Boss HM-2W - Analysing the NEW Waza Chainsaw | Gain Appreciation

welcome to cs guitars the science of loud the boss hm2 heavy metal an infamously disgusting and repulsive distortion pedal nicknamed the swedish chainsaw due to its prominent grinding usage in early swedish death metal the story of a relatively unsuccessful effects pedal which gained massive cult recognition due to its niche application is well documented but what often isn't spoken about is what's going on inside this filth box on a circuit level to make it so uniquely well adapted for signal destruction by popular demand boss have gone back to this 80s circuit and given it another shot culminating in the hm2w part of the revered was a line of reimagined effects i couldn't be more excited to get inside this find out what they've changed and improved and see if it still stacks up to the raw aggression of the original let me level with you i never expected this day to come the hm2 has been discontinued since 1991 and one of its evolutionary successors the mt2 metalzone went on to have incredible commercial success becoming one of boss's best selling pedals even during its eight years of production the hm2 was never particularly popular and if it wasn't for bands like entombed dismember and at the gates pioneering the everything on 10 sound in the 90s the hm2 could well have been a small almost forgotten footnote in bossy's history yet due to an overwhelming surge of public support i now hold in my hand the first prototype of the new waza hm2w with standard mode faithfully recreating the sound of the original and custom mode adding more gain and tailoring the eq for even more aggression this is a great day for 90s death metal fans if you've never heard one of these before let me give you a little taste [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] is [Music] sentinel now you might be thinking what the is up with that sound well let's break down the original circuit which is standard mode in the new waza because it's actually kind of genius let's start with the gain structure the hm2 uses pretty much every trick in the book when it comes to distortion generation there are four main areas this two-stage transistor structure comes first this is a very simple amplification process taking the small input signal and massively increasing the gain this isn't dissimilar to what you'd usually find inside a fuzz pedal but the hm2 isn't applying that much amplification quite yet even so this transistor stage is sufficient enough to start the distortion process next comes the op amp with asymmetrical soft clipping diodes and a negative feedback network this structure is practically identical to what you'll find inside another popular boss pedal the sd1 overdrive this is just a standard overdrive gain stage which will produce softly rounded distortion with one half of the waveform clipping more than the other a side note here that the distortion control is tied between the negative feedback network of this stage and the output of the previous transistor stage and has a twin application in this circuit at lower settings it's attenuating the output from the transistor stage and at higher settings it's dumping all of the negative feedback to ground maximizing the gain through the op amp a very clever setup let down by the fact that the control does basically nothing over the majority of its sweep only really kicking in at the last 25 at either extreme our third stage is a coring circuit a couple of parallel germanium diodes in the signal line this has two purposes firstly to act as some kind of noise gate germanium diodes have an extremely low forward voltage and when used in this arrangement will core out anything in the signal below 0.3 volts unlike a true gate though this isn't shutting on and off based on some signal threshold this is just cutting a section directly out of the middle of the signal at all times while this gets rid of low level noise it also introduces crossover distortion where the missing section of the waveform needs to stitch itself back together across the gap considering the amount of amplification going on prior to this generating near vertical walls of the waveform at crossover i would have assumed that this crossover distortion was having a minimal effect over the sound of the hm2 but the engineers in japan set me right on this they informed me that this was a critical part of the character of the hm2 and has been preserved for the wasa version despite efforts being made elsewhere to significantly reduce the noise floor the fourth stage is some good old-fashioned diodes tied to ground forming standard hard clipping this is what you'd find inside the boss ds1 or a million other distortion pedals the capacitor to ground which follows is attenuating high end as there will be a lot of high frequency fizz accumulated due to the multi-stage distortion process while each of these processes taken individually isn't anything special when combining them together in this fashion they create a progression of signal gain and clipping which results in an asymmetric square wave distortion bordering on fuzz territory but even with all of this it's not the distortion that makes the hm2 iconic it's the eq section which turns this dirt box into a chainsaw the face of the unit has two eq controls labeled color mix high and low but dig beneath the surface and you'll find that these two controls are affecting three amplifying filters each with a different frequency peak all having a narrow queue and capable of boosting these frequencies by a staggering 20 decibels the low control affects one filter which is centered around 80 to 90 hairs it's no coincidence this also happens to be right around the fundamental frequency of the low e string to into standard pitch on a guitar this was designed to chug when the low control was cranked the high control affects two filters which both set right in the mid-range frequencies one centered around one kilohertz and the other slightly higher at one point three kilohertz these two peaks blend together into one wide mid boost when maxing out these controls it creates a distinctive double humped eq shape which some have named the suspension bridge curve by massively boosting the lowest frequencies a guitar can produce and the mid-range while the space between the lower mids which usually result in a muddy sound are carved right out an hm2 with eq on 10 not only provides the ideal curve for cutting and chugging at the same time but the massive gain increase from the eq amplification adds further to the extreme