversary materials cite well over a hundred compact models and many millions of units sold. The catalogue also spans Katana and other amplifiers, GT multi-effects, Loop Station pedals, tuners and guitar-synth systems.

For players building a pedalboard or comparing standard overdrive, distortion, delay and utility pedals, BOSS is often the volume reference — durable, widely available circuits that define many of the categories they sit in.

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