Boss SY-1

[Woodinblack]

3 hours ago, Quatschmacher said:

In the case of the FI, it IS a synth - plug into a controller keyboard and it can be played in exactly the same way as any other dedicated keyboard synth.

Yes, I get that but why would you choose to use a FI synth in a studio compared to any number of more powerful synths, other than that you already have one. Like if o was recording in my room, I have a Roland DS61, Gaia, basstation 2, blofeld, Yamaha reface dx as well as all of logic, equator and cupher2/strobe. I really don’t see, however good the FI is - and I haven’t used one, that it is going to bring anything to the party that isn’t there

[HazBeen]

On 14/07/2019 at 11:03, Al Krow said:

• seems closer to the SY-300 in terms of available sounds but doesn't have the tweakability or presets of the SY-300. However, importantly, it's just one third of the price and size of the SY-300, both of which are major plusses;

It sounds like the SY-300 so it must be based on it. I owned the SY-300 for a while, some good Synth sounds but I did prefer my FI as a "real world" tool. It will be interesting to see how people get on with it.

[Al Krow]

1 minute ago, HazBeen said:

It sounds like the SY-300 so it must be based on it. I owned the SY-300 for a while, some good Synth sounds but I did prefer my FI as a "real world" tool. It will be interesting to see how people get on with it.

Harry - I think you are spot on. It seems to me that Boss have taken the SY-300 and packaged it into something that is 1/5 the size and 1/3 the price and without the program-ability with their new SY-1.

My expectation is that the FI and C4 will almost certainly edge it over the SY-1 in terms of quality of synth engine, but the SY-1 wins on price and for many of us (me included) on work-flow and is also polyphonic which the other two aren't. 

Once I have incorporated synth as a staple sound into our sets and got my bandmates used to it, I don't rule out returning to the FI, or joining the C4, fold. Particularly if FI release a more compact Mk II (there's a a lot of empty space in the FI shell!) with polphony to refresh their offering.

[Quatschmacher]

15 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Harry - I think you are spot on. It seems to me that Boss have taken the SY-300 and packaged it into something that is 1/5 the size and 1/3 the price and without the program-ability with their new SY-1.

My expectation is that the FI and C4 will almost certainly edge it over the SY-1 in terms of quality of synth engine, but the SY-1 wins on price and for many of us (me included) on work-flow and is also polyphonic which the other two aren't. 

Once I have incorporated synth as a staple sound into our sets and got my bandmates used to it, I don't rule out returning to the FI, or joining the C4, fold. Particularly if FI release a more compact Mk II (there's a a lot of empty space in the FI shell!) with polphony to refresh their offering.

How much chordal playing are you doing via bass? Is polyphony really a deal-breaker? I can totally see why guitarists would need this; bassists less so. 

[Quatschmacher]

17 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Particularly if FI release a more compact Mk II (there's a a lot of empty space in the FI shell!)

Already an option with @GisserD‘s 3D housing. 

[Quatschmacher]

25 minutes ago, HazBeen said:

It sounds like the SY-300 so it must be based on it. I owned the SY-300 for a while, some good Synth sounds but I did prefer my FI as a "real world" tool. It will be interesting to see how people get on with it.

I reckon you’ll dig the C4.

[Woodinblack]

For me polyphony is essential, which is why I was interested as it no longer needs the GK pickup, a mono synth is ok as a gimmick but not something I could see much of a use for

 

[Woodinblack]

1 minute ago, Quatschmacher said:

Already an option with @GisserD‘s 3D housing. 

Yeh, I wonder why they don’t pick up on that?

[HazBeen]

Just now, Quatschmacher said:

I reckon you’ll dig the C4.

It certainly looks good for my needs  .... although my Future Compact (thanks to GisserD) is small and awesome of course. The SY300/SY1 actually will appeal to some people.... if I needed a lot of 80's type synth sounds the SY in my eyes would really work well. Horses for courses and such. 

[Al Krow]

10 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

How much chordal playing are you doing via bass? Is polyphony really a deal-breaker? I can totally see why guitarists would need this; bassists less so. 

