I spent years thinking I couldn't make the Boss BD-2 sound good.

It's the pedal everyone tells you to buy first. So you chase that smooth, transparent edge-of-breakup the reviews promise, and what you get is fizzy, splatty, slightly wrong. You blame your hands. Then your amp. Then your technique. Years go by.

It was never an overdrive. It's a great distortion wearing the wrong badge, and the second you push it like one, it rips.

We all blamed ourselves for a word someone printed on a box.