| Behringer BSY600 synth
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OK, I snapped and scored one the other night, and it turned up today.
Thought it worth a post to give an idea of what these puppies are like, given I've not managed to find much info on t'web.
Anyway...
It's a Behringer pedal: it's similar size to the Boss ones and takes the same power connector at 9v. Similarities don't end there: Boss make the SYB-5, Behringer make the BSY600. Very similar, except the BSY600 also has a "hold" function and is a third the price. I've not played through a Boss pedal though so won't comment on sound quality.
It's plastic - not bullet proof, but I've given previous Behringer pedals a bit of welly and haven't broken one yet.
It's got an input, a wet output, a dry output and an expression pedal input for controlling resonance.
Controls are: dry level, wet level, resonance, frequency and synth mode. The synth modes start at sawtooth (with mode 2 having an octave down which is nice), through to square wave and PWM, stopping off at a couple of LFO options and culminating in two full synth modes: one normal and the other with rising decay.
There's a "hold" function where you press and hold the footpedal to drone the last noise - I've read posts with difficulties disengaging this and presume either Behringer have changed design or those pedals were faulty - it's press once for on, once for off, and press-and-hold for the hold. Hold can be used on all synth modes bar the two pure synth options 10 and 11.
So, what are the noises like? The two LFOs are great, with the decay knob acting as a rate control, particularly suited to live knob-twiddling. I like the square wave -1 octave, and the others are usable although I'm not sure how much I'm going to actually *use* it yet, but I've been enjoying playing with it today - particularly setting up a drone and then playing with the resonance and frequency sweeps - the harmonics this generates are pretty interesting and you can almost play a tune on them alone.
You've got a pot to control amount of dry signal and a separate one for wet, which is good and allows you to get a lot more usable tones than you might think.
The hold option's great although has some limitations. You can setup an interesting soundscape noise, and play with the res and freq controls, then dial down the effect knob and turn up the dry knob and play quite straight notes over it, although the held tone will eventually decay to a dry signal.
Tracking is better than I expected: it's a synth pedal rather than conventional effects so I guess playing style needs to adjust accordingly, but it's pretty rapid. Chords aren't what this is about, although some interesting flicks between tracked notes can occur, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It can sound quite interesting if you feed a drum machine into it, too.
I think it could do with something really funky like an arpeggiator to make it a really fun toy, but I'm impressed so far. Not got to the point where I'd be able to say I'll definitely use it in the set, but I'll post back after full-volume-through-PA rehearsal tomorrow night.
Summary: definitely fun. For 40 quid, I'm happy. Lots of interesting noises and the hold function gives you the ability to play with weird synth noises which I'm planning to use at the end of a couple of songs when I'm feeling self-indulgent... | 
GAS