8 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

For me polyphony is essential, which is why I was interested as it no longer needs the GK pickup, a mono synth is ok as a gimmick but not something I could see much of a use for

I think synth lends itself to polyphonic use perhaps more so than many other effects. And if polyphony is available that seems a really nice plus to me and in Woody's case a "must have" which I can understand.

There were some nice, albeit brief, examples of polyphony on the most recent short clip of the SY-1 I posted last night on this thread. 

[Quatschmacher]

29 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

For me polyphony is essential, which is why I was interested as it no longer needs the GK pickup, a mono synth is ok as a gimmick but not something I could see much of a use for

 

A gimmick, really? I think 40 years of recorded music would show otherwise. (That’s not my being snide, by the way.) For solo lead and bass lines monophony is perfectly useable. In fact, more of the complex routing tends to be used with mono lines as the textures get too busy for polyphony. However, if one really needs the polyphony then fair enough; that’s a case where I’d personally resort to keys as I don’t play guitar any more.  

[Woodinblack]

7 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

A gimmick, really? I think 40 years of recorded music would show otherwise. (That’s not my being snide, by the way.) For solo lead and bass lines monophony is perfectly useable. In fact, more of the complex routing tends to be used with mono lines as the textures get too busy for polyphony. However, if one really needs the polyphony then fair enough; that’s a case where I’d personally resort to keys as I don’t play guitar any more.  

I don't mean a gimmick for other people, I mean a gimmick for me - I have no use for it other than 'oh look I am doing a synth line'. I mean I used to like doing killer and seriously thought about doing 'you can't touch this' even though they were fine on the behringer boss clone, although the best reason to play that on the bass is that you are a bass player and don't have a keyboard player.

But for me, I need something I can gig live, that is small (not enough room on the pedalboard for large, so sy300 was out), and then when I feel like it I can use with other instruments, specifically the chapman stick. And frankly with 10 strings on that, playing just one would be a gimmick.

--

I must admit until this I was considering the source audio thing, I didn't realise it wasn't polyphonic, I just kind of assumed it would be. So pretty lucky I didn't get it.

Edited August 7, 2019 by Woodinblack

[Quatschmacher]

28 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I don't mean a gimmick for other people, I mean a gimmick for me - I have no use for it other than 'oh look I am doing a synth line'. I mean I used to like doing killer and seriously thought about doing 'you can't touch this' even though they were fine on the behringer boss clone, although the best reason to play that on the bass is that you are a bass player and don't have a keyboard player.

But for me, I need something I can gig live, that is small (not enough room on the pedalboard for large, so sy300 was out), and then when I feel like it I can use with other instruments, specifically the chapman stick. And frankly with 10 strings on that, playing just one would be a gimmick.

--

I must admit until this I was considering the source audio thing, I didn't realise it wasn't polyphonic, I just kind of assumed it would be. So pretty lucky I didn't get it.

The Source Audio will do polyphony of sorts; from a mono input, it’ll allow chordal output which is either of a fixed-interval nature, or it’ll intelligently harmonise from a given key centre and scale type. I’ve just written and published a few patches which have the dry bass as the root and then play 7th, 3rd, 9th and 5th close-position synth voicings.

It won’t replicate your chordal playing input with oscillators though, which is where the Boss wins. 

[Al Krow]

32 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

I must admit until this I was considering the source audio thing, I didn't realise it wasn't polyphonic, I just kind of assumed it would be. So pretty lucky I didn't get it.

You're welcome 😁

I would also have potentially thought about getting the C4 if you hadn't started this thread (or more likely kept my FI), so I guess one good turn and all that...

[Woodinblack]

45 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

The Source Audio will do polyphony of sorts; from a mono input, it’ll allow chordal output which is either of a fixed-interval nature, or it’ll intelligently harmonise from a given key centre and scale type.

Well, yes, so monophonic with more oscilators and harmonies. You can set quite a few mono synths to do that, such as the Korg Monolog. Its still monophonic if it is tracking on input source.

