NPD: Boss SY-1

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Found an SY-1 at such a good price it would have been rude not to snap it up, so it is due to arrive on my doorstep tomorrow.

 

I'm not sure how it'll get any use in the band I'm in as we do mostly 60s covers, so it could end up on my guitar pedalboard rather than my bass board. Failing that I'll get to play with it for a few weeks before letting it go to a new owner without making a loss.

 

I didn't really get on with a EHX B9 organ machine when I owned one briefly, so I'm hoping the organs on the sy-1 will tickle my pickle.

 

Do any SY-1 owners here have any tips?

Does it work better certain inputs - such as a tele bridge pickup rather than a humbucker neck pickup on guitar? Or the Jazz pickup of a PJ bass for example?

Has anyone flipped the baseplate to put velcro on without affecting the rubber foot?

Edited April 7, 2022 by Jean-Luc Pickguard

[Doddy]

I picked one up cheap a few weeks ago.

It's a cool pedal. I haven't spent too much time playing around with it yet, but it's a far better pedal than the old Boss SYB3 & 5, and the EHX Mono Synth.

Like most pedals, I think it triggers a little better with a passive bass (especially a Precision), but it worked absolutely fine with my EMG equipped Shuker.

[Woodinblack]

at the moment I use different patches at different times, but I am currently using a couple of organ presets in some specific songs (in fact, old songs), they work really well. I have got a great patch for perfect strangers, but we dont' play that

 

56 minutes ago, Doddy said:

Like most pedals, I think it triggers a little better with a passive bass (especially a Precision), but it worked absolutely fine with my EMG equipped Shuker.

 

Not sure what that means, there is no triggering as it is not a volume based on off thing (although it uses volume).

Don't think I have ever played it with a passive bass, but I have no idea why it would be any different.

[itu]

I have a IE Xero in front of it. For fun it's - yes, fun. Tracks incredibly well.

[pete.young]

Remembering to switch it from bass mode to guitar mode is probably a top tip. I hadn't even realised there was a switch originally!

 

I've been using mine with guitar (actually, acoustic lap steel) and the pads and organ sounds really add something. The bass specific patches are better with bass than guitar, and there are some which are just useless for both (thinking of the lead synths particularly).

 

The arpeggiators are awesome fun with a guitar, haven't tried them on bass.

 

What I'm really missing is an expression pedal. I think that will make it a lot easier.

[Doddy]

5 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Not sure what that means, there is no triggering as it is not a volume based on off thing (although it uses volume).

Don't think I have ever played it with a passive bass, but I have no idea why it would be any different.

I mean how quickly and smoothly the pedal reacts. There are a lot of pedals don't work quite as well with a high output active bass, as they do with a passive instrument. 

[Woodinblack]

8 hours ago, Doddy said:

I mean how quickly and smoothly the pedal reacts. There are a lot of pedals don't work quite as well with a high output active bass, as they do with a passive instrument. 

 

Yes, some pedals react differently - I don't have any high output active basses since I got rid of the G&L (which was actually just a high outpiut, whether it was in active or passive), alll of mine are pretty standard. The SY-1 didn't seem to care much what went in it, responded well to everything.  

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

The SY-1 was delivered this afternoon. Its in mint condition well packed and in the original box, but no manual or boss sticker. I downloaded the one page pdf manual and put it on my iPad, but I've found that the controls are pretty much self explanatory.

 

I've been wanting to play synth from guitar since I bought a Casio MG-510 back in the late 80s - which reminds me I must dig it out of the loft and list it on reverb. The casio has noticable latency which made it difficult to play with any groove or feeling I ended up using it mainly to program lines into the computer in step time. Having subsequently played and owned various guitar / bass synth pedals over the years including an akai deep impact and EHX B9, I've never been tempted to keep one longer than a few weeks. The SY-1 was cheap enough to take a punt on with a view to possibly selling it on but I think it might be a keeper. Playing a squier bullet mustang guitar and jaguar short scale bass through it was a bit of a revelation. The way it responds to my playing is amazing even without having to modify my sloppy playing technique. Layering a convincing organ sound over clean guitar was so simple to achieve. The fx loop looks like a useful feature so I'll try that with a fuzz & a klon clone in the loop and then feed the pedal output into a zoom MS50G for a bit of reverb etc to see how that sounds when I've found enough cables.