distortion from the gain staging it's this blistering level increase at specific frequencies that makes the hm2 sound this mutilates our original waveform we can see exactly how massive and unrecognizable from our input sine wave the signal becomes at these peak frequencies having analyzed the circuit it seems clear to me that when designing the original hm2 boss never intended anyone to use it with the controls maxed out the level control was clearly supposed to compensate for the strength of the eq controls the intention i guess was that the user was supposed to balance all these powerful aspects against one another for a more normal distortion sound but one with excellent eq characteristics and a unique gain structure but the possibility was still there to turn everything to 10 which creates this perfect storm of chaos a grinding aggressive churning sound with its curves in all the right places to cut through anything and it's for those reasons i honestly believe the hm2 is the perfect distortion pedal the waza hm2w makes a few important alterations to the original formula and while boss weren't exactly going to hand over the circuit diagram for this effect they did tell me some of the things they have changed allowing me to use my detective skills and guesswork to come to some sort of conclusion about what they've done inside this new pedal while the standard mode is aiming to recapture as accurately as possible the sound of the original the engineers in japan took the progression of technology and playing environments of the last three decades into account and have upped the total output level by three decibels while this would have been far too noisy for the original circuit the waza has no such issue getting louder alongside the updated buffers which allow the pedal to better interface with other units without signal degradation improvements to the power supply section of the board have resulted in much less internal noise this combined with other efforts to modernize the circuit layout and more modern components mean that the hm2w has a much lower noise floor than before it wouldn't be wasa if boss didn't take the time to redesign a modern variant of the effect for their custom mode this is where all the secrets are being kept however from reading between the lines i assume the topology of the circuit is largely similar to standard mode multi-gain stage and a number of filters in the eq section they're not doing anything too drastically different and they're playing within the original rulebook while custom mode increases the amount of gain available it does keep that drastic distortion control interaction we previously discussed but makes it more responsive finally we can make more use of that distortion control the sound itself is thicker and more homogeneous than the fizzier standard mode the eq being the beating heart of the hm2 has been changed for the custom mode to give it a more aggressive sound if you can believe such a thing it's clear from listening to the device that there is a wider more prominent low end and there's a definite change to the mid-range characteristics pushing its influence further up the spectrum that might have been achieved by adding new filters to effect different frequency peaks or simply by widening the queue of the existing ones i can't say for certain but what it sounds like is the low peak has extended down towards the lower frequencies accommodating for downtune chugging which is a popular application of this effect in fact let's confirm that on the scope that's exactly what's happening the low peak has been extended down towards the 60 hertz region exactly where the low b on a seven string guitar is this custom mode is making easier to chug those down-tuned death metal riffs we're still getting that low mid scoop but the upper mids have been extended out towards the three kilohertz region exactly where a modern meds focus is for tight gently percussive playing custom mode is very much boss taking on board how people are using this effect and tailoring it for a modern downtuned application in my experience using custom mode there's far more usability across the entire range of the controls and this doesn't have to be everything on 10 to sound devastating in fact taking a more conventional approach to setting these controls yields a sound that wouldn't be out of place as a supporting rhythm tone on a death metal track [Music] [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] now [Music] so [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in comparison to the original effect of which i'm very familiar it becomes immediately apparent that the waza is cleaner more precise and hits harder while still retaining the iconic sound it's higher fidelity if the original was standard definition the waza is ultra 4k the same picture but crisper in its details without the distracting artifacts of 80s technology if you made it all the way through this technical breakdown then you should now have a better understanding of the hm2w why it sounds the way it sounds and why this new wasa version improves upon the original in all the right ways the high fidelity standard mode alone is worth checking this out for but the versatility of custom mode brings this effect into the modern day and opens the doors for many applications beyond just 90s inspired death metal i don't have a release date for this pedal yet this one is one of the first prototypes that boss sent to me so i could make this video and i've been taking very good care of it as i assume they'll want it back in perfect condition when this is available i'll be first in the queue to get one i love it and i can't wait to do more things with it when it's out i'll update the video description here to contain the product links so if you don't see them there it's not available yet so thanks to boss for this opportunity thanks to you for watching and don't forget to click all the buttons you're supposed to to make this video viable to the ever-changing whims of the youtube algorithm that's all for now keep it loud and stay safe right okay we got this

Channel: CSGuitars

Views: 57,034

Rating: 4.9491787 out of 5

Keywords: CSGuitars, Colin, all the gain, guitcon, scotland, victory, pickups, science, will it shred, whats the difference, studio, recording, guitar, amplifier, pedal, scottish, metal, cs guitar, cs guitars, collin, hm2, hm2w, hm-2, hm-2w, boss, heavy metal, swedish chainsaw, ola, at the gates, entombed, dismember, death metal

Id: y076Gw_l9aQ

Length: 16min 13sec (973 seconds)

Published: Tue May 04 2021