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BOSS ME90B (here at last)


glassmoon

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3 minutes ago, markbunney said:

Thanks for letting me know. The rest of the pedal does look & sound great from all the videos I’ve seen

No worries, sorry it wasn't good news, there is a tuner onboard though, which works as an excellent alternative to achieve drop tuning ;) 
The rest of the unit sounds brilliant though, really really brilliant.

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17 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

If the drop tune is done by digital processing, the laws of physics are going to be against you no matter how or what you play.

Modern digital processing is more than capable of rendering a very decent drop tune, to a higher standard than anything analog?  Though I'm not sure of your context.

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One thing I love about some of my better pedals, Darkglass duality fuzz and Alpha Omicron drive, is that they retain a lot of the punchiness of the attack. I find a lot of drive pedals made of bass just make a fizzy noise that takes out the attack. How are the drives on the ME90B?

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I really like them. They’re varied and can be punchy. The advanced drive is a really great, versatile dirt sound and is my favourite.


I’ve often had the sense that what you’re describing comes from the clean blend, especially on a heavier drive pedals where the transient attack is more ‘distorted’ by definition. The me90b has a global blend which does that but it’s the same degree of clean blend for the whole unit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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So opened it up now and played a short while. No PSU? Seems a bit poor - over £300 and no 9v power supply? I mean I have one, but it seems a bit under-generous. I assume they do that because they give you 4 AA batteries so you can use it out of the box. Does anyone know what the battery life is like? I would be quite happy to not have a 9v power supply on a stage if I can help it.

Anyway, so far, seems very easy to use, not much is non obvious and very hands on, which is what I was looking for, although like anything I guess it will take a while to find what you like and dont as although it seems really easy, there are actually a lot of options in there and a lot of combinations.

 

 

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Now I had a chance to play with it with headphones, I can't believe all the options. Yes, I have the Zoom B1-4 and B3, and a helix HX, and the LT for a while, and various other stuff, but this is so accessible. The amps sound fantastic, totally clear, without the noise of the zoom ones, and seem to have real depth. A lot of the modulation options feel like straight copies of the Boss effects (which isn't too surprising) but haven't spent a lot of time with those in the past they feel very familiar. I also actually like the detune and harmonising options as well - yes, they sound artificial, but they always do and that works quite well. In general I think the only thing that really lets it down is the synth options, as I know they can do better, I can't see using those for anything. 

 

I think where it really wins for me is that I am sure there is nothing I can do on this that I can't do on the HX FX for instance, or the zoom but on this I can do it at the same time, like for instance, editing a chorus and then while adjusting it thinking 'this might work with a bit more treble', so adjusting that at the same time, and then maybe backing off the depth and changing the gain to put a bit of grit through it. Like separate effects, but with not only the ability to store them, but also not having to spend ½ hour before a gig trying to work out which patch cable is crackling or why no sound is coming out.

I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

 

But really - no power supply? huh. 

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Oh and a negative. What is with that tuner Boss? Literally all the other devices I mention above, the Zooms, helix, Dwarf, Tc clip on tuner can manage to say 'B' when your b string is in tune. Not C or F# or the number it first thought of. So yes, if you have a 5 string, you can tune the top 4, and then tune the 5th from the others, its faster. 

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21 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

Now I had a chance to play with it with headphones, I can't believe all the options. Yes, I have the Zoom B1-4 and B3, and a helix HX, and the LT for a while, and various other stuff, but this is so accessible. The amps sound fantastic, totally clear, without the noise of the zoom ones, and seem to have real depth. A lot of the modulation options feel like straight copies of the Boss effects (which isn't too surprising) but haven't spent a lot of time with those in the past they feel very familiar. I also actually like the detune and harmonising options as well - yes, they sound artificial, but they always do and that works quite well. In general I think the only thing that really lets it down is the synth options, as I know they can do better, I can't see using those for anything. 

 

I think where it really wins for me is that I am sure there is nothing I can do on this that I can't do on the HX FX for instance, or the zoom but on this I can do it at the same time, like for instance, editing a chorus and then while adjusting it thinking 'this might work with a bit more treble', so adjusting that at the same time, and then maybe backing off the depth and changing the gain to put a bit of grit through it. Like separate effects, but with not only the ability to store them, but also not having to spend ½ hour before a gig trying to work out which patch cable is crackling or why no sound is coming out.

I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

 

But really - no power supply? huh. 

Hmm. If you'd not said the synth sounds were poor I would definitely have bought one. Given how good the SY-1 is it seems odd.

I use many synth sounds live so it's kind of a deal breaker.

