6 Reasons You Need the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander

For those guitarists in the know, the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander has become one of the most important tools in our arsenal. However, not a lot of people know exactly what it does, or how it can seriously benefit our sound, live performance and studio recordings! So today, we thought we’d demystify the Boss Waza Tube Expander and show you 6 reasons why you need one of these in your rig.

In a nutshell, the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander (for starters) is a variable reactive load box, active analogue power stage, a mic’d cab emulator, IR loader, and recording interface all rolled into one. In addition, it allows you to hook up your tube amp (that’s valve amp to all of us in the UK) and crank it into saturation, whilst keeping the volume at a neighbour friendly level. This essentially attenuates your sound, without changing the tone, dynamics or characteristics of your existing amp.  This allows you to enjoy the sound of your cranked, valve saturated amp at lower volumes and basically allows you to get the best out of your valve amp at all times and at any volume.

Want to hear what your VOX AC30 sounds like cranked to the max without blowing your windows out? This let’s you do it. It’s also got a range of built-in BOSS effects, 10 fully customisable rig setups so you can save your ideal settings and lets you turn your tube amp, however big or small it may be, into the perfect partner for any venue.

But anyway, here’s 6 reasons that delve into why we think you absolutely need one if you’re a tube amp user.

The Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander features 16 onboard analogue reactive loads. Imagine being able to plug into one of sixteen of your favourite speaker cabinets from almost any brand and era, and not only hearing, but “feeling” your cranked amp tone at any volume. This lets you do it!

Your valve/tube amp plugs directly into the Waza Tube Amp Expander which receives the “load” like a speaker cabinet. You can then dial in one of the 16 “reactive loads” (ie. 2 x Bluebacks, or 4 x V30 Greenbacks for example) and the amp will “react” exactly like it would if it was plugged into that speaker at a controllable volume. You can then feel/hear this through your normal speaker cabinet.

We love the Tube Amp Expander as it features an onboard 100W class A/B power amplifier. This means in the same way that you can plug in your 100W valve amp, max out the master volume but be able to control the overall volume through the WTAE, you could also plug in a 1w, 5w or 20w valve amp into the WTAE and turn it into a 100W beast!

One of the best things about the WTAE is the fact you DO NOT need to plug into a speaker cabinet. This means you can plug your valve/tube amp into the WTAE at home or even late at night and monitor it via headphones. Great for being able to experience the true “mojo” of your valve amp if the kids are asleep or your partner’s watching TV!

You can load in your own Impulse Responses. This allows you to plug your valve/tube amp into the WTAE and record directly or monitor (ie. Inner ears/headphones) how you hear the amp through your favourite IR’s.

The Waza Tube Amp Expander features ultra high-resolution BOSS effects on board. This means you can plug your really old valve/tube amp into the WTAE and feel/hear how it sounds with ultra high-resolution onboard BOSS effects. This is packed with various delays including ping pong, digital, analogue and more, multiple reverb effects, compressors, EQ’s, solo boosts and more, all of which are fully editable via the free-to-download Boss Tone Studio software for PC/Mac. All your favourite tone and effect settings can be saved as 1 of 10 rigs which can be accessed on the floor using the optional BOSS GA-FC foot controller.

Another benefit comes in the form of the onboard Effects Loop which means you can plug in your favourite modulation or time based pedals directly into the power amp stage of your amp or utilise the 4-cable method. This is where you can decide which pedals go directly into your tube/valve amps “pre-amp stage” i.e. Wah, Overdrive, Distortion etc and which pedals go into your “power amp” stage i.e. Chorus, Delay, Volume Pedal, Reverb etc. This makes it a perfect addition to any tone purists rig.

Shop the Boss Waza Tube Amp Expander over at PMT Online today or call in to your local PMT store today to try out a full range of BOSS gear.