 

[Quatschmacher]

48 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Well, yes, so monophonic with more oscilators and harmonies. You can set quite a few mono synths to do that, such as the Korg Monolog. Its still monophonic if it is tracking on input source.

 

Yes, but the monologue won’t adjust the thirds, fifths and sevenths to be scale correct like the C4 does, so there is a difference. Playing root notes of D, G and C in C major on the C4 will yield Dm7, G7 and C maj7 when programmed. It’s pretty neat. But no, not truly polyphonic, which is what I said. 

[Al Krow]

A little bit of synth history (well my sawtooth take it on it anyway ) ...

Started delving into this side topic when finding myself surprised that retailers can still price the 2004 released Boss SYB-5 for between £120 and £150 new, when the vastly more capable new SY-1 model is about to hit the shelves at £175. It's predecessor, the SYB-3, was released in 1996.

I'm a little tempted to pick up a SYB-5 (used of course!) just to compare how the tech has improved in the intervening 11 years. Yup that's not me being bad at sums - but based on the assumption that the SY-1 is a repackaged and cut down version of the polyphonic SY-300 which came out in Autumn 2015 as a belated response to the much admired 2011 Roland GR 55.

Moving into more recent times, the Panda Future Impact came out hard on the heels of the Boss SY-300 in the summer of 2016, as a successor to the 9 preset Akai Deep Impact. The Akai was released and pulled relatively quickly in the mid 1990s but got itself a bit of a cult following resulting in stratospheric prices which are belatedly coming back down to earth. The FI with its synthesized blocks of oscillators, filters and envelope generators and 99 presets pretty much became top dog until...last month and the July 2019 release of the Source Audio C4. 

Along the way we have had the initially popular Markbass SuperSynth which was released in 2009 with minor cosmetic changes made in a v2 released in 2015, but was somewhat done for by the arrival of the FI; the quirky 2017 Bananana Matryoshka which we loved but found hard to get many gigable sounds from and two 2018 releases: the Pigtronix Mothership 2 which provided us with a small footprint and attractive form factor analog synth but never really captured the hearts of us bassists; and the 2018 Meris Enzo which seemed to hold a fair bit of promise but requires midi to get the best out of and seems already at risk of being eclipsed by the C4.

In hindsight 2015, with the arrival of the Boss SY-300, heralded a new era of development and competition between pedal makers in the synth arena and without doubt now is a great time to be getting into bass synths! 

Edited August 8, 2019 by Al Krow

[Al Krow]

Another short clip from the one bass player in the UK who seems to have managed to get his hands on one of these.

Looking VERY 'usable' to me! 

 

[Owen]

I need to get one of those things for my glasses.

[Woodinblack]

Oh fancy that - I got an email saying that mine is going to be delivered tomorrow. For a change, I started a thread about something I ended up buying

 

[Al Krow]

13 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

Oh fancy that - I got an email saying that mine is going to be delivered tomorrow. 

Mine too. Except I'm not in!!!!

Have rearranged my delivery to Friday. Ugh! Know what my weekend is going to be spent doing, in part, already!  

15 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 For a change, I started a thread about something I ended up buying

Or in my case, another thread you've started where I've ended up buying a gear 😁

[Woodinblack]

13 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Mine too. Except I'm not in!!!!

I am not either but my wife is in, so I shall be trying it out tomorrow night!

Earlier than I expected, was assuming it would be still a few weeks. Maybe time to check if the Squier CV Mustangs are coming out yet - nope!

13 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Or in my case, another thread you've started where I've ended up buying a gear 😁

Sorry about that!

[Woodinblack]

On 27/08/2019 at 17:50, Al Krow said:

Mine too. Except I'm not in!!!!

Well, my wife was but they didn't deliver. Very irritating, and more irritating because I wouldn't have missed it if they hadn't said it was coming!

[Al Krow]

Ah that is frustrating...

[Al Krow]

21 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Well, my wife was but they didn't deliver. Very irritating, and more irritating because I wouldn't have missed it if they hadn't said it was coming!

Yours arrived yet?

My PB has a SY-1 hole ready for filling!  

Edited August 29, 2019 by Al Krow