Are they like the old Boss synth pedals?

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2 hours ago, stewblack said:

Hmm. If you'd not said the synth sounds were poor I would definitely have bought one. Given how good the SY-1 is it seems odd.

I use many synth sounds live so it's kind of a deal breaker.

Are they like the old Boss synth pedals?

 

I think maybe they are - seems odd like you said, I am sure they could wedge a SY-1 in there at least, just a couple of presets from it. 

I suppose it does have a effect send / return (which I used tonight for a sample player as our keyboardist was off) for putting other effects in

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So tonights gig, because I couldn't get the sound I wanted on the last gig and had a not great gig because of it, I thought I might as well take the ME90B with me. I also have new strings and cleaned the frets.

Because obviously I only got the 90b on friday and haven't had much time with it, just a play around last night, I didn't want to go to crazy, but noticed that in preset mode, P1 is a straight(ish) sound with a bit of an amp model, P2 is an overdriven valve amp with dirt and P4 is a wah thing, so I figured I could use those basic tones to get most of what I needed. The keyboard player is MIA tonight, so back to the 4 of us. So for most straight songs I used P1, for something with a lot of dirt I used P2, and for things that were just a bit rocky, I used P2, turned preset mode off and turned of the drive section, for a mid drive level. For funky music I used 4, and found that if you engaged the pedal you got to change the frequency of the filter of the wah and that was huge fun. For Whole Lotta Love, I could go for P2, start without the drive, add the drive in the middle and turn the echo section on, adjusting the delay until it was right (that I managed to do in the song gap - I could have used tap tempo but forgot). for Who Knew, back to P1, then off preset and mod on with a chorus, and just turned the dials up, putting the time to the end it is like a CE1 chorus like I had so it sounded familiar.

The only think I missed out on what 'are you going my way' when I normally have an octave, but didn't know we were playing that until it started, and I hadn't selected it (forgot I could set the pedal to octave, until half way through the song).

I had a great gig, really enjoyed it, and honestly the sound in my IEMs was so great, sounded just like the bass going through a series of different amps and pedals. It didn't sound even slightly digital and at no point did I not know how to get something I wanted. Love this pedal.

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That's a very glowing review and great to hear about so many usable tones straight out the box!

 

Just wondering whether the effects bank that you're loving @Woodinblackis based on that available in the Boss GT1000/Core, for those wanting additional flexibility those models offer? I'm guessing the answer must be yes? In which I might need to have another look at the GT 1000 Core, which our guitarist snaffled off me and is loving it, before I'd really got to grips with it. (Aside: and he's finding it much more of a breeze to dial in tones he likes than the two other guitarists I'm working with who are using the older tech Helix Stomps).

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9 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

I think maybe they are - seems odd like you said, I am sure they could wedge a SY-1 in there at least, just a couple of presets from it. 

I suppose it does have a effect send / return

Yes indeed, adding the missing pedal is always an option with these units. 

Does kind of negate their main purpose as an all in one solution of course.

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27 minutes ago, stewblack said:

Yes indeed, adding the missing pedal is always an option with these units. 

Does kind of negate their main purpose as an all in one solution of course.


it does - I didn't mind the jamman as I wouldn't expect to have that in a multieffects. Maybe I didn't give it a chance, I heard a review where it sounded good, I will give it another spin in case I missed it.

 

oh I forgot to say, although at the gig I used it on power as it was on my pedal board, being able to run it on batteries is great too

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3 hours ago, Al Krow said:

Just wondering whether the effects bank that you're loving @Woodinblackis based on that available in the Boss GT1000/Core, for those wanting additional flexibility those models offer?

 

I assume so - I suspect they were just a copy paste with some restrictions created by the user interface. I suspect the GT1000 core has a lot of options that the ME90b lacks, which is probably kind of the point. Apart from bass amp models, I see a lot of people on the internet hoping that the GT1000 will get the bass models from the ME90b in some update at some point.

 

Maybe there are other options if I connected it to a computer - I might do that at some point to see what is there, but I can't really imagine working with it in that way in general. There do seem to be some effects that you can change out for others, there seems to be better options for the ring modulator, which I can never imagine using

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4 hours ago, uk_lefty said:

...and does the Octaver make the glitching noise you get with an OC-2? 

It tracks slightly better than a regular OC-2 and sounds close enough to my ear.

There's a Polyphonic Octave for glitch free octaving, but it doesn't sound as sweet as the OC-2 style Octave.

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It's here. Or rather, it's there. At home in a box. Had to bring my mam into A&E so I never got to unwrap it.

I may get to it later, don't really know what's happening..

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