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Based on one of Boss's rarest pedals. Built exclusively for Boost Guitar Pedals.
✓ In stock
Order before 9pm UK time for next-day dispatch!
✓ Spend £10.01 more for FREE UK delivery!
International delivery also available. See below for further details.
✓ 30-day hassle-free returns
Boost Guitar Pedals uses Royal Mail for all domestic deliveries and UPS for international deliveries.
UPDATE – As of 13th December 2024, we are
regrettably no longer able to ship to customers located within the EU or Northern Ireland, due to new GPSR regulations which make it prohibitively expensive for small businesses to operate in the zone.
UPDATE 2 – As of 10th April 2025, we are still shipping to the USA. Please note that due to the volatile political situation relating to tariffs, we may have to cease offering shipping here at short notice.
We offer free 24-hour tracked UK delivery on all orders over £150! Order before 9pm for next-working-day dispatch.
We offer 30-day hassle-free returns so you can pick the item you want safe in the knowledge that if it's not for you, we'll take it back and refund your order.
International deliveries are subject to additional import duties and VAT at your local rate. These charges are payable to the courier at time of delivery. Calculate how much you will need to pay here.
Please note that some orders may take longer to be processed before shipping during the busiest periods of the year.
Customers hold the right to return a product for a full refund if I am notified within 30 days of delivery.
If a product is delivered in a defective or damaged condition, please contact me immediately with details of your order.
To be eligible for a return, the item must be in the same condition
that you received it. It must also be in the original packaging.
Please note, the cost of return delivery is to be paid by the customer. This will be reimbursed if the item is shown to be faulty.
To complete a return, I require a receipt or proof of purchase. Please do not send any items back to the manufacturer, and please do not send any items to me without contacting me first.
Once I have confirmed that I will process your return, please send the item to:
Boost Guitar Pedals (returns)
84 Wolf Lane
Windsor
Berkshire
SL4 4YZ
United Kingdom
My first course of action for faulty items is to replace them like-for-like. If this is not possible, a full refund will be considered as an alternative.
If returned within the 30-day period, your refund will be processed and a credit will be applied to your credit card or original method of payment.
The customer is responsible for paying return shipping costs. Shipping costs are non-refundable unless a product is proven to be damaged or faulty upon delivery.
It is recommended that items should be returned using a trackable shipping service in case the item goes missing en route.
The Drunk Beaver Big Grunge is based on the Boss Power Driver PW-2, which was only made for 9 months in 1996 and 1997, and as such remains one of the company's rarest pedals.
The PW-2 was intended to be Boss's "grunge" pedal, but they were late to the party and obviously also overlooked the fact that Kurt Cobain was very closely associated with the DS-1 (and later the DS-2).
The PW-2 certainly didn't set the world alight at the time, but today you can more commonly hear it referred to as "the Oasis pedal" than "the grunge pedal" – not because Noel Gallagher ever used one, but because people who have experienced it have found that you can dial in a really accurate Definitely Maybe sound!
Vitalii has put in hours and hours painstakingly reproducing the original circuit design of the PW-2 because so few accurate schematics exist. But he has made some modifications in places: for example, the Big Grunge's EQ section features a combination of stock and custom frequency bands which he has perfectly tuned.
The discrete op-amp design is typical of many Boss dirt pedals, but the biasing of the PW-2 is completely different and uses a lower voltage. There are also no clipping diodes – all the dirt is generated by overdriving the op-amp, which gives a really nice amp-like response.
The discrete op-amp FETs are Toshiba 2SK208 – the modern counterpart of what the PW-2 had – while the single IC used in the EQ section is an RC4558.
While the PW-2 had 2 frequency bands, the Big Grunge's gyrator-based 3-band EQ allows for finer control over your sound, and offers up to +-15dB of gain per band. The EQ is a combination of stock and custom modes on the Mykolaiv Grunge:
Low has the "custom" centre frequency of 80Hz instead of the standard 130Hz
Mid has the stock centre frequency of 890Hz
High (not present on the original PW-2) is set at a centre frequency of around 3.5kHz
As per the original, most of the EQ change is achieved in the last few degrees of each knob's travel, but despite this it's a surprisingly effective design - especially with Vitalii's tuned frequency bands.
